The Writing Desk of Jakebe Rabbit

The terrible discovery was about Monday.

bunnyhugger had not bought train tickets from De Panne back to Brussels because all her research said that there was no buying tickets for what was basically a commuter line; we had that same experience getting from Brussels to De Panne and that worked out fine. And getting from Brussels to Amsterdam, our return flight, was similarly no big deal, trains leaving like all the time. So neither of us had put detailed thought into how we'd get to Amsterdam for our morning flight.

Well, that Saturday, after a good day at the amusement park and some good dinner and even a nap on her part, bunnyhugger thought about the scheduling and what it implied about how early we'd have to get to bed. The immediate question was whether we'd be able to see the sun setting into the Atlantic while riding the interurban, a highly recommended activity for De Lijn.

The horrible answer was: there was no train leaving De Panne early enough Monday morning for us to get to Amsterdam in time for our flight. If we had a car we could get up unspeakably early and make it there, but I dreaded the prospect of my first experience driving in Europe being in the predawn hours and that was even if a couple Americans could rent a car in a tiny shore town on a Sunday. A taxi or an unlicensed taxi service would likely be almost as bad. And rescheduling a flight less than 48 hours before departure would be preposterous.

There was only one way to handle ``be at the airport on time'' that wasn't practically impossible, and that was to get to Amsterdam Sunday night. Which meant leaving De Panne Sunday afternoon. Which meant, among other things, not riding De Lijn all the way to its northern end and back, and certainly not riding it to see the sunset. We could still ride it some, during the morning and early afternoon, at least, and not the whole length. But that was a small consolation.

And no consolation at all: we'd have to leave our De Panne hotel room. We couldn't even close out our stay a day early, as it was too late for us to change our reservation. bunnyhugger kicked herself mightily for if she had realized this just two or three days earlier we could have changed the reservation but now, well, we could use it as a place to store our suitcases until we were ready for the Sunday afternoon train to Brussels.

Fortunately bunnyhugger was able to find an airport hotel in Amsterdam, and to work out the trains we would need to take Sunday afternoon-to-evening to get there. So at least we went to bed confident that we would be able to leave western Europe on time and on the plane we had planned on. But we didn't sleep happy.

And now I bring you the close of our Labor Day trip to Michigan's Adventure. Enjoy some more pictures of buttons!

Trabant is one of the handful of adult flat rides at the park and we almost always take a turn on it.

Arty picture of the fence, with the operator at the dead-man's-switch beyond.

Here's the Trabant control panel being worked. I chose to have the panel be on top of the frame for aesthetics.

Our last ride of the day, on Wolverine Wildcat, with light just pouring in through the fence there.

This stairway is for ride operators and also people using the Fast Lane. This time I happened to notice you could also see the train as it dispatched from there.

And with that, the day and the regular season were done. Here's a last look at the skeletons and the Lakeside Gliders and, not sure, I guess a security guy.

Trivia: Dubai has about forty miles of natural coastline. Source: The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization, Vince Beiser.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, May - June 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.

I mentioned it being exceptional (and barely plausible) that a roller coaster might last seven minutes. We did nevertheless get on some rides that went on seven minutes or more; one even lasted at least a half-hour. This was the miniature train ride around the park, which unlike some modest amusement parks we could name (Michigan's Adventure, Cedar Point) makes a whole four stops at points along the park. This didn't give us as many views as we'd have liked of stuff from the wrong side, but it's always a pleasant kind of thing, and the sort of ride we want to get on when we have time.

Also we got on a dark ride, a boat ride this time. We'd tried to go early in the day but I think the ride was temporarily closed. Later on we saw it open again and didn't know what to expect from Het Bos van Plop, other than that the ``Bos'' thing sure sounded woods-y. And the ``Plop'' suggested something core to Plopsaland's identity. Sure enough, at the station, we saw a TV showing clips(?) from a TV show(?) with people dressed as gnomes and doing funny shenanigans that well, you can see pictures, and I'll suppose the show is what you expect from that. The ride was a fine one, a tunnel-of-love style ride in boats on the water through a lot of scenes, showing models and automata for fun effect. One point I know they had a couple figures on a carousel where the mounts were squirrels and bunnies, just in case they needed to appeal to bunnyhugger the more.

As you can tell I've given up writing a chronological progression of the day. No point to it, and we did a lot of walking back and forth across the park, which isn't that large. Bigger than Michigan's Adventure, probably, but better-connected so it's easier to get to different areas and different-themed areas. We would close out the day --- at only about 6 pm; European parks close crazy early --- with some rides on Heidi and then The Ride to Happiness.

