Make: television — Roller coaster wimp

Make: television — Roller coaster wimp

coastr.jpg

While filming the Wii/Arduino Flight Recorder episode of Make: television, we went to the Mall of America for a location shoot. The Mall has four roller coasters in it. How many does yours have? Mine has none, but I think that’s because it never gets cold in Los Angeles, so we leave ours outside.

We were there to film me pulling low-grade g-forces on the turns and hills. I don’t like huge coasters (OK, I’m a total wimp) but they assured me it would be a dinky little one. I arrived with the executive producer and the rest of the crew were already there, standing in front of a coaster with big vertical drops, loops, corkscrews, the works. I’m starting to feel a bit uneasy (read: terrified) as they’re figuring out how to get a camera man, sound guy and me on this thing and film the segment while we’re all white-knuckling it and screaming our innards out.

Thankfully, we all decided (I begged) it was going to be too violent a ride for us and we downgraded to a happy little regular coaster for lightweights like me. The slap in the face: all of the teenage girl extras went on the scary one anyway just for fun.

2 thoughts on “Make: television — Roller coaster wimp

  1. Zee says:

    The drop pictured is actually inverted (read INSANE). I was there while it was still being built, track was not complete and that wouldn’t be fun.

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John Edgar Park likes to make things and tell people about it. He builds project for Adafruit Industries. You can find him at jpixl.net and twitter/IG @johnedgarpark

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