Southwest Virginia Blogs

Former Virginia Tech Hokie and Clintwood stand out, Justin Hamilton, was drafted by the Cleveland Browns. Fellow Hokie, Marcus Vick, however was not drafted.

Congrats to Justin and his family.

Rex Bowman has this great article about a fellow named Clyde Colley who was from Dickenson County and recently passed away. Mr. Colley was an 84 year-old man who rightfully used force to defend his wife, Ruby, and himself from two guys who tried to rob them and threaten their lives.

It is a very impressive story and a reminder that although us Southwest Virginians are friendly, one should think twice before waving guns at us.

Alpengeist pretty much has it all, as far as coasters are concerned. It starts with a 170' drop and includes an immelmann inverted loop, a cobra roll, a 106' tall inversion, a zero-g's heartline roll, and top speeds of 67 MPH. It's about as much fun as a human being can have.

Here's that cobra roll:

Below is another look at the cobra roll, on the left. As you can see, it gets pretty close to another of Busch Garden's great coasters, the Loch Ness Monster.

For a coaster that's almost 30 years old, Loch Ness is no slouch, with a 114" drop, a 60 MPH top speed, and two interlocking loops:

I suppose the big draw at Busch Gardens is Apollo's Chariot, the park's latest monster. Apollo has a 210 foot drop, and it's been eclipsed by several of the newest coasters in the country, but when you're up top of the first hill, believe me, you're well aware of all 210 of those feet:

The ride the kids enjoy the most is the Big Bad Wolf. As of our last visit to Busch Gardens, it was the only roller coaster that all three of our kids were big enough to ride. The Big Bad Wolf is basically a kiddy ride; with only an 80' drop and a top speed of not quite 50 MPH. But since it is a suspended coaster, and since that drop is over the James River, I have to admit that the coaster gets the most out of those 80 feet:

The other Virginia amusement park, King's Dominion, has a few decent coasters, too. King's dominion is more of an "amusement park" than a "theme park." That is to say, Busch Gardens has more shows and adult attractions, and King's Dominion has a ton of rides of all shapes and sizes.

One of their coasters, the Shockwave, was the first stand-up looping roller coaster I ever saw. It looks pretty intimidating:

But then, once you ride it, it's a real disappointment. It just has no scare-factor, no real thrills. And, it's over almost as soon as it began.

I am a little superstitious about the Shockwave, though, because about a week after the first time I rode it, a guy got killed on it. That took the fun out of that coaster for me, and I never rode it again.

The smoothest, most mellow coaster I've ever been on is the Anaconda at King's Dominion. This coaster begins with a 144' drop and features a ton of sidewinder loops and corkscrew rolls, but the whole time you're on it, all you can do is smile. I guess it does look a bit daunting...

...but trust me, the Anaconda induces a ton of grins and no screams at all. That's not a slam on the coaster, I really enjoy it... it's a good way to cool off and take a break while you're at King's Dominion.

For my money, the best coaster at King's Dominion is the Flight of Fear. It's stats make the FoF sound a bit tame: It's cobra rolls, corkscrews and loops might sound a bit restrained by the ride's top speed of 54 miles an hour and it's highest drop of only 74 feet. The thing that makes FoF so much fun is that it's an indoor roller coaster, inside of a big, dark aircraft hanger-like building... so you can't tell where you're going, what's going to happen next... or even when the ride is over. The ride has a UFO theme, and when you get on the train, you're launched into a black hole:

And, when I say launched, I mean launched. The ride launches you from zero to 50 MPH in it's first three seconds. It launches you into a dark room and right into a loop. You're literally upside down about four seconds after the ride starts. BOOM! Just like that. By the time the ride is over, your equilibrium is so screwed up that you don't know if you're upside down, rightside up, or backside front. There's one cool part about halfway through that always tricks me... the ride slows down and there's a bit of daylight ahead, so it looks like you're headed for the exit. You have a second or two to start thinking about how much fun the ride was and then BOOM! You're hurling straight down again. It turns out that the ride isn't over at all, and that you were actually at the top of a hill. Wow. The Flight of Fear really delivers.

