Birch Bay Bitterness

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Unfortunately there was no “annoying kid-eating whales” there.

I’m old and bitter and in need of not working all the time.  Unfortunately, it takes a lot of bitter food and water to maintain this bitterly taken care of physique, so I have a job that pays for just enough of that (food and water).  I get just enough vacation to keep me from going clinically insane (or any other kind of insane).   Recently when a small two day window opened on our vacation schedule (days my cretin co-workers didn’t suck up like day old doughnuts) I decided to take the two days, and do what I do best.  Sit at home being lazy while complaining about stuff that makes me bitter.  Unfortunately, I got sabotaged, tricked and coerced (even though other people would have you believe that it was my idea) into going to a water park.  Not just any run of the mill park that has lot of rides, a LAZY river, and a wave pool.  No much worse.

I was a fingernail from Canada, and like a busted toe from Seattle and the Capital of No Man's Land.

I was a fingernail from Canada, and like a busted toe from Seattle and in the Capital of No Man’s Land.

It was only 2 hours away from where we live or 40 miles away from Canada.  You know, worst of both worlds.  If someone wanted to murder our family and hide them in one of the town’s closed down lottery Bingo Halls no one would have ever found us.  The FBI would have been so depressed at this ghost town by the Lake, they would have got gas and turned right around.  Even the Cold Case people wouldn’t have touched this one.  Besides why in the heavens name would I have ever wanted to go even 2 miles away from my house?  There’s a perfectly gross, disgusting tub I could have used to do anything you can do at a water park.  Other than sliding down a huge 40 story slide.  And paying $40 for pizza that is worse than a Little Caeser’s Hot N’ Ready $5 pizza.  It cost us a half a tank of gas to get there and back.  That’s only like $500 or so right?

The savior of the Zombie Apocalypse.

The savior of the Zombie Apocalypse.

Luckily, we had all kinds of things to do on our drive up to the Great White North.  My kids turned into zombies once the car started rolling thanks to their Nintendo 3DS’s. I’m convinced there will never be a Zombie Apocalypse as long as portable electronics exist(stick a device in front of their face and watch them ignore you).  My wife did the driving, so when I wasn’t sneakily playing my 3DS or checking my phone for yet another comment about how terrible I was in my YouTube video and how great Amanda was, I was telling my wife how great of a view we were getting of yet another tree, or another strip mall in yet another Bates Motel type town.

Finally we got there and prepared ourselves for the 3 minutes of thrills that we packed into a four hour time period.  It only cost $78 for a family of four to enter the park, thanks to the $1 off we got for “Liking” the Birch Bay on Facebook.  Definitely well worth the fumbling on my 4G Phone (reduced to 2G in this barren land) only for my wife’s much slower phone to get to Facebook up, type in Birch Bay Waterslides and actually hit “like” in order to get the 2 quarters, 2 dimes and six nickels off the ENTIRE BILL.

bubble-photo-anime-02

Hey kids, it slows down eventually.

Finally in the park, I walked my completely white, completely lazy body inside the water wonderwhyland, took off my shirt and proceeded to not put on sunscreen.  It’s not like I would be exposed to the sun and wet in a water park, right?  So off I went with kids that were too afraid to slide down a 2 foot slide to convince them that it would be fun to ride down a slide that was nearly the height of Sears Tower.  “There’s a huge pool at the bottom that slows you down.  It’s only the 100 story drop that is scary!”  I failed as I always do, so I decided to go do the “grown up” slides in order to prove that ,”I’m a man!”.  For me, it wasn’t the height of slide that scared me, but the amount of stairs it took to climb up there.  I was very disappointed that escalators/elevators seemed non-existent in a place that required you to go from low to high in order to use their product.  It’s really hard to enjoy a superfun drop when you feel like you just ran a marathon. The lines were also horrendous.  There was one time I had to wait at least a full minute to get on a ride.  I’m not getting any younger and I had an appointment with the couch later.

