Wow, what a rainy, sloppy day at Busch Gardens. We left here at 8:30 am yesterday and it wasn't really raining at all..spitting, maybe. We got to 64 and traffic was pretty backed up. When we finally made our way up to where the accident had happened, it looked like a Geo Tracker had flipped at least once. It was in pretty bad shape. By this point, it was POURING down rain. Traffic from then on was fine..but it poured almost all the way to Williamsburg. It started clearing just before we got to Busch Gardens.
We met Olivia's friends Andrea and Luke just inside the intrance to the park and we set off accross the park to find some trouble to get into. We had enough time to ride Alpengeist twice, and then it started pouring. My guess is that the storm that we drove through on the way there earlier had finally caught up with us. So, it rained. And it rained. From about 11 until around 4 it dumped a couple hundred gallons of rain on the park. All of the sidewalks were totally flooded and just about all of the rides were shut down. But we stuck it out. We ate lunch in FestHaus (in the Germany area) and watched the Oktoberfest show. Pretty interesting. It was freezing cold in there, though, and the fact that we were all soaked didn't help at all. I'm suprised I'm not sick today.
At around 4pm, the storm had finally passed most of the way by and the rides started running again. So, we made our way over to Apollo's Chariot and The Big Bad Wolf. By around 8 we were totally pooped and decided it was time to leave. Even though it was a rainy, dreary day, it ended up being one of the best days to visit the park after all. The storm scared half of the crowd away, so when it had finally passed, there weren't many people left in the park! Most of the coasters had maybe a 2-minute wait..nice. We ended up getting to do MORE stuff than we did the last time we went with Brian and Paul and it was sunny (which means that the lines were loooong).
So, we said our godbyes to her friends and left the park. It was around 9pm. I decided that since we were so close to my grandparent's house (they live in Portsmouth), we decided to drop in on them and see how they were doing. My parents were already there visiting, so it was perfect timing. We ended up staying there for about an hour and then heading home.
Today, I decided it was time to put the mud flaps on my truck. Ok, so maybe I'm not REALLY putting the flaps on the truck the way they were designed to. I went out and pulled out my cut-down factory bump stops and brought them inside to cut the new ones to the same size. I put the new stops in and took her for a spin down the road. It's definitely much better. The back end still bottoms out on the larger bumps, but it's not half as bad as it was. Just from looking at it, I think I've got at least another half-inch of travel back there. It rides much better. Thanks to my new-found friend, Randy, from Missourri for the idea. Check out his illustration of the modification to the left.
Mom and Dad are supposed to stop by here this evening on their way home so that we can go out to dinner and enjoy Father's Day with Dad. :)
