Robert Kirby
Tribune columnist

We were upside-down and in the middle of a high-speed turn when it occurred to me that I hate Mike Redford's guts. My own were mashed to one side by a multi-G spin normally reserved for laundry.
    I wasn't the only one unhappy with Mike. His wife Patti was hanging next to me screaming for a divorce. It was her husband's idea that we all go ride Lagoon's new roller coaster, Wicked.
    Mike gets ideas like this all the time. Every so often he calls and says, "Kirb, you know what would be fun?" followed by a plan for us to surprise an alligator with a colonoscopy.
    Typically, I'm able to get out of these plans with the standard reply: "Sorry, I'm still on probation." This time I went along.
    It made a certain foolish sense. I am a roller-coaster veteran. There isn't a whirl-and-hurl I won't try. I cut my teeth on Disneyland's Matterhorn and did graduate work at Magic Mountain and other Six Flags parks.
    I hadn't reckoned on the advance of technology and age, though. My anatomy has not kept pace with the imagination of amusement ride designers, many of whom should be in jail.
    Doubt began in the parking lot. Wicked looks like a NASA launch platform engineered by Bozo the Clown and Ex-Lax.
    It looked - but didn't sound - dangerous, but then that's before I realized the riders plunging off the tower were traveling well ahead of their screams. Modern roller coasters don't coast.
    The old-fashioned coasters of my youth clanked and rattled to the top of a hill, then used gravity to plunge down the other side. The long drag up the hill increased the anticipation of the ride as well as the opportunity for idiots to fall out.
    Then someone invented gunpowder. Today's coasters don't bother with gravity. Wicked employs a linear synchronous motor that snatches riders out of the gate faster than their eyeballs can keep up.
    Such sudden departures make for faster reload times. The line for Wicked moved more quickly than I recall the lines for other rides moving, which was good because the sun was brain-damage hot.
    According to Mike, we were "lucky" to get the front seats of a car. Not only would our view be unobstructed, but whatever bad happened would happen to us first.
    There was no time to worry. We clamped in, turned the corner and - WHAM! - we were gone. I have vague, but nevertheless hysterical, images of loops, whirls and plunges.
    Lagoon says the 2,000-foot ride lasts 2.5 minutes. It's a lie. It lasted about an hour.
    Would I ride Wicked again? I'll have to. I left my mind somewhere back along the track.

Robert Kirby