I read that as
In the mail
A few years ago, I heard terrific things about the teen dystopian series starting with “Divergent.” I got the title book from the library, and while the first 2/3 of it held my interest, the last 1/3 kept it only enough for me to decide to finish the book. Maybe if I was 14 years old, I would have thought it was great, I guess.
Back when I lived in the rather staid (read blue-nosed) Midwest there was an event which made the local news.
Some young man and woman showed up at the mall one day dressed all Goth like. Lotta black, a little gloss, some shiny mental accessories. So far not all that unusual for the era. Goth had fallen out of fashion, but not that far out of fashion.
Except she was handcuffed and wearing a leather collar and he had ahold of her leash. And they proceeded to promenade around the mall doing their window shopping. Followed by a growing retinue of upset normies. Eventually the mall security stopped them and after some verbal fussing the real cops showed up.
Cops determined the woman was under no duress, but they still got chased off the private property for causing a scene. Over which they sued the mall company. Which was how it made the local news.
I know I never found out how their suit went; I wonder if that ever made the news? Most likely not. Either dismissed or settled cheaply with a NDA.
I’ve never done indoor “skydiving”, but I did the real thing four times before I came to my senses, jumping from a Cessna at 3000 ft! It wasn’t a tandem jump, this club just set up novices with static lines and sent them off on their own. The static line was a thing that automatically pulled the ripcord shortly after you jumped out. You were trained to pull the reserve chute yourself if something went wrong, though Lord knows if I would have had the presence of mind to do it.
I’m glad to have had the experience, though I think it was a stupid risk. There are some remarkable memories, though. One of the most remarkable is the non-memory of the free-fall phase. It’s like my brain just blanks out that part because it just doesn’t want to remember! Once the chute opens, though, it’s a well-remembered experience. It’s weird the way you start to hear familiar sounds as you get closer to the ground – highway sounds, later even the sound of people talking – while you’re still high up in the sky.
That would really be pushing the envelope
I’ve been hearing so much about their magical tacos, I want to try them. There used to be several JitBs in SE Michigan, but no more. I just checked the website, and the only Michigan location is Battle Creek, a couple hour drive from here. Then I clicked the address link and it said ‘COMING SOON!’.
So, Summer road trip, maybe? Tour of the Kellogg’s factory, and Jack in the Box for lunch?
ETA: I googled…
You can’t take a tour of the actual Kellogg’s cereal factory anymore, as public tours in Battle Creek ended in 1986 due to safety and trade secret concerns
Trade secret concerns?!? Are corporate cereal spies still trying to steal the secret Corn Flakes recipe? Maybe at one time, but I’d assume that wouldn’t have been an issue for many years now.
I did the exact same thing when I was 18 years old, encouraged/pressured by my stepfather who spent my entire childhood bragging about the U.S. Army Airborne jump school he’d attended when he was a young Army officer.
So I took the course with him mostly to shut him up. Anyway, it seemed to be a good, thorough recreational course mostly consisting of teaching you by endless repetition to check for a good chute and to immediately pull the reserve if the main chute didn’t deploy properly.
The actual jump that day was terrifying but also exhilarating. Once you took the course, you could come back for additional jumps for just $10 per jump. So I went back by myself a week later to prove to myself it wasn’t a fluke.
I had a logbook and they talked about how you could do more and more jumps, eventually building up to longer freefall jumps—but even though it was fun I decided that the whole hobby was more risky than I liked. After all, your life is literally dependent on some fabric and lines and whether or not they deploy and function correctly.
But…in writing this post I was curious how the safety of recreational skydiving compares to scuba diving, which is a hobby I took up later (and still do).
It feels like you have more control over your own personal safety with scuba diving vs. skydiving, but stats indicate that the fatality rate for scuba (~1 death per 50,000 dives) is significantly higher than for skydiving (~1 death per 370,000 jumps). Hmmm…
How about if you dive in a scuba suit, like the warriors at the end of Thunderball? Even without homicidal criminal organizations gunning for you underwater, the mortality rate is probably pretty high.
(pointless, but I had to add it – one of my neighbors claims to be one of those parachuting divers in the film.)
I did a static line years before I did that tandem free fall.
I remember being disappointed that I did not experience the “falling” part prior to the chute being pulled. I asked one of the instructors about this, and it’s because when you “jump”, you’re exiting a plane that is going maybe 70 mph. So in those few seconds before the chute opens, you’re going “forward” faster than you are “falling”. About the time the falling takes over, your chute opens so you don’t feel that free fall sensation.
I don’t buy that. Regardless of forward motion, the instant you exit the plane you’re weightless and falling. What the instructor probably meant was that you don’t get to maneuver in the air, bird-like, the way experienced skydivers do, sometimes joining up in formation, but you’re definitely experiencing zero-g the moment you exit the plane. I’m still going with my theory that the experience of jumping out of a plane is just too alien and terrifying for the brain to properly register it or remember it until you build up a certain amount of experience with it.
Further proof of that is that on one of my jumps, I experienced what the juimpers at this club called a “burble” – where the static line does its thing and pulls out the pilot chute, but for quite a few seconds it just wobbled behind my back before catching the air stream. It’s frightening to think that the reason it finally caught enough rushing air to pull out the main is that I was falling faster and faster! And I still remember nothing about the free-fall portion of that jump. (The “burble” thing was described to me later by the jump master who had been observing me.)