I think we could have got some more rides in, but we weren't sure whether the gift shops would close when the park did at 6 pm, and we hoped for some souvenirs. Turns out they left the shops open after the closing hour, but we've been burned before. Sadly they didn't have much in T-shirts, although I was able to find something at least saying The Ride To Happiness. And we got some magnets and little things like that, including park maps.

As we left a most strange thing unfolded: outside the gate park workers gave us two small bags of baby carrots. Not just us, everybody got them. There were empty bags and partially eaten bags along the sidewalk and abandoned at the tram station. Why does the amusement park give out bags of baby carrots to people leaving for the day? I have not the faintest idea.

We used the tram to get back to our hotel and, after a while, went out looking for dinner, as our plan to eat all our meals at the amusement park didn't pan out. I had seen another kebab place that I thought might be easier to get to on our walks and suggested we try that. That place, too, wanted cash only payment so I had to backtrack a fair bit to get two €20 notes. bunnyhugger worried about having the excess foreign currency when we were flying home the morning after next, but I figured we were planning to spend Sunday riding the interurban up and down the Belgian coast, we'd find somewhere to spend it or most of it. (We talked a bit about going back to the amusement park for a second day, but we weren't sure there would be enough more stuff to do to justify the ticket price.)

After eating bunnyhugger napped for a couple hours. When she woke up she confirmed some horrible news, news comparable in badness to Nigloland's being closed.

It's time now for a pleasant discovery, a couple more Michigan's Adventure pictures.

For some reason I was taking a lot of pictures of operators and their stations as the day went on. Here's the Zach's Zoomer operator.

And here's ... uh ... the daily inspection card, I guess.

Couple folks enjoying the ride. You don't think it's this fast coming out the station!

Ride operator working the buttons of the control panel.

Little stage set up for the Halloween event. We would actually see it in use this year!

And here's just some unused landscape at the edge of the park being let go feral. The parking lot is behind the wooden fense there.

Trivia: A February 1797 appearance of three French frigates in the harbor of Fishguard, Wales, a small fishing village, set off a demand for hard currency and account-holders withdrawing enough gold that the Bank of England had to suspend convertibility. Source: Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation, Peter L Bernstein.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, May - June 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.

After Heidi and all that we did get back around to K3 Roller Skater, a cute little roller coaster with the theme of ... well, I guess you're in a train of roller skates going through the clutter of a teenager's room. I don't know why ``train of roller skates'' is a model of roller coaster but it is and it's cute if odd. The high point of this particular instance is that it dives through a giant stereo speaker prop. Anything where you get nice and close to props like that does well. It's apparently themed to the Flemish girl band K3 and a tv series K3 Roller Disco so you see how this all makes sense.

Anubis: The Ride is another of their launch coasters, ones that accelerate horizontally rather than using a chain-driven lift hill for energy. It's got a pretty fancy station, one made to look like an English stately home, to fit its theme of 1910s-or-so Anglo Egyptologist who's brought back something he maybe shouldn't. Pleasant ride. What sticks out in my mind is that I made a mistake going into it dumb enough you could be forgiven for thinking it was a bit, although I think bunnyhugger just took me for saying something weirdly wrong in a way not worth challenging.

Outside the building was a ride sign with information about it and I pointed to one of the little squares and said this was a seven-minute ride. Which is extraordinarily long; your average roller coaster ride is two minutes, with the longest ones you'll encounter about three minutes. A seven minute ride would be something with a weird circumstance, like for some reason they have to put all the track two miles over from the station. Or they stop partway through for a show. Well, what happened is I saw the square reading '7+ min' and took it for seven minutes. If I'd paid attention to the text underneath, 'jaar/ans', I'd have correctly understood it as the minimum age requirement. But bunnyhugger didn't correct me, or even acknowledge this, and when I looked at other ride signs I figured out my mistake, and I confess to it here just to be honest about it.

Any attempt to count roller coasters will encounter things you're not sure should count. One that we kept looking at and ultimately rode was SuperSplash, which looked like a water roller coaster, something that starts out on a track and then splashes down to sail the rest of the way. We've ridden some like that, notably at d'Efteling. This one, we decided after seeing other people weren't getting very wet, we'd ride.

It proved to be less of a roller coaster than we imagined. We got on the train on a segment of track that proved to be on an elevator, and that rose up to the top of a tower and rode a hill down, into the water. It's gravity-driven and on a track and all, but it feels a little like a Freefall ride in terms of not quite being roller-coaster-y. The Roller Coaster Database doesn't list it, although Coaster-Count.com does. Who's correct? You have to make your decision and hope nobody demands you give a rigorous defense.