There is one roller coaster at King's Dominion... and only one... that I'm scared to ride. This is where I draw the line. This is where my own personal wuss-factor takes over. The ride I'm scared to ride is the Volcano. Here it is:

This coaster simulates blasting the riders out of the top of a volcano. Thus the name. Duh. Here's another picture of it... I like this one better, because you can see the "aircraft hanger" from the Flight of Fear in the background:

I'd ride Volcano... I'd ride it in a heartbeat... but here's the problem. I'm terrified of heights. Scared to death of heights. Absolutely scared into paralysis by heights. The reason I like roller coasters is that, while they take you up high, they then immediately drop you back down to earth again. Quickly. That's the whole idea. Now, look at those pictures of Volcano. As you can probably tell, the point of Volcano is that it, instead, launches you up high really quickly and then keeps you up there for a long time, going around and around in circles at the top of that synthetic volcano. No thanks. If you're going to take this fat ol' redneck that high up in the air, you better be bringing me back down again p.d.q.

My first rollercoaster experience ever was terrifying, and I honestly think that it both instilled in me my fear of heights and planted the seeds of my love of roller coasters. In the Roanoke area... in a smaller town outside or Roanoke called Salem... there used to be a theme park called Lakeside. It's been gone for years and years; there's a shopping center where it used to be these days. Lakeside featured a wooden roller coaster called the Shooting Star. I was both drawn to it and terrified of it as a kid. Finally I got up the guts to ride it with a friend of mine. I'll never forget it... on the way up the hill, I clamped down on my friend's arm and said "Just don't talk to me until this is over." I'll never forget the view as we rounded the top of the hill and came to the drop. I was able to find a picture on the internet of the Shooting Star's drop, and here it is:

Just looking at that picture gives me the shivers. All seventy-some feet of the Shooting Star's first drop scares me more than the 210' drop of Apollo's Chariot. I'll never shake that feeling. And, to this day, I won't ride wooden roller coasters. When we hit the bottom of the hill and my neck snapped back, I thought I'd been killed. My neck and the back of my head hurt for a month. My friend had a bruise on his arm from my deathgrip.

It scared me so badly that I wouldn't ride roller coasters again until I was in my early 20's and my friend "The Governor" goaded me into riding the Loch Ness Monster with him. He basically did the old "don't be such a baby" thing, and I'll seriously always be in his debt for that. I had no idea what I'd been missing. Roller coasters rule!!

All this roller coaster reminiscence was triggered by Cube, who recently wrote about the experience of riding SheikRa at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay. SheikRa looks pretty substantial:

Wow. I'd love to ride it.

Maybe.

Just as long as it ain't made out of wood, the drop is over pretty quickly, and the seats are arranged in such a way as to prevent me from bruising anyone's arm.

But not this summer. This summer, I suppose all my roller coaster riding will be of the virtual kind.

Rarely do I enjoy George Will’s columns. In this one, though, he had my head nodding in agreement through most of it.

Will says:

His challenge will be to harvest financial support, much of it from outside Virginia, from antiwar liberals, without forfeiting his appeal to Virginia’s moderate Democrats and many military families. He is being endorsed by some of the retired generals now denouncing Don Rumsfeld. And he will attract attention if he continues to charge that the Bush administration is “deliberately miscounting the casualties in Iraq,” minimizing them by “counting only those evacuated out of theater.”

Webb says, “I’m pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-Second Amendment.” Two out of three might not suffice, given that Democratic primary voters — disproportionately, liberal activists — often have little tolerance for heterodoxy. And he says, “I’m not saying what antiwar people want to hear — ‘Get out last Tuesday.’ ”

Last Friday I was lucky enough to talk with some folks interested in Webb and helping him win. The big question we kept coming back to, though, was “can he raise the money it will take?”

