Trip Report: Joe's Ride - Olney, MD

Bottom Line

Fun, inexpensive party ride. Not a race - all riders expected to start together. I'll add this to my list of annual rides - it's a great way to start the season - but there are some things I hope will change.

The Five Ws

• Joe Sanford died of brain cancer at 10 years old. 
• Rides (45K, 30K, 10K) and a stride (5K). The 45K and 30K were $25, the 10K ride and 5K walk were $10, and there was a free kids' bike rodeo.
• 2018 date was April 28 (reportedly earlier than in previous years). 
• Start and End at Oakdale Emory Church - 3425 Emory Church Rd, Olney, MD.
• The event is in memory of and benefits children in the Olney community who have died. Proceeds go to the Joseph Patrick Sanford Foundation.
• Here's a link. 

What to Expect

The longer rides (30K and 45K) started at 0700. Seemed like fewer than 50 riders, maybe 35 or so. The scene is a party scene - there was a DJ, a couple of vendor booths, and a light breakfast. Check-in was super-smooth. I gave my name and they handed me my swag (a t-shirt, a tote bag, and a water bottle among other things), though the organizers had encouraged riders to have registration info - a QR code - ready.

We all set out after a brief prayer. The majority of the route in the beginning was roads that had been closed for the ride. After the 30K riders split off, roads were mostly lightly trafficked. The route was very well marked with the kind of signs you stick in the ground.

There were a LOT of farms, some woods, and some residential areas on the route. One house early on the route had people on the porch cheering us on. It was rolling hills throughout, with beautiful scenery. The day was really foggy, but that added to the beauty. There was one support stop, where the 30K and 45K diverged. Most of the roads were a little chewed up and in need of a fresh coat of asphalt, but that's to be expected this early in the season and on a rural route.

I got to see a beautiful woodpecker, wings out-stretched, fly in front of me. He was big - I had never seen one that close. The colors were unreal, like God went a little overboard with the Instagram filters. I wish I had a picture to share. Warning, though, farms in spring smell like, well, about like you'd expect. If you can abide the occasional smell of a freshly-fertilized farm, maybe stick to the trails around DC?

After the ride (it took me about 2 hours do do the 28 mile/45K) it was a party scene. Line dancing, talking, eating. I kind of wanted to do the Wiggle and the Macarena, but that part wrapped up by the time I got my bike shoes off and my slides on.

It seems like this is really a community event. I saw a lot of riders riding back home after their ride, and there was a lot of surprise when I said I was from Odenton, about a 40-minute drive away. One person said, "Oh, I've heard of Odenton..." Sometimes, I felt a little out of place - not from there, don't have a kid with cancer, didn't suffer the loss of a child, don't know Joe Sanford. I wanted to ask, "Am I the only one here who's just here for the ride?" but it seemed a callous thing to say.

Some Drawbacks

From most significant to least significant:

No cue sheet. Organizers assured me that I wouldn't get lost, as the route was well marked (it was, mostly) and that others on the ride would help me find my way, if I got lost (so, a group of four of us all ended up lost together, but not badly. There was either a sign missing, or a confusing sign, or one we all missed near the end of the ride. We ended up biking along a busy highway for a short distance, and then turning left off of said busy highway. It was dangerous and scary, but we all made it).

There was SAG, but no one gave out the SAG number. "If you need SAG, just wait, the car will be driving around on the route."

Balloon release. I know - this isn't really ride related. I'd love to see the organizers ditch the balloon release. Cuz, you know, wrecking the environment in loving memory of those who aren't around to see it wrecked... not cool. Plant a tree or release butterflies or something. Grief is real, losing a child is tragic, but there are better ways to honor that memory.

Registration. Registration wasn't through Active.com, but through SignMeUp. The technical process - navigating SignMeUp and PayPal and such - was kind of a pain. The other option was a snail-mailed registration sheet and a check.

No Gatorade or EnerGels - okay, this isn't even really a draw-back; I just thought I should warn you. There were delicious bagels and coffee at the start, and, c'mon, 28 miles. Do you really need Gatorade or EnerGels for 28 miles? No. Just fill the two water bottles you have on your bike, you'll be fine.