ETA: As for disappointments, as much as I enjoyed the exhilarating experience, I was disappointed that – especially after my first jump – after I landed I didn’t get the major accolades I felt I deserved! The other members of the jump club just milled around talking as if nothing earth-shaking had happened, even as my heart was still pounding! Bastards! 
My three static line jumps all followed the same procedure: connect the end of the static line (which I think was a carabiner clip) to a D-ring in the plane. The jumpmaster then opened the door and you were expected to climb out, grab the wing strut while stepping onto the footrest on top of the landing gear wheel, then inch out hand over hand until you were hanging from onto the very end of the strut. At some point during this operation you would step off the footrest so you were completely hanging. This all took a minute or so.
Then look up at the smiley face painted on the underside of the wing, arch your back, and let go!
Since it was such a drawn-out procedure, it was pretty indelibly impressed on my mind.
When I finally let go on my first jump, from my perspective, the plane shot away upwards at incredible speed. My next sensation was the shock of the parachute opening.
As for the climb-out-of the-plane procedure, the jumpmaster said not to panic if you slipped and fell before getting into position. While not ideal (and not quite as safe), the whole point, after all, was to exit the plane. And in fact, the first person to exit the plane (a petite woman) literally blew away the instant she fully exited the plane and was hit by the 80 mph slipstream. I don’t even think she even had a chance to fully grasp the wing strut, much less inch out to the end. After she blew away, the jumpmaster watched her closely until her chute opened properly.
Prior to taking off, during our brief, the jumpmaster also said that one of the most dangerous aspects of the whole exercise was engine failure in the climbing phase, so once the plane got above a certain altitude, if the plane had trouble and everyone had to bail out, he would just throw everyone out of the plane without attaching the static lines—and that we should immediately pull our reserve chutes. 
The attraction of Disney World for a childfree adult is you’re free of a child who has to be fed, can’t walk quickly enough, gets tired too easily, complains, and generally takes all the fun out of it.
Being lifetime childless all my trips to WDW lack those irritants you so rightly point out. But I also found next to nothing there that would be interesting to a non-child.
In recent decades, Disney has added a lot of things at WDW that are more of an adult appeal. A lot of the World Showcase stuff at EPCOT, for example, is more geared to adults, and they hold a lot of limited-time events, like the Food and Wine Festival, which are, again, built to appeal to adult guests.
It’s not that you won’t find kids with their parents in, say, the French restaurant or the English pub in World Showcase, but it’s not all “It’s a Small World,” either.
I’ve got a buddy in California who attends these sort of speed-run things at Disneyland where the goal is to go and ride as many rides as you can in some arbitrarily short amount of time.
Zip lining. Thought it would be fun, but found it rather pointless.
I disagree. Find a location is find A location - not “see what regions the store has shops in” and it fulfills it’s function to me. It helps people who want to find a location to eat at, which is it’s function. You are calling them idiots for their system not doing something it wasn’t designed to do and which really doesn’t benefit them in terms of getting customers to eat there.
You read my mind 
We met up with a friend in Sherbrooke Quebec once, and had dinner at a restaurant that was ALL poutine. Different sorts of toppings etc. We ordered several different ones and shared.
They were tasty enough but nothing I’d drive a hundred miles out of my way for (the hundred miles was to meet the friend, not for the food). Yeah, it gets a little soggy after a bit.
But oddly, the best poutine I had was actually at a restaurant in Washington, DC. We had a student from Quebec staying with us, and I found a place that served it. It was basic - fries, gravy, cheese curds, and somehow really hit the spot.
There’s a restaurant near us - one of those Greek / Italian places - and it serves pollo soltado - over fries. Same concept though I think I’d prefer rice.
I’ve done it a handful of times. It was okay, though I struggled at one point because I braked myself too soon. And the trail we used had one section that was a rope bridge. That was the single hardest part, for me. The zip part was easier - you finally steel yourself to step off the platform, then you just WHOOOOOSH. Nothing else to do.
A year or two later, I took some students there. I declined that part and watched them have fun.
Not “always wanted to do” but I had to go to one of those team-building days, 40+ years ago, when I was in the Junior League (yeah, really). It was stuff like trust falls. At one point we rappelled down the outside of a 6 story fire tower.
Everyone else loved it and went back for a second try. Me? Did it once. Felt NO compunction to do it again. Maybe I’m a chicken but I didn’t have anything to prove.
Let us see what Walt said-
To all who come to this happy place- Welcome. Disneyland is Your land.
Here age relives fond memories of the past – and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America – with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.
I would agree with earlier suggestions of caviar (it’s okay, but…), famous fast food chicken sandwiches (but not actually better than Harvey’s or Popeye’s) and skydiving. Cheesesteaks made with provolone and ribeye are great.
The Turkish Delight comments made me laugh. It’s very mediocre. The world’s worst commercial candy bar was called “Big Turk” and was once sold in Canada.
Shake Shack and In-n-Out are just okay. If you go to a sushi restaurant in Japan or to a steakhouse in Argentina you will be spoiled by the local versions in your home city.
Jagermeister and Goldshlager may impress university freshmen but are very mediocre drinks.
I found scuba diving unpleasant and hard on the ears. I enjoy eating fish, but catching it requires lots of alcohol and this is by far the best thing about it.