The Evil Ride of Satan

By Darvell Hunt

Last week was spring break in our local school district, so we took a family trip to Las Vegas to see what sort of trouble we could find.

For the first time in my life, I was asked by a police officer if I had been drinking. That was a new experience for me—and writing is all about new experiences! To be fair, however, it was during a roadblock on Boulder Highway in Las Vegas and everybody was asked the question. My kids thought it was cool, though. The officer apparently believed my answer, because he didn’t add me to the pool of handcuffed motorists sitting in chairs by an RV they used for processing DUI offenders. That was one experience I certainly didn’t need, for my writing or not.

I also had the chance to observe what I called “The Evil Ride of Satan.” It wasn’t a decked-out sports car we saw (though we did see a Lamborghini while in town) or a customized chopper bike (though we did see a few motorcycle gangs).

None of my family has ever been to the AdventureDome at Circus Circus on the Las Vegas Strip, so we decided to correct that oversight. The place is like a mini-Lagoon, if you’re familiar with the amusement park in Utah that’s featured in that old Beach Boys song about Salt Lake City.

One of the rides consist of a series of spinning cages that travel around and around and around, and you can also spin the cage around and around and around, and then the whole circle of spinning cages turns on its side and spins vertically. Ughghgh. My head spun just watching it. My older kids tried it, but I think I’m too old for that nowadays. Wanting to experience new things for my writing goes only so far.

When my oldest son walked from the spinning mess of welded metal, bolts, and colorful paint, he had a big grin on his face. It’s good a police officer wasn’t there, because I don’t think my son could have walked a straight line at that moment—and the goofy grin just made him look even more intoxicated.

I frowned, shuddered, and promptly named the contraption: “The Evil Ride of Satan” and got myself hence from it.

Some things are just too scary to even look at, let alone experience.