In our previous Summer Projects article we looked at building a backyard roller coasters.
Roller coasters aren’t for everybody. They can also be rather costly and require a great deal of resources and knowledge to actually build one. Building a safe one, that is.
Today we’re taking a look at another backyard thrill ride — the homemade water slide.
Water slides are fun, they’re a great way to cool off in the heat of the summer, and when channeling your inner redneck, the backyard water slides can be pretty wild and crazy. Throw in some beers and it gets even crazier.
A water slide with a massive jump and the rider landing in a pool of water. Unfortunately, this video is a fake.
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A clip from “MythBusters” proving that the previous video is a fake.
Backyard water slides can be classified into three categories.
The first category of water slides are those that are true water slides. These slides are elevated off the ground, they normally have a steep drop, and they finish in a pool of water. Like the modified slip and slides, many of these DIY water slides also have some sort of jump at the end to further the amusement of the rider and everybody watching from the sides. People will pull out all stops and build massive water slides, some of them going so far as using the roof of a house as a starting point.
Your second category of water slide is basically a gigantic slip and slide. These slides use sheets of plastic and a naturally hilly terrain to provide the thrills. All you need is a nice hill, lots of plastic sheets and equipment to hold it in place, running water, and some sort of water at the end of the slide. Some people take this concept a step further and add a jump at the end, giving the rider some airtime before making a splash landing in the water.
The third category of a water slide is also the smallest. These slides are built for toddlers and grade school kids. You can take existing playground equipment or inflatable slides and make a quick and easy slide for the kiddies. All you have to do is have a hose at the top running water down the slide, and then have a tiny pool of water at the bottom that catches the equally small rider.
Now that we have a better understanding of homemade water slides, let’s take a look at several examples found on the Internet. Read more…
3 comments - What do you think? Posted by
Dan -
June 3, 2013 at 5:35 pm
School is finished for the year, the temperature is steadily climbing, and neighborhood pools are already full of kids.
It’s summer time. It’s the time of year to go crazy and put those skills you learned in school to good use.
It’s a perfect time of year to gather some supplies and build not a treehouse, but a freakin’ roller coaster.
There’s been a bit of a craze over the past few years of people building roller coasters in their backyard. We’re not talking about massive wooden or steel coasters that plunge a hundred feet and go through a dozen or so inversions, but rather simpler structures that can provide a quick thrill or two.
All it takes is some wood, a LOT of bolts and screws, some careful planning, and a little ingenuity to construct your own little thrill ride. Some people stick with wooden tracks, some use PVC pipes, and others go all out and use steel to build the coaster’s track.
Blue Flash — A steel looping backyard roller coaster.
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Another video of Blue Flash in action.
The simplest (and cheapest) backyard roller coasters are those are basically incomplete tracks. These normally consist of a main drop (ranging from about five to fifteen feet off the ground), a small hill or two, maybe a curve in the track, and then a small hill at the opposite end that functions as a brake. There is no lift hill and riders have to manually push the car to the top of the hill where it’s then boarded.
Although simple in concept, some people have managed to construct some elaborate track designs that actually look like fun. Here are some examples of those DIY roller coasters. Read more…
Great days are back again as the nightmare of working for a clueless franchise owner (a.k.a. jackass) is finally over!
It’s actually been over a month now since the assistant store manager (ASM) officially parted ways with a certain SteviB’sfranchise in the Atlanta metro area.
Before I go any further, SteviB’s is a great pizza buffet company. The food and buffet are significantly better than the national rival, CiCi’s Pizza, and SteviB’s has a wider array of pizza types and toppings. Plus, some SteviB’s locations even have a dessert bar complete with a self-service ice cream machine. The trade-off is that SteviB’s buffet is about a dollar more expensive than CiCi’s, but if you were to visit both locations, you’ll most likely agree that SteviB’s is the better of the two pizza buffet restaurants. I’d love to see SteviB’s spread throughout the country and give CiCi’s Pizza a serious run for its money.
