THE WILD MOUSE
When I was a young child, maybe seven or eight, my family and I went to Beach Bend Amusement park in Bowling Green KY, not too far from our home. I love amusement parks. Especially then when mom and dad were paying for everything. The day turned out to be a day that would shape my life for the next eight years or so.
My sister talked me into getting on a roller-coaster with her. Now, I listened to her encouragement. I looked the coaster over-—not a large one, small cars that seat only two people, and I looked at the name, "Wild Mouse." I knew mice weren’t very ferocious, the ones I had seen were the ones dad removed from under the hot-water-heater in traps, their heads all smashed, eyes bugged out...So, a roller-coaster named Mouse wouldn’t be scary, or so I thought.
I later found out in my adult years, that the "Wild Mouse" is a style of roller-coaster developed by a German, Franz Mack, in the early 60s.
What separates the Mouse from other roller coasters, is its small car size—-two to four people--and its style of turns. Most of the turns on the Mouse are 90 to 180 degree turns with no cant. Cant is the difference in elevation of the two tracks. When you drop the elevation of one tack, it results in a banked turn.
On a regular roller-coaster with banked turns, you see the track in front of you in the turn. On a Wild Mouse with no cant, you see the rest of the theme park in front of you, giving you the feeling your going off the track! Now I said it shaped my life for the next eight years because it was that long before I ever got on another roller-coaster. The Wild Mouse scared me to death! This crazy life can seem like we are going off-track, but God has us at every turn.