Our first week at Adventureland

This has been a good week, getting all settled in at Adventureland, exploring the nearby areas, and preparing for our work here running the amusement park rides.  We joined a fitness center run by the city of Altoona, and because we're Adventureland employees, we get a corporate rate of $31 per month for the both of us -- and the center is really impressive -- lots of weights, resistance machines, stationary bikes, a huge swimming pool, and lots of fitness classes.  Its one of the best facilities we've seen in our travels, and its only a short two mile bike ride away.
Speaking of cycling, we've gone on a couple of longer rides on the trails around Altoona, and are finding them very good.  We've got to do a bit more research to find the connections to the rest of the large bike trail system in the greater Des Moines area, but overall the trail system here looks great for us to keep up on our cycling this summer.  Mark and Sue are also really getting into the cycling around here, and we've found several other cyclists within the workamper group at Adventureland, so we should be able to get in a lot of riding.

We'd had a refreshment or two the other night, and were trying to decide what to do about dinner, when Mark and Sue suggested that we help them get rid of their MRE's that they had gotten when hurricane Rita struck the Gulf Coast a couple of years ago.  We snapped a few pictures of us enjoying a gourmet dinner  . . . . .



Here are a few shots of the Adventureland campground and the entrance to the park.  We've been very impressed with the overall organization, facilities, and welcome that we've received here as workers.

  




















Oh yes, the work -- we started our first full day on Friday.  We're all on afternoon shift, and our first assignments were: 
Mandy -- Carousel
Greg -- Der Flinger (a tilt-a-whirl type ride)
Mark -- Shooting Star (a 40 passenger spinning and looping ride)
Sue -- Bumper Cars

And . . . . . .  here are the pictures of us -- in our official uniforms -- ready for work.
 

As of this evening, we've completed two days of work, and are all enjoying our tasks.  We all have one more day on our assigned rides, and then we work Monday at our next assignment for one week.  The management rotates the ride staff weekly through all the rides in the park, which will expose us to all the operations here and will keep things from getting boring or repetitive.  Generally, we'll work 6 hours a day (afternoon shift) 6 days a week -- with Thursdays off.  Our initial impressions is that they seem to be a bit short-handed here (maybe something to do with fuel prices . . . . . . ) so some of this could change as the season progresses.  We also have both confirmed that we get the week off for our RAGBRAI ride.  We've been unable to snap any pictures of the rides within the park, but should be able to eventually, to let you have a better idea of what we're doing.