I did something I never thought I’d do today… I had a chance encounter with another theme park enthusiast “out in the wild” so to speak!
Basically, I was chatting with a coursemate I’ve been working on a group project at university with for the last 6 weeks or so and met for the first time last autumn, and for reasons I can’t quite remember, the conversation got onto theme parks and roller coasters.
She said that she loved theme parks and roller coasters, and “knew who built different roller coasters, knew the element names of certain roller coasters and why x ride was an improvement on y ride”, which naturally piqued my interest… so I told her I loved theme parks and roller coasters too, and we struck up a conversation about them! As I gradually ascertained that she pretty much seemed every bit as into parks and coasters as I am, the conversation then progressed to me showing her my spreadsheets and my Captain Coaster account… and instead of thinking it was weird, she thought my spreadsheets and such were cool and said that she’d always wanted to track her coasters! We then had a long conversation about what parks we’d been to and what coasters we’d ridden, about theme park YouTubers we watch, sites we go on, and a number of other things… and in general, I just thought it was awesome to discover such niche common ground with someone I’d known and been friendly with for so many weeks!
I was really friendly with my coursemate before, and she’s been an excellent work partner on the Implementation section of our machine learning group project, but knowing that she’s also a theme park enthusiast is a definite added bonus!
I know it’s small, but I just thought it was awesome to coincidentally find out that someone I’d grown friendly with through university, and the group project in particular, is also a theme park enthusiast! She implied that she occasionally reads forums, so she may well read this very post at some point…