On the second day of our road trip to Minneapolis, we returned to Mall of America for a day of rides. We walked through Nickelodeon
Universe before deciding where to start. We’d
stopped at the railing of the Log Chute ride and watched a log full of people
jet down a steep hill and into a pool of water, sending a wall of water
straight up on either side and ahead of them.
“I’m not going on that.” Abby said.
I laughed. “But look – they’re not even wiping their faces
or hair or anything. I think it looks like they get wet, but they don’t
actually.” I’d noticed a sign that warned riders may get soaked, but no one
we’d seen ever left the bottom of that splash looking drenched.
“It pushes the water away from them, Abby.” Mark added.
“I’m not going on that.” Abby said.
‘You wouldn’t join the family on a Log Chute ride?” I leaned
in and smiled sweetly.
She watched the next log plummet into the pool. The young
girl in front ducked behind the front dash as water sprayed all around them. “I
might go. … if I can choose where I sit.”
“Of course!” I said.
“I want to sit in the front.”
“Absolutely.”
“But I don’t want to do this ride yet,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. She needed to ease into it. “How about the
ferris wheel?”
She looked up at it and decided it was a safe enough start.
We eased into the day of rides with the Ferris wheel, and soon were making our
way through lines to others. Finally we made our way to the Log Chute ride. We
waited in what seemed like a three-mile long line up that wove through a stony
tunnel. At one point during the half hour wait, two young children, maybe nine
years old, wove their way through the crowded tunnel past everyone. “Excuse
me,” one said. Instinctively, I moved over and let them pass. As I watched them
walk past all the waiting people, I became frustrated with my politeness. Why
did I let them by? Why was everyone else? Soon afterward, a voice behind me
said, “excuse me”. Instinctively I moved over and watched another child move
fluidly through the crowd toward the front of the line.
“That’s it.” I said to Mark. “I’m not letting another one
through.”
“Oh relax,” Mark said.
“What do you mean relax? We have to wait in line. Why
shouldn’t they?”
“They’re – “he shrugged, “Whatever. Let ‘em pass. It’s not a
big deal.”
I didn’t understand how three people pushing to the front of
a line could be fine, and my having an issue with it was making me feel rude
and childish. I knew I would let more pass if they would come, but I would not be happy about it.
Finally we arrived at the little river where a four-seater
log floated up in front of us. The attendant motioned for us to climb in. “I
want to sit second from the back,” Abby said, changing her mind suddenly.
“Sure thing. Sit where you like!” I smiled.
We all took our places, Mark ending up in the back, and I in
the front. The log bobbed forward in the rushing water and into a dark tunnel.
“Don’t you rock it!” I said to Mark and Ethan. The echo of water in the small
tunnel drowned out whatever reply they made. The small tunnel opened up to
reveal a larger room inside the stony mountain, and the log chugged up a track
to another tunnel near the ceiling.
As we rose up on the track, we passed a landing where a
living room scene was set up. We rose up and up, coming eye level to a rocking
chair on which was perched a mechanical cat. Its eyes blinked and head turned
toward us as we rose past. Its rough grey fur looked like it had been recently
recovered from a dusty attic where it had been stored beneath something heavy,
and plunked on this chair without being fluffed or combed through.
“Oh look,” I said, wondering why I was pointing it out. “The
cat is moving.”
Two clicks of the track later, opposite the cat, was a
dining room scene. Two millworkers in red plaid shirts mechanically tended to
breakfast. One bent over the stove, cooking something and waving a kitchen
utensil at us. His eyes opened too wide, almost lidless, and his mouth opened
and closed mechanically without coordinating to any words. The man seated at
the table held a fork in front of his mouth with a bit of food on it. His eyes
spread wide and lidless too, watching us as we passed, and his mouth chattered
like a pair of wind-up dentures. These men also looked frazzled, like they’d
just been unearthed from under furniture in an attic and placed here without so
much as a dusting. From somewhere in the cave ceiling, a speaker blared
unidentifiable words, I assume were supposed to appear belong to the chattering
mouths. We bobbed on past the mangy cat and chattering men and came to the
outside of the mountain among evergreens.
“Well that was unnecessarily creepy.” I said.
“Yeah! Did you see the explosives?” Ethan asked over the
sound of rushing water.
“No, I didn’t. I only saw the cat and the kitchen.”
Just then, the path in front of us disappeared, the horizon
becoming all the rides of Nickelodeon Universe. Beneath us, the watery chute
dropped away into a pool. “Here we go!” I said, and leaned back against Ethan.
The log tipped over the edge and fell into the watery slide. We dropped down
the mountain side and glided into the deep pool at its bottom. Swoosh! Water
folded away as the log settled into the pool. The waves splashed against the
cave’s outer wall and made their way back to us, submerging the front of the
log and folding over the edge and into my lap. I gasped loudly as cool water
washed my denim thighs.
“Did you get wet?” Abby called out from the back.
“I sure did!” I laughed. I guess just the people who sat in
front got wet on these rides after al.
“Did you?” Mark laughed loud, making my heart happy.
“I’m soaked!” Ethan said, “It got the bottom of my pants!”
The log was sucked into another tunnel, up another track,
and past another vignette with a wide-eyed miner and a dusty box of dynamite,
and then we came to the end. The pinnacle. The very peak of the weird mountain.
