John Ivers represents the kind of spirit that make engineers everywhere proud. When John decided that he wanted a roller coaster, he built one. Complete with 360 degree loop and corkscrew.
John’s pet project is named “Blue Flash”, a name worthy of any amusement park roller coaster. John, who has experience in metal working and apparently a lot of basic tinkering, put his skills to the test and came up with a fully functioning ride.
The journey to having a backyard amusement park ride took a year and a half to complete, and cost about the equivalent of a family trip to Disney World. I personally like the way the ride goes up and over the shack, which no doubt was a pre-existing structure whose shape worked out fine for the coaster design.
If I were to build a backyard coaster one of my concerns would be in getting enough initial momentum to carry the rider through the rest of the ride (You know, the part where the roller coaster typically goes clickety clackety as it climbs up the initial hill). In watching the video it was cool to hear John Ivers externalizing the same concern, which impressed me.
When seeing this, I keep having the image of a popular beer commercial come to mind, “This beer is for you John Ivers. When the lines at the local amusement park got too long, you took matters into your own hands and built your own roller coaster” (Interject Kenny Loggins sound-alike background music here).