On Accidental Saints

Last year (2015, for those keeping track) at Lent, my church picked two books for the Lenten book group. One was Accidental Saints, by Nadia Bolz-Weber, and the other was Desmond Tutu's Made for Goodness. Well, I was in college up to my eyebrows, and the book group ended up not having its last meeting, and I got severely behind in my reading. I didn't pick up either book again. Here are my first and last posts on the books.

The rest of this has spoilers, so, if you're not into spoilers for Accidental Saints, you should stop reading here.

So, now that college is all but over and I have more spare time, I went ahead and finished Accidental Saints. You can check out my review on GoodReads, but I wanted to add something that really struck me about the last 3/4 of this book. It was the chapter that dealt with Nadia's friend Bruce's drunk driving accident.

Nadia had befriended Bruce, a Bishop in the Lutheran church, whose wife was dying of cancer. Some years later, something bad happens. Nadia writes,

"In a brief exchange on instant message, I learned that, two nights earlier, Bruce got behind the wheel of his car with what tests would later show to be a higher than legal blood-alcohol level, lost control, and hit and killed a fifty-two-year-old mother of three. And by the time I found out, from my luxurious room in a resort in Mexico, Bruce was sitting alone in jail."

This chapter so spoke to me. I still often think of my bishop, who also got behind the wheel of her car with what tests would later show to be a far higher than legal blood-alcohol-level, wasn't paying attention, and struck and killed a 41-year-old father of father of two.

It was hard to know what to pray for - Tom Palermo, his family, and cyclists everywhere, or my suffragan Bishop Heather Cook, her family, and prisoners everywhere. Of course I prayed for all of the above. I wrestled with anger at the bishop, I wrestled with disappointment in a church leader, I worried about the divide this might drive between often liberal-atheist-cyclists and drivers and the church.

Nadia talks in this chapter about the need for mercy and the remorse Peter must have felt as he swam up to Jesus and proclaimed three times that he loved him. She writes, "We simply have to cling tightly to the truth that God can redeem it." I'm still struggling with that one.

I know Jesus being resurrected is supposed to make it all okay - that the resurrection makes everything okay. It washes away all our sins - as Nadia might say, mine, yours, Heather's, Peter's. But that's hard to swallow. It's hard to not still feel a little angry and a little lost and a little heartbroken.

Powerful Editing Tool

In a creative writing class, we were taught to avoid adverbs if at all possible. I had spent this other class (a class on writing a novella) wishing for a "highlight adverbs" feature in Microsoft Word, or in Scrivener.

I hit Scrivener's feature request forum and did a search on "adverbs." Who'd have guessed I wasn't the first person to have the idea. The request was denied, but one of the comments referenced The Hemingway Editor.

The Hemingway Editor is a web-based app, but there is a downloadable desktop app. I only used the web-based one. It allows you to paste text into the editor, or compose within it.

 The app highlights adverbs, passive voice, difficult-to-read sentences, and overly-complex usages.

It grades your writing based on the number of sentences and words. The lower the grade, the better the writing. The grade may be commiserate with school grade levels - i.e., if it's rated a grade 4, a 4th grader could read it.

Pros:

You can paste a surprising amount of text into that window and it doesn't crash. Like, more than 5,500 words.

The mechanism to find difficult-to-read sentences is nuanced enough that it has two levels of difficulty, "hard" and "very hard."

It highlights "wordiness." It found all the times I said "in order to" when "to" would have worked, and all the times I said "all of" instead of just "all." It also found fancy-shmancy words like "consolidate" and "portion." When you hover over a wordy word, it recommends a simpler word or phrase.

You can format the text in the editor. There are options to make lists, use bold and italics, and the normal rich-text options.

Cons:

It doesn't find all the adverbs. It finds the ones with an "ly" ending, but misses "only," "even," "never," and some others.

If you paste a lot of words into the app, it can get confused. Switching the toggle from Edit to Write, pasting the text, and toggling back to Edit fixes this.