Would you like to see pictures of things at Michigan's Adventure that inspire no disagreement about whether they're roller coasters? Look on, friends.

The Corkscrew station. We invariably head for the back as the most comfortable ride; the over-the-shoulder restraints will bonk your head and from the back you get warning about which way to lean.

The station had this penant. What the Battle Royale 2024 was we have no idea but they achieved something for it.

Giant skeletons being prepped for their Halloween work season.

Person on the left: 'So which way is Zach's Zoomer?'

Ordinary picture looking up the Zach's Zoomer queue, but I like how dramatic it is. If I'd got the roofline of the building perfectly vertical I'd call this an art.

No explanation for why those two seats were unavailable, although almost always the issue is that the restraints aren't opening right. Since Zach's Zoomer has only the one train they can't swap the train out and you wouldn't want to take the ride out of operation if you don't have to.

Trivia: The Lumière brothers' films were first shown to American audiences at the Eden Musée theater in Manhattan, located on 23rd street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. Source: The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide. The theater closed in summer 1915.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, May - June 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.

It's time to review my humor blog for the past week. Which, if you've seen on your Reading page or followed by whatever your RSS reader is, you know saw the end of this intense block of Robert Benchley posting. Why did it end? For one, because our very busy time from the end of May to the start of July has passed. But also? Read on and you'll see the hint I got.

• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 47
• Robert Benchley: Nature’s Noises
• Statistics Saturday: Some Adequate Cartoons Of Our Past
• Robert Benchley: Owl Data
• Robert Benchley: As They Say In French: Other Times, Other Customs
• What’s Going On In Judge Parker? Why is April Parker in Norway? April – July 2025
• Statistics June: Robert Benchley Is Somehow Less Popular Than Me
• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 48

And now please enjoy returning to Michigan's Adventure and the end of a regular season on another impeccably lovely day.

As always, we rode the carousel, little suspecting that the next time we rode it the ride would go ... backwards?!

Here's bunnyhugger riding the fiberglass white rabbit.

bunnyhugger pointed out the nice work done on painting the trappings and so I stopped and noticed that, like, yeah, that's a nice picture to put on the zebra's saddle blanket there.

The cat, again with a bunch of nice decorations. Also a fish in its mouth because classic carvers never thought about how it was showing the mount as having killed another creature.

Here's the tiger, and the blanket there is quite well done despite being part of the fiberglass body.

Of course we always like seeing the sea horse. This time I paid attention to the orca on its saddle.

Now over to Thunderhawk. There was a longer line than usual, giving me time to take a picture of the train coming out of the station and beginning the ascent of the lift hill.

View from the station back to Wolverine Wildcat, which you'd think you could just cut across to walk to and can't. There must be something unstable about the soil that direction.

Photograph of some of the controls of Thunderhawk, revealing that the roller coaster is a big 10CC fan! I'm surprised the station isn't playing ``I'm Not In Love''.

Arty picture of local trees and spiderweb against the blurry background of Wolverine Wildcat. You can see the train going by in the upper right corner.

The swan boats are an attraction on this side of the park, past the entrance to the water park, and I liked how the light came here.

I have to assume this promises some Snoopy meet-and-greet but we never saw it.

Trivia: Otis Elevator demonstrated the world's first working escalator at the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris. Norton Otis, representing the company, was awarded the Legion d'Honneur. Source: Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City, Jason Goodwin.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, May - June 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.

I mentioned not riding the log flume despite its dinosaurs. There were some other things we didn't ride or didn't get to do. The roller coaster miss was Draconis, formerly named Draak. Unfortunately, hanging across the ride's entrance sign was a plaque with this note:

Deze attractie is even in onderhound maar zal snel weer blinken als goud.

The message is repeated in French so as to not sound so much like someone making fun of Dutch. But you get the gist: the ride is closed for maintenance but will soon be back, shining good as gold. (We only got that precisely translated with machine help.)

The change of name from something meaning ``dragon'' to something else meaning ``dragon'' may seem unmotivated. Its motivation: this year they re-themed the ride to the series Nachtwacht. There were statues of what we surmised (correctly) to be the main characters: a vampire, a werewolf, and a girl. (She's an elf.) According to Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database they're a trio of supernatural teens who protect the city from monsters of the week. I believe the dragon appears in one episode. I don't know if the extended downtime of the ride is part of the retheming or if the ride is just having issues.

Also missed: Nachtwacht-Flyer, an elevated swings ride. There was no chance bunnyhugger would ride it, but I was up for it. Unfortunately, by the time we felt ourselves free to mess around with optional attractions like that, the ride was closed for weather. High winds, you know, which only reinforced my nicknaming of it as a WindSeeker. We thought to get back to it later, but never found the time.