Like a scene from The Fugitive, we perched on the edge of the tunnel, teetering
atop a waterfall that seemed to fall far away and felt like a ninety degree
drop. The log teetered there for a moment, allowing us to fully take in the terror
before plunging us into it.
“Oh no!” Ethan said behind me.
“I know!” I said, leaning back. My heart tightened into a
fist.
The log finally lost its balance and dipped down into the
waterfall. We sped toward the pool at the bottom and I wondered if I’d been
wrong. Maybe Abby was right, and everyone was getting soaked after all. The
blunt front end of the log plowed into the pool of water at the bottom,
building a wall of water all around us. I flinched, preparing to be drenched
from head to toe, but this time, the water did not enter the log at all.
When it was our turn, we climbed out. Mark and Abby were
dry, but Ethan’s pant legs were wet at the bottom, and my thighs were soaked.
“It’ll dry,” Mark said casually, as we began walking to the next ride. I looked
down at my legs and thought it looked a lot like I had just wet myself.
Fly Over America
“Let’s go to the Fly Over America ride!” Abby
suggested.
I was perfectly pleased to let my pants dry in a dark room
where no one could wonder about them.
“Sure! Let’s do it!”
We walked up to a desk where the clerks’ uniforms and the
red and navy signs had a slight airport feel. I thought so, at least. “Welcome
to Fly Over America.” She said. We got our tickets and she pointed us up the
ramp. “Enjoy your flight.” Yes, to someone like me who’d never set foot in an
airport in her life, this seemed airport-like indeed.
We filed into a large room with about twenty other people,
each of us standing on painted circles in a matrix of rows and columns
separated by velvet ropes and metal poles. We stood to watch a short safety video
by a stewardess. “You’ll notice there are a couple of Canadians in the video,”
she said “that’s because we’re featuring a Fly Over Canada film too, this
month.”
The “Canadians” in the film were stereotypical of course;
the RCMP officer in full formal dress you’d only see in parades, and a hockey
player who grinned wide and toothless. I shook my head and smiled, feeling
amused and offended and guilty all at once. I wondered if this was how British
people feel when they’re made fun of for their big ears and bad teeth.
We were led up a flight of stairs and onto a balcony that
overlooked a large screen not unlike IMAX.
We took our places in the chairs
that looked a bit like amusement park seats or electric chairs. Why did the
chairs have tall handles on them? Were they going to do loop-de-loops? How
mobile were these chairs exactly? I hoped I wouldn’t throw up.
I smiled at Abby, who sat next to me. “This
is going to be fun!” I said. She looked worried. “If you want to, you can use
these handles. It’ll be fine.”
We buckled in and the attendants disappeared from the
platform into the side doors. Then the lights went out and we were alone in our
chairs in complete darkness. An electronic sound came from all around us and
the balcony railing in front of us unfolded, opening toward the screen. Our row
of chairs pushed forward toward the screen, suspending us in midair, until the
screen was all we could see all around us.
A puff of air and mist wafted across our faces and in front
of us an image of clouds appeared. We were in an aircraft, sailing through the
clouds, feeling the wind in our hair and the moisture of the clouds. As the
view changed, so did our position. The aircraft tilted downward, gliding
smoothly down. As the clouds parted, a panorama of mountains opened in front of
us. I drew a breath.
We glided like eagles over the tree-covered mountain.
Millions of vibrant red and orange leaves seemed to wave in the autumn sun. My
chest swelled with awe. How could such beauty exist? And how could God allow me
– sinful, rotten me – to see it? We floated past the tree tops and crested a
peak to discover a lake hidden just on the other side. We glided down slow and
low, maybe thirty feet above the water, and soared across it like a bird riding
the wind. But there was no wind. The water stretched far ahead and lay still
like black glass. This was how the Word described the floor of the throne room.
I drew another breath and held it, lips parted. These glimpses of heaven made
me swell such amazement I thought I would explode. Tears filled my eyes.
Ahead, was a red canoe with a lone paddler. We were headed
right for it. As if we were playing a game of Chicken, we kept our course until
the very last minute, until we were so close we could see the person dipping
their oar in the water. We could see their small amount of camping cargo. The
ball cap he wore wearing. Then we pulled up, feeling the heavy drag of gravity
and the rush of air in our face. The paddler became small below us and we
tilted up toward the panorama of sky and mountain as it opened up before us
again. God could see the paddler like that, I thought, from up close, or from far
above. God also knew his thoughts. His dreams and fears. God knew everything about
that paddler’s past, present, and future. I was amazed by this, perplexed by
the logistics, confounded by what would motivate such intimacy, and awed by the
compassion of such an able God. I knew again, as we soared above hills and
fields, that God was completely beyond understanding and was completely good.
Tears streamed down my cheeks now.
We flew over cities and mountains, soaring past extreme athletes. Rafters on
bubbling rapids. Extreme bikers peddling vertically down a treacherous mountain
bike path. We even flew through the mist of American stunt planes. Finally we
soared above the clouds, rising up, up like a slow rocket, into the black
starry sky. Below us, the distant lights and clouds of the USA. Beyond us, a
sliver of orange where the sun disappeared behind the planet as seen from space.
Another of God’s views that caught my breath like a rock in my throat.
“That was awesome!” Ethan said once the lights came on.
“I really liked that!” Abby said as we headed back down the
stairs.
"Me too," I said, wishing I could better encapsulate the experience.
I found myself wishing something I'd never wished before; to be a pilot.
Maybe we'd get to fly in heaven.
I hoped so.
