High Rollers

Such a coaster, alas, couldn't leave the station in today's litigious society. "When a new ride opens up, you get a lot of lawsuits," says Toomer. Retired from Utah's Arrow Dynamics Inc., Toomer spends much of his time in trials, testifying about coaster safety. "We have 200 million riders a year on coasters designed by our company," says Toomer. "When someone comes to me and says our ride hurt his back, I say, 'Would you believe that 15 million people rode it before you did, without a problem?' "

In the past 11 years, there have been 11 nonoccupational roller-coaster-related fatalities in the U.S., few of them involving mechanical malfunction. Last September at Paramount's Great America in Santa Clara, Calif., a Mexican tourist lost her hat on an "inverted coaster," the kind that speeds its suspended passengers, feet a-dangle, around a high-speed glorified dry-cleaning rack. The woman's 24-year-old husband didn't speak English and thus didn't heed warning signs when, after finishing the ride, he entered a restricted area to retrieve the hat. He was struck in the head and killed by the dangling feet of another rider, a 28-year-old woman, who suffered a broken leg.

The point is, while you might have your face bloodied by the occasional dive-bombing goose (as happened to Fabio this spring in the front car of Apollo's Chariot at Busch Gardens in Williams burg, Va.) or be stuck upside down for two hours awaiting rescue by the fire department (as happened to 23 passengers on Demon, at Six Flags Great America outside Chicago, in April 1998), riding a roller coaster is much safer than riding a bicycle. "We all look for things that push the boundaries of our daily existence," says Hulk designer Hettema. "Roller coasters are a safe way to do that. Riding a coaster is a more practical way to feel alive than jumping off a cliff."

More practical than a cliff dive, coastering better approximates mountaineering. Rodriguez had "surreal visions" during his 47-day Blackpool marathon last summer. "You can experience a kind of natural high while riding," confirms Ruben.

Enthusiasts speak of rides the way climbers talk of the Seven Summits. On every coastermane's "lifetime list" are Dragon Khan (at Port Aventura, near Barcelona) and Monte Makaya (at Terra Encantada, in Rio de Janeiro). Both have eight inversions, the world record. Oblivion (at Alton Towers, in England) makes an 87.5-degree drop into a 100-foot hole in the ground. "Eve heard," one rollerphile told me lasciviously, "it's terrifying."

The names of the world's great modern coasters are conceived to heighten such terror: Megaphobia, Mind Eraser, Exterminator, Alpengeist and—at Pare Astérix outside of Paris—Tonnerre de Zeus, which means, sounds and feels like the thunder of Zeus. None of these, however, have the exotic, elusive appeal of Fujiyama, King of Coasters, at Japan's Fujikyu Highlands fun park in the northern foothills of Mount Fuji. "Fujiyama is the one I want," Tolotti told me, as if it were a white whale. It might as well be.

Fujiyama is the world's tallest traditional complete-circuit coaster, 259 feet at its high point. The ride's toupee-ravaging first drop of 230 feet is also a complete-circuit record. And Fujiyama shares with the formidable Steel Phantom at Kennywood the Guinness mark for the fastest complete-circuit coaster, with a top speed of 82 mph.

What's more, I resolved not merely to ride Fujiyama but also to do it immediately after speed-eating bowls of soba noodles with another Japanese phenomenon: Hirofumi Nakajima, the Black Hole of Kofu, the former world champion of competitive eating, a man who once consumed 24½ hot dogs in 12 minutes, as if feeding pencils into an electric sharpener.

In the days leading up to my trip, I thought many times of hurling. But I also thought of Kipling:

If you can meet with Gluttony and Gravity
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can ride with Kings—of coasters—and not lose it;
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!