Pasting from Scrivener really confused Hemingway. The hard returns didn't transfer over, and this had an impact on the grading and on which sentences it thought were "very difficult." Often, adding a hard return where there should have been one downgraded the difficulty level and upped my grade.

It really wants you to write short sentences. Sentences without clauses. Simple sentences, with only one comma. That's great sometimes, but gets old after a while. I blame Hemingway himself for that one.

4 Things The Wiz - Live! Got Right

I watched NBC's The Wiz - Live! last night (most of it - I missed the first hour). I had never seen any version of the play. If you missed it, you should go see it - it's still available on NBC's website.

Here are four places this version really nailed it.

1. It Boosted New Stars

The lead was played by Shanice Williams. Don't feel bad if you don't recognize her name. According to IMDB, she's best known for her role in The National Dog Show Presented by Purina. Yeah, I didn't see that, either. She got the role that was previously played by Ashanti and Diana Ross in other versions, and she killed it.

Other talented, but little-known actors include Amber Riley (Glee and a made-for-TV movie), Elijah Kelley (The Butler and a few other movies), and Uzo Aduba (OITNB, mostly).

Amber Riley as Addapearle

She was framed by some major names, too - Ne-Yo, Queen Latifah, Common, David Allen Grier, and Mary J. Blige. They provided draw, boosting viewership, and lending exposure to Williams and her fellow actors.

Hollywood needs this. Hollywood needs more African American actors earning money, making great films, and supporting each other. Those awards shows are still awfully predictable. That can change. This is part of that change.

2. It Portrayed Successful African Americans

Take a deep breath and stick with me through this point, okay?

While movies are more likely now to star African Americans, the actors often don't speak or dress any differently than their white counterparts (Annie, I'm looking at you). Aside from the color of their skin, they may as well be white.

The Wiz - Live! might engender criticism for having the characters speak in slang, but these characters are African American. They aren't African Americans striving to conform to the dominant culture in order to achieve success - by dressing like successful white people, or by talking like successful white people, for example. They find success not despite their identity, not because of their identity, but within their identity. And it's glorious.

Ne-Yo as Tin Man

Queen Latifah is the successful ruler of the Emerald City as the Wizard. Aduba and Riley (as Glinda and Addaperle) are successful Good Witches. Dorothy, Tin Man, Lion, and Scarecrow face challenges and rise above them. They don't conform to the (non-existent, in this film) dominant white culture in order to do so. They do it slang, clothing, and stereotypes included. They do it as they are.

This is what acceptance looks like.

3. Positive Body Image

Shanice Williams was adorable in her little plaid skirt. Mary J. Blige looked amazing in her costumes, and Uzo Aduba and Amber Riley looked beautiful in their dresses. None of these women are exactly tiny. And I loved seeing that.

Shanice Williams as Dorothy, Uzo Aduba as Glinda the Good

I love it that the show's producers didn't choose super-skinny women to play these characters - they chose women who could act and sing and dance to play these characters.

The women appeared comfortable in their appearances. Williams never tugged her skirt down in an attempt to hide her thighs. Aduba and Riley never tugged at their costumes in an attempt to hide their lovely curves. No one commented about diets or exercise regimens.

Williams, giving a pep-talk to David Allen Grier as the Cowardly Lion

I know - that stuff wouldn't have fit in that play. It was written about characters who wouldn't have worried about those things. But gosh. It was so refreshing to see stars on stage who, I felt, sort of looked like me.

4. It Passed the Bechdel Test

The Bechdel test presents a series of wickets for a movie (or book, or video game, etc.) to hit: it has to have at least two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.

With Queen Latifah playing a definitely feminine Wizard (though she doesn't necessarily look very feminine at first), and Aduba and Riley as the good witches, there were a few scenes where the women spoke to Dorothy.

Dorothy (and cast) discuss the meaning of success
with Queen Latifah as the Wizard

They didn't even discuss hair, or nails, or clothes, much less diet plans and exercise routines. They talked about big stuff - identity. They talked about the meaning of success and the meaning of family.

It was women acting like women. (Mostly) supporting each other. It passed the test with flying colors.

