ZORBs are giant inflated balls that you climb into and then roll around in like oversized hamsters on a holiday.
They were invented by the above-linked company in New Zealand and were first used there as a tourist attraction, but over the past couple of years have been turning up all over the world as a way to help separate tourists from their money. The first time I ever saw one was on an episode of “The Amazing Race” a couple of years ago when the race took the contestants to New Zealand; it looks like it could be fun, or it could be a good way to hurt yourself.
Well, guess what.
Last week, a reported from my hometown newspaper, the Lewiston Sun-Journal, climbed into a Zorb at the little ski area in my town, Lost Valley. Lost Valley is small potatoes compared to the big corporate ski resorts in Maine, and, like a lot of small independent ski areas, they spend a lot of time looking for ways to keep people coming once ski season is over. They were all set to roll out (pardon the pun) the Zorb as a new attraction to go along with their paintball course. The reporter would write some puff piece to help promote the new attraction, talking about her experience inside one. And then she promptly broke her back.
She was able to get up, walk away, and drive back to the office, but apparently her injuries were a lot worse than she originally thought. And now, instead of that puff piece to bring in all the locals, Lost Valley has a great big story in the paper about the accident , and instead of opening the ride to the public to make money, they’ve got to do a complete safety evaluation AND pray that the bad PR doesn’t mean they wasted all that money on a giant hamster ball no one in their right mind would get inside.
On the other hand, I hear paintball is fun.
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT.
Since you cannot click a [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and [...]
Thanks to Shelley for alerting me that last night’s edition of the local TV newsmagzine “Chronicle” featured Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein, whom I blogged about recently in conjunction with the various atheist billboard campaigns around the country. I was busy helping Charlotte do her homework, so I didn’t watch the show, but WCVB’s [...]
Update to yesterday’s post about boiled eggs:
The picture at the top is what I got by boiling two eggs in 180-degree-ish water for 6 minutes. Sorry for the so-so photo, I only had my cell phone handy.
The eggs were indeed nicely done. The cooked ring of egg white was consistent in its thickness [...]
