An Irish Cell Phone Saga

I'm not wild about amusement park rides. They're usually fine, and sometimes great. I just don't go out of my way to go on them.

Part of the Bray Summer Fest is a collection of pretty good sized carnival rides. Since I was in Ireland, and since I know I normally dodge rides designed for amusement, I decided to try out the Cyclone Twister, or whatever it was called. Picture the Tea Cups. Raise them up about ten feet in the air. When the whole thing is spinning pretty good, have the floor holding all the tea cups start to tilt until it's pretty much sideways. It's a spinny ride.

That night I couldn't find my cell phone -- a really new LG thing that took decent pictures. I mentioned to Jack that it probably shot off while on that ride, and he assured me that the way centrifugul force works, the cell phone wouldn't go anywhere -- only back into it's own seat if anything. I went back to the ride and looked around for it. Nothing other than about 60 Euro cents.

Two days later, much of our group was walking past the ride and decided to get themselves sick. I kept to the sidelines, and mentioned to a couple of the high school Irish kids to be careful about putting their cell phones in their front jeans pockets. I had remembered the flip-down guard rail thing digging into my thighs the whole ride. It must have squirted my phone out like a watermelon seed.

Sure enough, one of the high school boys couldn't find his phone after the ride. We all started looking around -- I could again look for my phone under the pretense I was looking for his... We pretty much gave up and were standing around discussing dinner options when I suddenly felt the urge to duck.

After standing back up and feeling a little silly with the whole group staring at me, I saw what I saw: someone else's cell phone had shot off the ride -- from about 20 yards away -- and had flown right through the space my head had been in pre-duck. I might be without a cell phone, and stay away from the tea cups for a while...