Bonus Point: Excellent Conflict

That scene when Dorothy confronted Evillene was one of the best scenes I saw. Dorothy starts hurling insults about Evillene, and Evillene responds with, "If I'm wicked, what does that make you?"

She launches into a list of Dorothy's offences. She killed the other witch and then stole her shoes before the body was even cold. Dorothy didn't have a good comeback for that.

Mary J. Blige as Evillene, not taking Dorothy's hypocrisy

I wish the moment had been more powerful. There was potential for Dorothy to have self-doubt or defensiveness... but she kind of glossed over it.

The other point was made by the Wizard. The Wizard explained that things in Oz worked before Dorothy came. There was balance. Everyone knew their place. Then Dorothy went witch-killing and upset everything. Again, Dorothy never addressed that accusation, or even seemed to acknowledge it.

Plotting Help

Now that NaNoWriMo is almost at a close, you probably don't need this tool - unless you write during the "off-season," or are a struggling college student, like me.

I'm in the middle of a two-month class aimed at teaching students to write a novella - a ~100 page story, which we'll self-publish at the end of class.

I found myself in an existential plot crisis. Even though I had a strong start, I couldn't figure out where this novella was going. I needed some serious plot help. I Googled "plot diagram" and landed on this interactive tool.

Once you enter in your name and title, it presents a "mountain." You can use the slider bar at the bottom to change where the peak is (allowing for more or less rising and falling action). 

You enter in an event and a description, and drag and drop it to where you want it on the "mountain." Downside: once you drag that event, the only part that will be visible is the event title. You can't get back to see or edit your event description.

Hitting print will allow you to print or save the final version, but you can add events after you "print." Once you start over or navigate off the page, your work will be lost, so if you want to keep it, print it. This is what it'll look like:

Happy writing!

Edit: I found another interesting downside to this working aid: The events are numbered on the printed page as you entered them. So, using the example above, if you entered in Problem 1, then the Major Crisis, and then went back and entered in Problem 2, the bottom of your printout will list them as:
1. Character Intro
2. Problem 1
3. Major Crisis
4. Problem 2
5. Resolution 1

It's still a useful working aid... it's just not perfect.

On Accidental Saints and Made For Goodness - Week 2

On Perfection

I have to say, Nadia's chapter where she talked about the expectations of others really spoke to me. She said, "Maybe it's not only the leaders who think they should be perfect; maybe it's also their followers who expect them to have it all together."

I am totally guilty of this. Like, all-the-time guilty. I have high expectations of myself, and high expectations of others. I tend to know my friends well enough to love them and their imperfections. I love their snarky-ness, their sarcasm, their occasional falling-apart. I identify with all those things, and I do them myself. I know we're not perfect.

But I expect my leaders - in family, in church, at work - to be always forgiving, never snarky, never falling-apart. At least, not when I'm around. I have some amends to make, and I'll make them in person.

Desmond Tutu again echoes her: "As human beings, we hear in the command to be perfect a demand for flawlessness. But flawlessness is not the goal of God's invitation. ... Godly perfection is not flawlessness. Godly perfection is wholeness." I love him for saying this. I guess I have some work to do.

Desmond Tutu talks about practicing being good. He talks about how God gave us choice, but the choice really is ours, and it does take practice. I have to admit, this really confused me. Last week, he was saying that being good is something we are, not something we do, and now he's saying that we have to practice being good.

Not the Blessing

The other thing Nadia said that really struck me, was when she talked about how we are not the blessing that is bestowed upon others. I'm guilty of this one, too. Thinking that I will magnanimously step down from my ivory tower and bless people with my presence or my works. She points out that we are all both needy and needs-meeters. It was a difficult concept to wrap my head around. I think she's also saying that experiencing the need and the meeting of that need is to experience Jesus. It's not in the being needy or in the generosity - it's in the communion.

The Discussion Questions

1. 1. What is your Nineveh? Has God ever moved you to confront that thing, person, or event that you would rather avoid? What happened, and how did it feel?
   