And the big thing we missed? Shows. We had seen some characters doing happy dances at the park entrance when the day started. But they had events along the way. The most important of those --- a parade --- we caught. But there was some kind of show at the stage up front, a couple of times during the day, and we managed to miss it every time. While stumbling from one attraction to another we saw a bit of it from afar, across the field of water sprays from the concrete, and maybe it might have given us some idea what the intellectual properties we were watching were about. Maybe not. We don't know. We'll only ever know any of these characters and shows from YouTube or people making comments here.

There were other things we didn't get to at the park --- it has way more attractions than we could have got to in one day --- but those were the ones we were most interested in.

Putting aside now Plopsaland De Panne, let's enjoy pictures of Michigan's Adventure from last Labor Day.

The Dock, est 2024, is what they ended up doing with that weird wooden structure they were building at the end of 2023. It's more of a boardwalk than a dock, leading from where the bumper boats used to be to the beer garden. It's no kind of shortcut to anything and it doesn't support any water features we know so it seems like that thing where you have a little spare money in Roller Coaster Tycoon but no idea of anything to do with it.

But here's what The Dock looks like, with a tiny bit of cute bunting where it changes direction.

It's a nice spot to pause and look at the water, at least.

There's this spot where the boardwalk Dock changes direction and that has some space but it's hard to imagine setting up an event here, at least not anything supposed to keep a crowd.

Oh hey, this is nice, they're trying to help prop up a tree using the corpses of other trees!

And here's Corkscrew, the ride that started the deer-petting-zoo's transformation into a modest but respectable amusement park. Note the train is mid-cork.

Trivia: In February 1946 mob boss Charles ``Lucky'' Luciano was released from state prison, given a reprieve in exchange for his support of the war effort (from inside jail) through his Italian contacts and ensuring of no New York City dockworker strikes, on condition that he remain in Italy the rest of his life. He arrived in Cuba the 29th of October, 1946, to reside in Havana. Source: Cuba: An American History, Ada Ferrer. (Cuba would expel him in 1947, under United States government pressure.)

Currently Reading: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, Keith Houston.

Finally let's resume talking Plopsaland De Panne.

The Ride to Happiness is the roller coaster that has a reputation, to the point it might be something an American roller coaster enthusiast might have heard of. That reputation is of an unbelievably intense ride, something unlike what you might have experienced otherwise. The station, and the ride, has this steampunk vibe, all gears and clockwork mechanisms and, like, a forge's furnace in part of the queue building. You also might get some of the vibe of the place by the sign put out front, delivered in three languages --- English as the first and largest text, the only place in the park where that happens, and French and Dutch translations beneath that:

Dear people of Tomorrow, welcome to The Ride To Happiness.

After many wonderful years of writing history, Tomorrowland has been searching to expand its horizons. This spectacular ride has found its course, created to stimulate all senses in a way that hasn't been done before --- as a true symbol of uniting the People of Tomorrow community around the world.

The 4 elements of nature work together to power this extraordinary machine. Kicking off with the first element Air --- known to blow harshly at the Belgian coast --- of which the force is collected for the next element Fire. The scorching fires are then controlled in the oven to be used in the next element Earth. The incredible temperatures can shape Earth's surface any way it desires, ensuring its path to flow perfectly for the last element Water. Finally, the 4 elements unite to fully power The Ride To Happiness.

Prepare for an unforgettable journey of a lifetime.

Tomorrowland, by the way --- designers or something of the ride --- is a big electronic dance music festival in Belgium, scheduled for a couple weekends later this month in Boom, Belgium. So despite all that text, and the huge monitor of a cybernetic woman introducing you to the ride when you get to the station, it's not some prog rock thing. Actually the music is more ... I'm not sure how to describe it. Softer, though, and enveloping and seeming out of line with a thrill ride. But the cybernetic woman congratulates you on being guided through the energy maze to this place and that you will have nature embrace your inner being so live today, love tomorrow, unite forever. The ride is full up to the brim with vibes, is what I'm saying.

And what is the ride itself? ... Well, the roller coaster is a short one --- all the Plopsaland roller coasters are --- but it's a pretty intense, curving, topsy sort of ride. And what elevates it further is that the cars all spin, and are released to spin almost right away. The experience is much like if you put spinning wild mouse cars on an Arrow megalooper of the 1980s. In fact, the ride is pretty close in length and speed and inversion count to Kings Island's Vortex, though it's not so tall as that one had been. I'd call this more intense than Vortex, although just how intense varies, depending on your luck in the spinning. We got several rides on this over the day, and avoided doing a real session on it because it would be just too much for that. Also you start the ride with a low-speed inversion, the track doing a heartline roll before you get to the launch. These are always unsettling.