I don't know what it is about being in your mid-twenties and not married but I'm just ready to scream.  Over the past two days, I have been asked somewhere between 10 and 12 times when I am getting married. Now, let's put this in perspective.  I'm not single, but I'm not engaged.  I am living alone, but that does not make me alone.  Being unmarried after 25 is not the end of the world.  In fact, I'm proud of myself for all my accomplishments WITHOUT being married.  

I don't know why it bothered me so much this morning, but I was ready to scream at the women at my church.  I guess after all that has happened this week (which I have not blogged about for my own reasons, but the three people who know–me, the Boy, and Linds–are the only ones who currently need to know), I must be getting overly sensitive about this question.  I know that many people get married at 18 and stay married for life.  I also know that many more who get married at 18 get divorced within 5 years when they realize they gave up on a lot for their spouse.  I know that being in your twenties and unmarried is not a big deal. 

I don't know why old women don't understand that some things are more important at different times in peoples lives.  My goal was my education.  My second goal was being financially stable and able to take care of myself before marriage.  I've now reached both of those goals.  Does that mean I'm getting married this year?  Nope.  It just means now that those two things have been accomplished I will let myself get married in the future.  I'm in no hurry.  Why does everyone want to rush me?

(This is a reconstruction of an earlier post lost when our server crashed in midweek. Idiot me didn't save a backup.)

I'm a journalist. Been one all my life. It's all I ever really wanted to do. I love getting to the truth behind spin, uncovering facts our elected officials would rather keep hidden, and writing about things that make a community, a state or a nation unique.

In today's Internet-driven world, people too often confuse bloggers with journalists. Some bloggers consider themselves journalists. Most, even those who aspire to be journalists, are not. They confuse opinion with facts, perception with truth and bias with objectivity.

To their credit, most bloggers make no pretense at journalism. They write about things that affect or move them. Fred First at Fragments from Floyd is a good example. So is David St. Lawrence at Ripples. David also mixes in some journalism, reporting on what is or is not happening in and around the Floyd County area.

Philadelphia journalist Jonathan Last has some excellent thoughts on the subject:

It wasn't until last year that I became convinced the Internet was the locus of all evil in the known universe.

You may find this statement odd. After all, the Internet pays my mortgage, so I have a vested interest in its continued success. I've been the online editor of the Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com) since 2001, and I was dabbling on the InterWeb long before that. I launched a Web zine with two college friends in 1997, before Web zines were cool. In 2004, I started a little blog. I may be an idiot, but I'm not a Luddite.

But last year, a flack called me from one of America's most prestigious think tanks and invited me to participate in a panel on "The Impact of the New Media." The event, he explained, would work like this: Six distinguished panelists, three from the Old Media and three from the New Media, would argue on stage in a discussion moderated by another famous Old Media personage. I was invited to be one of five bloggers who would sit in the audience blogging about the panel discussion, with our comments to be projected on a screen above the stage, in real time!

This stunt struck me as a good bit of synecdoche. The New Media in general, and blogs in particular, are concerned primarily with the meta (that is, commenting on commentary), which makes the blogosphere occasionally useful, often harmful, and ultimately pointless.

I've met, interviewed, and worked with a lot of bloggers over the years, and for the most part, they're swell folks. The defects I see are largely - maybe even exclusively - inherent in the medium, and not the result of individual failings. Whether the person blogging is a pajama-clad lawyer or a Pulitzer-winning journalist, the medium is the message, and the message of blogging is: More! FASTER!

Blogs can be a real force for good when they act as supra fact-checkers. They can add serious value when they quickly elevate experts in obscure topics to the fore of public discussion (see, for example, the Bush "National Guard memo"). And they have enormous potential to enable on-the-ground reporting when news happens suddenly or in remote locations. We've seen some of this potential realized, as in sites such as Iraq the Model, but not nearly so much as one might have hoped.