One of the problems with SteviB’s is that it appears SteviB’s corporate has very little control over what takes place inside of the franchise restaurants. It’s really up to the franchise owners to handle the majority of the marketing for the restaurant along with the payroll and internal affairs within the restaurant. As we’ve seen with the clueless franchise owner, when you FAIL at marketing the store, you will LOSE most of your business. It’s a downward spiral that will only lead to problems with the employees and most likely the sale or closing of the restaurant.
If SteviB’s corporate knew the true stupidity of the jackass in charge of that franchise, they would have beaten him with a stick and then taken away the restaurant. People like that should NEVER be allowed to run a business larger than a lemonade stand. Actually, I take that back. Little girls run neighborhood lemonade stands better than that jackass could ever dream. People like that jackass should never be allowed to run a business, period. Owning a business franchise means having control of people’s lives, and that’s a power that somebody as stupid and gutless as this particular franchise owner should NEVER have!
Anyway, the ASM was offered a salaried management job with another restaurant chain. This was one of the easiest decisions ever for the ASM. Her new company (her location is a corporate restaurant, BTW, and not a franchise) is offering basically a SALARY almost DOUBLE her rate of pay at SteviB’s, she has FULL HEALTH BENEFITS, TWO WEEKS OF PAID VACATION, and plenty of room to move up in the company. This is a major chain of restaurants throughout the country, so the opportunities to advance are virtually unlimited. Read more…
After months of procrastinating and finding excuses to avoid the hard work, I’ve finally begun my workouts with the aim of forming a stronger, healthier body.
This isn’t something seasonal so that I’ll look better when removing my shirt and visiting the beaches or pools. This is a permanent change.
My plan is to use a combination of both cardio and strength training workouts, ideally alternating the workout every other day. The catch for the cardio is that I have a mild heart condition, so for now fast paces and running is out of the question. My cardiologist said that I should be fine for exercising as long as I don’t rush into anything.
My two pieces of exercise equipment are a ProForm treadmill and a Total Bodyworks exercise machine.
The ProForm treadmill was given to my girlfriend and I by one of her friends. It’s not in the best of conditions but it still worked for what I wanted to do. The display panel showed information such as the total time, distance walked, speed, and an estimated number of calories burned. The machine is rather bulky and pretty loud, so I have to really crank the volume on my television set when I’m using the treadmill.
Unfortunately, the machine froze one day when I was finishing a fairly aerobic walkout. I’m guessing that it overheated as it was operational again after cooling for a few hours. But that really doesn’t matter any more. I’m donating the still-operational treadmill to a local thrift store and I have an exercise bike on order. Read more…
There’s no doubt that yesterday’s tornado that struck the town of Moore, Oklahoma was a devastating event.
The tornado’s damage path is around seventeen miles long and about a mile wide. Entire neighborhoods have been erased from the map. Two schools were heavily damaged from the storm. Hundreds of cars were tossed aside like toys. Around 20,000 families have been displaced because of the tornado’s incredible path of destruction.
Sadly, 237 people were injured from the storm, and as of the last official statement, 24 people were killed. Last night the death toll was 51 people, but that number was lowered this morning by the office of the medical examiner. The excuse for having an incorrect death count was that apparently many of the victims were counted twice.
The National Weather Service is still examining the wreckage and making a decision about the true power of the storm. We know that the tornado was at least a strong EF-4 tornado, but latest reports claim that destruction has been found that equals the incredible power of an EF-5, the strongest class of tornadoes. Word has it the tornado had a peak wind speed of a whopping 210 mph.
In reality, the ultimate strength of the May 20, 2013 tornado that struck Moore, OK is meaningless. It’s just a statistic for the record books. The reality is that this was a monster storm that nearly wiped out an entire town. The incredible amount of damage stretches for miles and miles in that section of the greater Oklahoma City metro area.