   Not so much, on this one. I would say that the closest it comes is at work. As a team-lead, I was a great coach, mentor, cheer-leader. But I wasn't good at giving negative feedback or conducting sessions where I had to counsel someone on poor performance. I had to do it, and it felt awful. I'm still much better at "A for effort!" than I am at "these are the expectations. Let's find a way for you to start meeting them."
   
   
2. Have you ever felt like you were someone's "project" - as if they were trying to "minister" to you, yet somehow were serving themselves? How did it feel? Why is it so difficult for us to give to others without becoming self-important?
   
   Again, not so much. I've definitely been on the other side of that - believing that I could lead a youth group (I don't even like kids!) because I was young and energetic (I was) and I understood teenagers (nope. Not even when I was one). It was a gift I didn't and don't possess, and I failed miserably. I think we do better at ministration when it's in a way that comes more naturally.
   
   
3. (Summarizing) When you were young, did you believe that Godliness meant following a list of prohibitions? ...Has that rules-based messaging affected how you live and feel as an adult? Is there such a thing as "Godly living"? Is the lifestyle and personality of the Christian the primary focus of faith?
   
   Oh, yes. Christians don't smoke, drink, smoke pot, swear, have pre-marital sex. I know now those things aren't true, but when I was a teenager, I vacillated between believing that we are saved by faith and that we are saved by works. When I thought we are saved by works, I was super-puritan. When I thought we are saved by faith, I took it as a free pass - I'm already saved, I can do whatever the hell I want. Now, I think it's both. I do still believe that we should aim for a lifestyle that treats ourselves and those around us well. I know that as sinners, we'll fall short. But I do believe we should be trying.

On Accidental Saints and Made For Goodness - Week 1

I can't always make it to church, and that means missing book group. So I'm participating via blog, at least on the weeks I can't make it.

Overall Impressions

The choice to read these two books together was brilliant. They echo each other using different voices for much the same message, and it's a good and powerful message. So far, I'd say the message is, "You are worthy - it'll be okay."

Nadia Bolz-Weber's voice in Accidental Saints - Finding God in All the Wrong People is humorous, at times irreverent. She uses swear words! She sounds like someone I'd like to have coffee with. It's refreshing to "hear" someone speak on Godly matters without the lofty speech that often makes books on the subject inaccessible to the average Joe.

Desmond Tutu's voice in Made for Goodness and Why This Makes All the Difference is grandfatherly. Kind, approachable, instructive. His text is a little denser than Nadia's, which is why I think it's a good thing that we typically read three chapters of her book to two of his. He has a much different outlook than Nadia (for some obvious reasons), but still manages to relate to the American experience.

What Spoke to Me

One of the best quotes from Accidental Saints is: "There is nothing we have done that God cannot redeem." It's really hard to internalize this one. Tutu helps a bit: "God already loves us perfectly; God cannot love us one iota more. Equally, there is nothing we can do that will make God love us one iota less." This, too, is difficult to internalize, but remembering God's love is perfect is helpful.

The next quote from Accidental Saints captures the idea that we are all complicated. I think this speaks to the idea that we're all marred by sin in some way, but also reflects the idea that we're all saints, too: "On All Saints' Sunday, I am faced with sticky ambiguities around saints who were bad and sinners who were good." This pairs nicely with one from Made for Goodness, which reminds us that even though we are all complicated, we're also all good: "There is not a single person that God gives up on, because God knows that we are made to be like God, who is goodness itself."

Nadia talks about her struggles with racism, and that resonated with me. She says that for all her anti-racism talk and liberal leanings, she can't get around the fact that she reacts differently to (for example) young black men she sees on the street. She also references white privilege and her empty outrage at the inherent racism in our society. She says she feels that if she could just "show the right level of outrage, it'll make up for the fact that every single day of my life I have benefited from the very same system that acquitted George Zimmerman." Tutu has a slightly different take on it: "If wrong was the norm, it wouldn't be news... Murder and mayhem are not the norm. The norm is goodness." This brought me hope. It's easy to feel discouraged watching the news. Whether it's local stories or international news, there are atrocities everywhere, and there's so much of it I can't do a thing about. I like this reminder that while it may seem that stuff is everywhere, there's also goodness everywhere. It's almost like he's speaking to her outrage, here.

