Water Park Peril

Things a Chubby Girl can do at Waterworks Park in Redding, California:

1. Ride the Lazy Lagoon.
The Lazy Lagoon is a fake river that goes in a circle (if said circle had been drawn by drunk monkeys that were missing their opposable thumbs). I was able to snag one of the available inner tubes easily enough, but actually getting on it to ride was an exercise in patience and humiliation. I would grab the handles, jump out of the water, and attempt to land on the inner tube an exercise that usually landed me right back in the water. (I do believe, in the marine mammal world, the term for this is "breaching.") Alas, failure would not stop me. Out of seven million tries, I was able to successfully wedge my fanny in the inner tube hole exactly twice.

2a. Go down the Raging River Ride.
As you ascend the hill to the start of this ride, there's a sign that lists all the warnings. One of them says, "Increased weight will increase your chances of injury." Since it wasn't in neon, or flashing, or even printed on a sheet of paper that was handed out by a 16 year old lifeguard-in-training at the foot of the hill, I figured they didn't really mean it. I mean, seriously, just having it written on a sign? Please.

When I got to the start of the ride, I lept gracefully (hah!), belly-down, on my inner tube and got a shove from the attendant. I hit the first corner. I hit the second corner. I was gathering speed at an alarming rate. My life flashed before my eyes. I saw the faces of my children as they wept for their beloved dead mother. My parents wailed at the unfairness of life, "We were supposed to go first!" My husband was sad for about a year and then decided he would test the dating waters again before realizing nobody else was as perfect as his dear departed wife and he would never remarry.

Wait, that's too dramatic. My tuna sandwich lunch flashed before my eyes.

At some point, I realized I was dragging my feet behind me in an attempt to slow myself. "My toenails!" I thought. My perfect pink polish! My life/lunch be damned! I liifted my feet into the air and promptly flipped around, hurtling feet first at 90 miles an hour, towards certain doom.

At the end of the ride, I hit the pool, and immediately flipped off my inner tube and into the water. When I surfaced, there were people laughing. (I'm almost positive they were laughing at me and not something clever or witty someone had said just moments earlier.) At least my toenails still looked great. Oh, and I wasn't injured.

In retrospect, this isn't a good thing for a Chubby Girl to do.

2b. Ride the Lazy Lagoon. Again.
It takes five minutes and 54 seconds to go all the way around. Unless you paddle a tiny bit with your arms. Then it takes five minutes and 16 seconds. If you're being chased by a child hell-bent on drowning you, it takes 3 minutes flat. If you fall off your raft and said child catches up to you, you're in trouble.

3. People watch.
Here's something I realized. EVERYBODY jiggles when they're wearing a bathing suit. Even the skinny women. As GenAdFemale says, "Life is jiggly." I was very tempted to start photographing bodies, but if
turnabout is fair play, I would die if someone posted a photo of me, in my bathing suit, on the internet. Yes, I really would die.

Oh, the thighs I saw! Oh, the upper arms with grandma flaps! Oh, the chins! Oh, the lumpy backsides! Oh, the bellies! Oh, I've GOT to stop looking in the mirror!

Note to guy wearing a wetsuit: It's a family park, not the ocean.

Note to 300 pound woman in bikini: Next time, I AM taking photos.

Oh sure, there were other things to do.

I could have ridden down the Avalanche. The Avalanche is a 30 foot tall, U-shaped slide. You start up high on one side and slide, hurtling to the bottom of the U and then up to the other side, going back and forth until you slow down at the bottom of the U. I asked the ride attendant if anyone had ever fallen, or even gotten close to falling, off the edge. His response: "Physics won't let it happen." However, even if I actually knew this Physics guy is or his brother, Gravity, nothing would have prevented me from leaving a giant brown streak on the ride itself.

I could have hung with the little kids in the kiddie pool. Yeah, that's what parents want, a Chubby Girl whose kids are too old for the kiddie pool, playing with their kids, in said kiddie pool. I don't know how you get away with that and not have people think you're some kind of freak. I'm quite sure I would have ended up in jail. With a girlfriend named Rita.

I could have ridden the other three water slides. After my near-death experience on the Raging River, I think my own weight would have risen up in rebellion and injured me before I even hit the water.

I could have cleaned out the snack bar. Actually, between my kids and my brother's kids, I sort of did that.

All in all, I've got to say that the park itself is great. It's not too big, there are lots of chairs and shady areas, the food is decent and reasonably priced, and if your weight doesn't cause you to be injured, you might make it out with your pride and/or pedicure intact.

Comments

[Ami]

omg, I howled!! I can so relate. And you are completely right about other people in bathing suits. If you stop obsessing about yourself for a tiny second - you can see other people's flaws and everyone has them. Even that 12 lb 16 year old who looks like she lives at the gym. As someone who has gone to the water park as both a 120 lb teenager and a 250 lb woman, grace does not come easily when there are water and inner tubes involved no matter how much you weigh. However, now that I am down to 150, I am going to try again this summer.

[Maven]

This reminds me of the time I went to Action Park on a water slide which you didn't have a tube or a mat, nothing between your body and the slide itself except water. Well. Being a big gal, well... I can say that it's a challenge going down waterslides, if you can't get any water between you and the slide. Yep. At one point, I just got stuck. Oh yeah. I'm the fat woman who caused a human pile up on the waterslide, Summer of 1994. Good times!

[Tammy]

Hey, thanks for sharing your experience with us. I spent many summers with my daughter at the water park in Redding, CA. If you think those slides are bad, come check out the indoor water park we have in Anchorage, Alaska; I wouldn't dare go down the slides for fear of getting stuck in those little tunnels but lazy river and wave pool are great fun. Oh, you can also loose 10 lbs from the humidity in there.

I was just in Redding two weeks ago but was able to stay cool in the privacy of my sister’s pool. Thank goodness, for the temperature was HOT ranging from 104 to 118 while we were there and as Alaskans, we were melting.

[Kate Dino]

Snort. I had a similar experience at my county fair on the giant slide.

Now I want to see someone write about what happens when a woman who's squeezed out three kids decides to recapture the magic of childhood by climbing into the Moon Bounce. Did you already do a post on stress incontinence?

[Emily]

I think the last water park I went to, my swimming suit got caught on a screw on the slide and ripped right up my butt area. Very embarrassing trying to explain why I wouldn't get out of the pool at the bottom.

[Kathy]

I was dying! I am from Sacramento and we have two big water parks here and I have had to endure them both (repeatedly) with my children. I can soooo relate!

[sarah]

your crazy and you can't spell....let me let you in on a little secret.....there's no such thing as chubby....its either skinny or fat........and since you wrote this you must be fat and so go on a diet.........and you can go on any of the rides you want.... stop being a pussey...let me clue you in almost everyone flips over at the bottom of the raging river...get over it....they werent laughing at your fat paraniod ass... its funny to see someone eat shit... i am 115 pounds and i eat shit.....so stop feeling bad for your self and get off your ass and go on a diet...
HAVE A NICE DAY....
Sarah

[Andi]

oO I used to live in Redding, and know all the humiliation that used to go with enjoying a day at that park. I'd never thought of the lazy river there as having been drawn by no-thumb-having drunken monkeys, though now that I think about it, it fits perfectly.

I just found the CGB, and love it to bits.