Kicked in the Schlitterbahn

As Carol pointed out in a comment to my last post, I have a few other quirks - I have a lot of quirks, to tell the truth - which I didn't mention. The most prevalent of these is the Charlie Brown on Vacation curse. Like Charlie Brown always seeming to find misfortune in unlikely places, my Charlie Brown on Vacation curse causes misfortune to sneak attack me on not all, but some vacation trips. If the curse would strike on every vacation, I would be prepared for it but it is too insidious for that. It only strikes occasionally so that I'm never ready.

Several years ago, the Tiki family loaded the family truckster and went to the Schlitterbahn water park in New Braunfels, Texas, with Dale and Carol and their children. Schlitterbahn is a huge complex of water parks with everything from wave pools to a very speedy lazy river to water roller coasters. Schlitterbahn also has dozens of flume rides. The flume consists of a concrete channel that switches back and forth down a hill - imagine a bobsled run filled with water instead of ice. To ride the flume, you sit in an inner tube and are whisked through a series of slow moving streams, fast moving rapids, and the occasional drop down a really fast moving ramp.

Schlitterbahn is always packed with people because it is a fun place to be. At the top of the flume rides, a college-age lifeguard helps you climb into your inner tube and gives you a shove to get you started. The lifeguards load people as fast as possible to keep the lines moving. As you can imagine, this can lead to crowded conditions in the flume. So, we began to notice that no matter where I started out in line to get on the flume, I was always the last of our group to get to the end of the flume. Everyone else could make their way through the masses of inner tubes fairly quickly but I'd always get stuck somehow. Sometimes, a large lady wearing her inner tube like a miniskirt would decide I looked like someone who could pull her through to the end and would latch onto my tube. Other times, kids would use my tube as a launch pad and push themselves along - and me backwards - by shoving off with their legs in the direction of the exit. And occasionally I would just get stuck in the whirlpools that naturally exist at the bottom of the ramps. The best way to exit a whirlpool is to push off using someone else's tube – the kids had taught me this important lesson. Strangely enough, however, the entire flume could be packed with people except for the particular whirlpool I happened to be stuck in.  I would circle around for what seemed like hours before someone came zipping down the ramp and launched me out of the whirlpool.

The ramps were dangerous for me in many ways. On one flume, I had managed to stay with our pack for much longer than usual. We made it to one long ramp and I started down with Carol right behind me. At the bottom of the ramp was the customary whirlpool and stuck in this whirlpool was a large group of people circling in their tubes like a swimsuit clad offensive line. I hit this wall of tubes and stopped instantly. Carol did not. Her feet hit me in the back of the head at approximately the speed of sound. When the stars cleared, I was fine but a couple of large ladies were latched onto my tube waiting for me to get them out of the whirlpool.

Later in the day, we rode another flume and I managed to stay with the group through the entire ride. This didn't turn out to be a good thing for me, however. The flume ended with a big ramp leading into a pool of water. Just before the big ramp was a whirlpool. Apparently, the Schlitterbahn folks had learned that without help, people would circle in that whirlpool forever so they had stationed a lifeguard in the pool to shove the tubes, and us in them, over the edge of the ramp. As usual, I was at the back of our group so everyone had been shoved over the ramp and they were all now waiting on me to join them. I finally made my way into the final whirlpool and saw that the lifeguard was a petite girl who was maybe five feet tall and couldn’t have weighed more than one-hundred pounds. My tube drifted toward her so she grabbed it and gently pushed me toward the ramp. The next thing that happened was truly remarkable. I’m six-two and weigh about one-eighty and this tiny girl flipped me, tube and all, completely over as she shoved me over the edge. One second I’m looking at my friends and family at the bottom of the ramp and the next second I’m seeing blue sky and then water streaming past my face. I managed to flip back over so I would be upright and found myself sitting on the ramp and, somehow, the tube had flown up in the air and came down over my head so I was now wearing it like a tutu. At this point, I noticed that the ramp was very steep and to keep people from descending too quickly, Schlitterbahn had installed a bunch of small speed bumps. These speed bumps are probably not a problem when you are sliding down on your tube but they are a big problem when you are sliding down on your rear. I now know what it feels like to ski moguls without skis. And worst of all, as I’m bouncing down the ramp on my rear with the tube around my middle, I look up and see my entire group – with their hands on their knees – laughing their heads off. My pride was bruised (as well as a few other things) but I climbed out of the water, pulled my tube off my head, and waited patiently for my friends, family, and complete strangers to get up off the ground and catch their collective breath. I guess all that laughing really takes it out of you.