Desmond Tutu devotes a lot of time to explaining that our efforts to "be good" get in the way of our recognition that we "are good." One of the things he says is, "Attached to that notion of "being good" are all the "oughts" and "shoulds" that we think will win us... God's love and divine favor." I've been in therapy a few times. One of the more recent was because of the stress I was facing with accepting a decision that meant our family was geographically spread out, and I was (temporarily) a single mom. I had stopped sleeping. I had almost stopped eating. I was consumed by anger and stress. The therapist worked with me using cognitive behavioral therapy - changing your thinking in order to better control your thinking. He talked about "musterbating" - allowing too many toxic thoughts into your head. "It must be fair" (no, it isn't always fair), "I must do the dishes" (no, you don't have to do the dishes, but maybe there's a way to remind yourself that you want to), "I must be understood" (nope, that doesn't always happen, either). Focusing on that stuff will drive you certifiably crazy. Tutu also said, "We cannot choose how we feel. We can choose what we do, how we act." I'm not sure I agree with this. I think you can make choices about how you feel. I think my therapy did just that. I think when we are angry, that's as much a choice we make as when we decide to move forward from a set-back.

One of the first things I highlighted from Accidental Saints was a quote about the saints in our lives: "Saint Paul describes the saints as "a great cloud of witnesses," so when they have passed, we still hold them up, hoping perhaps that their virtues... might become our own virtue, our own strength." I had never considered our (Episcopal) view of the saints in this light, but I like the idea. It was an "aha!" moment.

There's this, on leadership, from Accidental Saints: "I'm a leader, but only by saying, 'Oh, screw it. I'll go first.'" I wonder how much of corporate leadership is this "Fine - I'll go first" kind of attitude and how much is "We (meaning you) need to go this way." Is one way better in the corporate world? More effective? Is there room for high-level corporate leaders to "go first"? I'd like to say that going first is the best leadership... But honestly, I'm not sure the guys at the top can do that. Not in any "corporate vision" kind of way. Maybe they can sometimes. I don't know.

The Discussion Questions

1. I rarely think of myself as a saint. Mostly, I realize how broken I am - I'm so mean, sometimes. Often, even. I've said before that if my mom, my aunt, and my husband are praying for you, you're going to be okay. While each of these people is merely human - they each have their flaws - I also know that they can be my strongest supporters. I've always felt their spiritual health was really high, even when they were in crisis or questioning their faith.

2. I think I'm often in places where I say the wrong thing, or I react the wrong way. I think loving (in a Christian kind of way) the people around you helps you empathize with them more, and might help you not say the wrong thing, but I think getting it right 100% of the time is impossible for humans. I think Desmond Tutu answers this better, by encouraging us to not try to say the right thing or do the right thing, but to remember that we are good, even when we're not.

3. Figuring out just what crap I've had exchanged for Jesus's blessedness is pretty hard. I know I've got a lot of crap. Figuring out which has been more or less directly exchanged is a tall order. I suppose, I could say that there have been a few times when I said exactly the wrong thing to someone... And those people chose to keep talking to me, to be my friends, to forgive me. I guess that's my crap for His blessedness.

Busch Gardens Williamsburg, VA - Review & Tips

We went to Busch Gardens theme park over Columbus Day weekend. Here's the review.

What if Some Members of My Party Don't Like Roller Coasters?

Don't worry - there's plenty to keep them busy, too! The lines for the roller coasters (especially the Griffon and Mach Tower) tend to be pretty long. They do a good job of keeping the line moving and there's good stuff to look at, so you don't really realize you've been waiting for an hour to get on the ride. While the scare-lovers are waiting in line, the non-scare-lovers can ride bumper cars or check out the live animal exhibits or play fairway games. Or point and laugh at their roller-coaster-riding companions as they scream their heads off.

Why Should I Go to Busch Gardens Instead of the State Fair?