For the residents of Moore, OK, tornadoes are just a part of life. The town is located in the heart of Tornado Alley, and it’s been struck by deadly tornadoes at least five times since 1998. Until yesterday, the most destructive tornado to hit the city was an F5 tornado on May 3, 1999. That storm had the strongest tornado winds ever recorded and was responsible for the deaths of thirty-six people.
VIDEOS OF THE MAY 20, 2013 MOORE, OKLAHOMA TORNADO:
time-lapse video of the tornado recorded from a news helicopter
A day after I wrote the article about my “Uncle Billy” and his encounter with the Detroit Medical System, my grandmother died (the same woman referenced in the previous article).
This grandmother was my mom’s mom. She was also the last of my grandparents as both of my grandfathers had passed away years ago, and my grandmother on my dad’s side has been deceased for almost ten years.
My parents and I headed up to Detroit to spend a few days with the extended family and attend to the viewing and funeral for my grandmother. It was those few days visiting with my cousins (unofficially I’m the oldest of the bunch, but several of them are within five years of me) that I realized just how little I had in common with those people despite the closeness of my mother and her sisters. My mom is the oldest of her five siblings, and except for “Uncle Billy,” they still have a tight bond with one another.
But when it comes to my cousins and myself it’s a different story.
One of my aunts had an idea of creating posters and filling them with pictures of people in my grandmother’s life, and putting those on display during the viewing and funeral. That itself was a great idea and everybody at the funeral loved seeing the photographs. For a grandmother such as mine and the extended family, there were a LOT of photos spread across many poster boards.
Anyway, it was helping my cousins with the posters that I realized just how little I had in common with those people. While they were going through the photos and going, “Oh, remember this . . . ” or “Remember that . . .” or whatnot, and for me the most common answer was “No.” I had no bond or connection with my grandmother while almost all of my cousins did. A big problem was that my grandmother played favorites with her own children and her grandchildren, and my brother and I were at the bottom of the list. We’re we bad to her? Certainly not. We were just not on her favorites listing, and when my family relocated to Georgia back in 1987, that wedge between my grandmother and I just grew deeper.
From 1987 through 2013, my grandmother came down to Georgia to visit us ONE time, and that visit was within the first year of us living down here. That’s it. She had the means to come down and visit more times, but she lacked the willpower or desire to do so. Read more…
Today we’re telling the tale of a relative of mine.
Let’s call him “Uncle Billy.”
Yes, Uncle Billy is really an uncle of mine. The guy is in his fifties, he’s single, in his youth he participated in very objectionable behavior throughout downtown Detroit and the suburbs, he has AIDs, he’s never had a real job or actually worked for a living, and as you can probably guess, he’s lived off of welfare and probably a dozen other government benefits. Uncle Billy is a pimple on society’s ass. The guy is a social deadbeat whose purpose in life is to keep making his daily visits to the three gambling casinos in downtown Detroit and continue spending his welfare checks.
This isn’t an anti-gambling thing. If Detroit didn’t have its casinos, then the guy would keep crossing the border into Canada and gambling in Windsor, Ontario. If those casinos didn’t exist, then he’d be spending his welfare money on other garbage.
The guy is an embarrassment to the family and a complete waste of space. He’ll use his memory skills and memorize your credit card and driver’s license information, using that knowledge against you. I’m surprised he isn’t sitting in jail right now. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s still living at home with his mother (my grandmother), then the guy would either be A) dead, or B) in jail.
I kid you not.
Last week, Uncle Billy was visiting his mother while she was there for probably her tenth hospital stay in the past year alone. It seems like she’s being admitted to the hospital once every few weeks for a variety of reasons ranging from breathing issues to circulatory problems. Grandma is rather overweight and has been a lifelong smoker and drinker, and a person’s body can only handle so much of that crap. Sadly, her condition is only going to continue deteriorating as she chooses to do little to make the necessary changes in her lifestyle.
