The first time I ever rode a roller coaster was the old wooden coaster at the Pacific National Exhibition grounds in Vancouver. This was back in the mid 1980s, before the big renovation, so it still had shitty plywood cars where the only thing preventing you from being thrown bodily from the track was your own weight and a single metal cross-bar to hang onto. I just barely cleared the "you must be this tall to ride" sign, but I was abnormally tall for my age and the operators either didn't notice or didn't care how skinny I was, so I was well below the minimum safe weight; when my car hit the big drop I was lifted from my seat by the sudden acceleration, and hung suspended in mid air for the full duration of the drop, held in place by my grip on the safety bar. It was the most magical experience of my life, and one I look back on with fond nostalgia, which probably explains a thing or two.