Just kidding, you should do both. While Busch Gardens is much more expensive than the state fair, you won't find roller coasters like those at your state fair. You'll eat better at Busch Gardens (they have salads and vegetables, in addition to some more traditional fair foods), though you will pay more to do so. Also, Busch Gardens is really clean, and it's clear that the people who work there actually enjoy their jobs. That makes a huge difference. The people running the various boutiques took ownership and pride in their shops. One commented on the Hallo-Scream shenanigans, with a gentle complaint about the screaming 13-year-olds "running through my store." She wasn't having it.

Basic Logistics - What to Take, What to Leave

The stroller (obviously). 

If you have a kid in a stroller, you'll be fine, though the stroller can't go on the scary roller coasters.

A drawstring shoulder-bag. 

Bags are allowed, and it's really nice to have one place to stash your stuff. Put your cell phone and wallet in there, so you can leave it with someone or in a locker before a ride where it might go flying.

Food and Drinks? 

I don't think you're allowed to bring your own in. Food and drinks are pricey, especially the beer ($8.50 for a metal bottle of Bud Light). You will get hungry and thirsty, but if you plan ahead a bit, you can make good choices at the dining areas. Also, at the gift shops, if you buy a Busch Gardens water bottle for $8, you can refill it anywhere, all day long. I wish I had done that - I could have been drinking a lot more water!

Cigarettes? 

If you're a smoker, don't fear. There are smoking areas spread throughout the park. I mean, it's run by the same guys who make Budweiser. They won't keep you from having a smoke-break... But they also won't let you smoke right by the kiddie rides.

Pay for VIP Parking? 

I wouldn't. For starters, if you're worried about walking too much, Busch Gardens is not the place for you. You will do a lot of walking, all day long. What's a little further to your car? Secondly, when the VIP parking is full, they don't stop taking your money. So, you could end up paying for VIP parking, and still park in the next town over. If you end up parking far away, there'll be a tram to take you to your parking area, so it's not like you'd have to walk for miles. Speaking of your parking area, take a picture of the sign with your country and number with your cell phone, so you don't have to remember it all day.

Pay For a Quick Pass? 

The quick pass lets you hop to the front of the line for rides. There's a one-time option, and an all-day option. They're really expensive, even the one-time option. We didn't get them and I don't feel like we missed out. Besides, like I said, the lines are entertaining, and they keep moving.

The Rides! Oh, the Rides!

There's lots out there on the rides. Some of them are really pretty terrifying. I loved it, but that Mach Tower was a religious experience. Seriously, I'm not sure I've ever prayed so fervently in my life. I cried at the end. It's an eternity of free-fall from 240 feet high. The Cape Hatteras lighthouse, the tallest in the U.S. is only (only! Ha!) 193 feet tall.

Yup. We're in free-fall.

That's the relieved grin of someone with a new lease on life.

These are people too smart to go on the Mach Tower

 Photo Ops!

There are lots of cool places to take photos.

Very appropriate choices of placement

Busch Gardens Does Hallo-Scream in October

It's pretty normal during the day - some Halloween decorations, and I think the haunted houses were running, though that's not our shtick, so we didn't go. You can get some pretty amazing body art, too,

At night, it gets really dark. The lights are dimmed, there's fog everywhere, and people dress up in costumes and scare park-goers. There are warnings during the day that Hallo-Scream may not be appropriate for small children. No, really. I'd recommend this only for kids 10 and older, maybe a brave 8-year-old. It's really dark, with a lot of flashing lights, and a ton of noise (mostly in the form of dub-step). People jump out at you screaming and waving things. It's kind of overwhelming and disorienting, even for the grownups. It would be a pretty cool date for high-school or college students, though. They all seemed to really be enjoying it.

To the park's credit, some idiot was dragging their terrified first-grader through the park, and a guy with a fake chain-saw jumped out and scared the kid half to death. So, the chain-saw-guy stopped and showed the kid that it was just a toy - no blade - and that he was just a normal guy, and the family got a photo with the still-terrified kid, mom, and chain-saw-guy. Not sure if that was park-provided training, or just really good common sense on the part of chain-saw guy, but good for him.