Uncle Billy was there in the hospital when he apparently began suffering from a heart attack. From what I understand, he was admitted and underwent some testing to determine the extent of his problem. As far as I know, no surgery took place when he was admitted. I live in Atlanta, so my information is being relayed from relatives. What I do know is that the following day we learned that Uncle Billy was going to need a quadruple bypass procedure to help fix all the clogged arteries around his heart. Uncle Billy weighs about 300 pounds, he’s been a smoker for the longest of time, his dietary program is mostly unhealthy, and the guy’s exercise program involves walking from the car into and around the casinos. Read more…
It’s been several days since the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, had the shootout with Boston cops and then put the city under siege and martial law until the surviving brother, Dzhokhar, was finally captured.
According to the media, the case is basically closed. The vast majority of news stories have painted the picture of two boys originally from southern Russia who came to America and later decided to strike back against this very country. They allegedly became “brainwashed” with a radical faction of the Muslim religion and carried out a personal jihad against the USA. The Tsarnaev brothers placed IEDs constructed from pressure cookers (as described in online publications), and detonated them near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
It seems simple enough of a plan, especially when you look deeper into Tamerlan’s past including his mysterious trip to Russia that lasted for six months and the violence he’s used against his wife, a woman who was forced to convert to the Muslim faith. New articles online hint that Tamerlan Tsarnaev may also be the person behind a still unsolved triple homicide that occurred back in 2011.
2013 Boston Marathon bombing
It seems so simple: Construct pressure cooker bombs. Start a fuse. Place bombs amongst the unsuspecting crowd watching and cheering for the runners. Walk away. Flee with the masses when the bombs detonate. Avoid capture and live to strike again (failed for these two starting with the chain of events that began early Friday morning).
But to many people, there’s much more to the Boston Marathon bombing than we’re being told by the media and politicians.
Saudi Arabia connection
Let’s start with a Saudi Arabian named Abdul Rahman Ali Issa al-Salimi al-Harbi. Read more…
While watching the news reports and reading more about the bombing that occurred on April 15th at the 2013 running of the Boston Marathon, I’m more and more convinced that the terrorist, whomever he may be, is NOT part of an international terrorism organization such as Al-Qaeda, Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood.
My theory is that the bombing was carried out by an individual, a.k.a. “lone wolf,” and not from orders from a terrorist cell or organization. Whether this person has sympathy for the terrorist organizations, or is somebody just looking to cause chaos is still to be determined. But I’m confident that this act was not ordered from any of the big militant organizations.
What evidence supports this theory?
With all due respect to those who were injured and killed in the blasts, considering the size of the crowds at the Boston Marathon and the relative crudeness of the explosives, there should have been a much larger body count. As of right now the death toll stands at three people. That number is remarkably low considering that a large crowd of people were unprotected and just standing around the bombs’ locations when they were detonated.
Whenever you hear about suicide bombers in the Middle East, the death toll is usually higher than just a couple of people. When car bombs are used in attacks, especially coordinated bombings, the combined death toll can reach a hundred or more people. But as far as IEDs planted in busy areas, or suicide bombers wearing explosive vests, death tolls are normally quite a bit higher than what we saw at the 2013 Boston Marathon.
We also know that if a large terrorist organization tried to strike again in this country, the attack would be much bigger than the bombing we saw in Boston. These are trained killers who think big. A bombing as small as the one during the Boston Marathon would be the equivalent of “tipping your hand” in poker.
Why would a major organization go through all the trouble of placing and detonating an explosive, knowing full well the reaction that it would cause with the media, police, FBI, and everybody else, if it’s not going to have a high number of fatalities? Read more…
The other day my girlfriend and I were walking through a shopping mall when a new sign for Dave & Buster’s caught our attention. One word was definitely wrong but the advertisement was also in desperate need of some key punctuation marks.
Did you notice anything wrong with the grammar and punctuation?
How about now?
Obviously not every phrase and sentence on an advertisement like this needs punctuation, but you really need to have some punctuation in key areas like after asking a major question or stating a proud selling point. As far as the your/you’re error, that’s a common problem for a LOT of people these days, and nobody seems to care about correcting it. Read more…
