L'été et la Foire du Midi

Last year, Scott and I headed there to check out the rides just before our road-trip. Scott got a few nice photos, some of which are on his Smile in Europe site.

As with every year, Foire du Midi is calling me, peering over the tops of houses to beaconing me to go and spend some money. For the past week, the Ferris Wheel shown here has been looming over the houses, serving as a warning for me to save up lots of euro coins!

Since I can't even escape the advertising right next to my front door, I've been considering popping over there during the week. However, the RMI seem to think that our crappy weather will return to clouds and rain again. Belgian weather can be so crap.

There's one thing to be said for carnivals as opposed to amusement parks: Carnies are great for giving you more oomph in your rides! These places have great atmosphere, and fortunately the local police have been working on the crime problem at Foire du Midi over the past few years. As usual, the coupons are utter bollocks as expected, which makes me wonder: are the kids the thieves, or the carnies‽

My favourite carnival rides include the first ride I ever went on at Luna Park in Melbourne, the Gravitron (Foire du Midi has the crappy version, the Rotor), the Ranger, and Mondial's Capriolo which seems to have many names, mostly with a liberal use of the letter X. Maybe this list is related to why I like coasters, since they're all fairly smooth and pull of a lot of G's. In fact, all of these rides easily reach 4 G's!

This last one pulls slightly more G's than the Ranger does, and looks pretty impressive — Even from my kitchen window. The key to this ride is a large fan mounted just above the gondola which is turned on to help force the arm towards the ground as it spins, creating the forces with significant ease.

If it wasn't for the nauseating web-design, I could scan through Rides Database for all of those rides I've been subjected to by the Wittingslow family in Australia! Fortunately Melbournian David Burton has a less ugly site with all the rides Wittingslow maintained, complete with loads of information.

Lately the realisation of how I became hooked has hit me: after my father took me on the Gravitron, and the many family visits to the now defunct piss-weak Wobbies World across the road from the old channel 10 studios.

I wonder if my nieces would be up for a visit to Luna Park at the end of the year…