It is a really good ride. And the theme and presentation is so very different from any American roller coasters. It's amazing.

And now, getting into the photo reel, since we're done with the Fairy Ball what comes next? ... Go on, guess.

Establishing shot. Exterior, my car, outside the Mad Mouse ride. Labor Day. So, looking like maybe not too heavy a day at the park? We'll see.

Here's the park's tree, and Ferris wheel, against the cloudiest sky we ever thought we'd see at Michigan's Adventure.

Maker's plate for the Scrambler, a ride we don't get to nearly enough considering it's pretty hard to have a bad ride on one.

bunnyhugger here was snagging a picture of the charming cartoony figure of the safety warning figures, cartoon stick figures who are smiling when they're letting the restraint bar keep them safe during the ride and unhappy when they unlatch it and stand up. Note the Big Eli logo on back of the cars.

There's Thunder Bolt, the Himalaya ride, which for 2024 lost its roof. Now it's protected from the elements only by the elements themselves.

Trees outside the Scrambler and Thunder Bolt already starting to change colors for fall.

Trivia: The British Naval Intelligence Office cracked German naval ciphers at the start of World War I, thanks in great part to the accidental capture of three German cipher books, one from a merchant ship in Australia, one from the light cruiser Magdeburg wrecked on the Russian coast, and the third from a torpedo boat salvaged from the English Channel. Source: To Rule The Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, Arthur Herman.

Currently Reading: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, Keith Houston.

I must once more beg off writing up the European Vacation in order to tend other matters of great importance. Please enjoy more pictures from the Fairy Ball, though.

We poked back around the woodland trail in full darkness.

Here's the sort of path we were following by night.

And here we emerged onto the Court of the Fae, illuminated only by the overhead lights.

The Moon Grove looks even more remote in portrait mode.

They had something or other going nearly all the time, with the drawback being you couldn't avoid missing a lot of stuff.

Fairy lights in the darkness doing a very good job of being the trail.

Moon Grove as the wedding dancing was going on and, you can see, they were bringing out the light sabers!

Meanwhile here's a woman demonstrating fire dancing moves.

That's an exciting event!

Swinging the flames around some.

Yes, there's fire-swallowing.

And some dancing with the fire.

Trivia: Two of the final projects of Terry Toons were Saturday morning cartoon pilots: The Ruby Eye of the Monkey God, a jungle-adventure cartoon, and Sally Sargent, about a 16-year-old secret agent girl. Source: Terry Toons: The Story of Paul Terry and his Classic Cartoon Factory, W Gerald Hamonic.

Currently Reading: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, Keith Houston.

My humor blog has been another week of Robert Benchley and some very slight other stuff. Also a joke based on a thing bunnyhugger has been facing. Want to read all about it? Here we go.

• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 46
• Robert Benchley: Isn’t It Remarkable?
• Statistics Saturday: MacBook Computer Case Colors
• Robert Benchley: Do Dreams Go By Opposites?
• Robert Benchley: My White Suit
• What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? What’s the problem with Clambake? April – June 2025
• Robert Benchley: Wear-Out-A-Shoe Week
• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 47

And now let me share a normal amount of pictures from the Fairy Ball last year.

Swordfighting at the Moon Grove! I don't know if this was merely a demonstration or if it was actually for some prize.

Much like a small convention they set up things like palm-reading booths and some vendor stations.

Some of the many signs made and not yet put up even as the event was under way.

This was a small circle very useful for navigating. The bike stand is on the right, with the Moon Grove below.

bunnyhugger examines the entry arch. Note the Christmas lights --- the fairy lights --- to line the path inside.

bunnyhugger composing an ode to the entryway.

Drum circle that was going on as we went to walk the path through the woods.

There's the drummers on the right; I can't tell what's going on in the background. Hidden behind the trees was a crepes truck, though.

And here's the walkway. Those probably aren't actual ghosts draped up in the woods.

This seems like an unproductive bridge until you remember it's probably a lot of fun to ride a bike over.

Following the fairy lights through the woods here.

And we came out the path near the Moon Grove where, it happens, the wedding ceremony was going on, with the exit right behind, like, everybody. So, we stayed back rather than intrude, and maybe appeared as blurry visions in the background of other people's pictures.

Trivia: Greenland ice core studies indicate that between atmospheric lead levels rose from 0.5 parts per trillion to 2 parts per trillion in the first century AD, reflecting Rome conquering Britain and mining the island's lead. Source: Molecules at an Exhibition: The Science of Everyday Life, John Emsley.

Currently Reading: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, Keith Houston.