Luckily after the 3 hour and 57 minutes of torture, we had the privilege of riding in the opposite direction.  Everything looked exactly the same, except the opposite.  At least I got to bring a souvenir with me.  An increasingly painful epidermis.  My skin went from an uncomfortable “Can we turn the heat down?” as we left to a “Can we get off the sun?” inconvenience.  Good thing I had those all those thinning hairs to block the sun on my head.  When we neared halfway home, we got an inkling that we should feed our kids.  I say it was just my intuition, but my wife said it was the kids yelling, “We are so hungry that we are about to gnaw each other’s arms off soon if we don’t get something to eat!”. Tomato, Potato I say.

Part 2 Golden Corral Bitterness tomorrow.  Same bitter time, Same bitter blog.  

Arrrgghhhhhh

Bitterly Burnt Ben

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66 thoughts on “Birch Bay Bitterness”

  1. Pingback: Hall of Bitterness | Ben's Bitter Blog

  2. Love this. I’m originally from Birch Bay, so I’ve been to the Waterslides countless times. I’ll tell you one thing, it doesn’t get any better the second, third, or fourth time.

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  3. Pingback: Golden Corral Bitterness | Ben's Bitter Blog

  4. I HATE waterparks. A large part of this is likely due to my general disdain of being in a swimsuit in public.. but also the germs, the lines, the screaming kids. You are a stronger person than I!
    Although I don’t take kindly to your remarks about Canada.. consider yourself on notice, sir 🙂

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  5. My last run in with a water park resulted in me having burned feet from the burning hot pathways throughout the park. Between that and all those stairs, eh. It’s like going to an overcrowded gym where everyone is scantily clad and we all know how I feel about gyms.

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  10. BEN! So glad you survived the trip and lived to be BITTER another day! However, I’m thinking the $40 pizza was probably awesome, and you’re just too bitter to admit it. And I have to say I’m so glad my KIDS are too old now for the family vacation (woo hoo…maybe, that’s why I’m happier than you and/or more positive?) cuz, well, I remember those days like when Max was terrified of almost every ride at Cedar Point since, ya know, they’re mostly roller coasters (and he refused to ride one until we went to Disney two years later)…however, he wanted to go on the log ride, and it was 57 degrees the last time we were there (doesn’t matter that it was JULY…we live in OHIO), so I was not about to board said soggy ride. Thank God, my now 26-year-old, Tim, was happy to get doused on the only ride that should’ve caused hypothermia. Thank God, for those cheap towels they give you, that we still have, that I use to clean the litter box :)…regardless I love the line that you had a date with the couch later…I feel you on them!
    In HAPPINESS and light…
    Tenacious BITCH

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  14. Ok, so bitter amusement on my part. Too bad there’s no vid of me laughing so hard at the “thinning hairs to block the sun on my head”. And, really? Long climb to get to that ride? Yikes. I find myself eagerly looking forward to your Golden Corral moments. Hoping your likely to be bitter review will help me decide if I should ever go there….. 🙂

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  15. That looks horrible, and not because I’m sure there was all kinds of kid urine in the water, but just because it involves being outdoors, being in the sun, and going underwater. Horrible.

    How did you make it?

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  16. Ah, yes, the horror that is the water park. I made the mistake of taking my kids last summer. I spent about five hours in excruciating pain from either standing or climbing or roasting in the sun…only to get about 45 seconds of relief total from the actual sliding part. And I was out about 70 bucks. It’s a total racket.

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  17. Replete with bitterness! This is why I avoided Schlitterbahn all summer! No waterparks for me! But think how strong your hamstrings will be for climbing those stairs.

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  18. Is a bitter vacation better than no friggin’ vacation at all? Like me, not ever having one?

    You could come out to Cali, go to San Diego’s Wild Animal Park and do the zip line over the lions! Oops, someone fell!

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  20. I feel your pain, friend. We decided, after our first visit to a ‘funpark’ and all the pandemonium that ensued (i have clippings) that we should turn the tables on our kids and instead sell tickets for others to come under our big tent and gawk at them. It’s worked out so far and i’ve even been able to sell lemonade for a profit.

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    • We had one of those huge inflatable backyard waterslides and all the neighbor kids thought it was okay to come over and destroy it. I wanted to charge 20 per day per kid, but my wife wanted to allow people to use it for free. Of course it broke and I am bitter.

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  22. Everything about this post was fabulous. I could feel your pain because I’ve been there myself. Well, not that close to Canada, but at a water park no where near Canada with scaredy kids and a brutal sun.

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