High Rollers

Rodriguez was raised in the shadow of the great coaster jocks of the '70s, men such as Jim Bruce, who made his reputation on the Swamp Fox in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Noel Aube, who tamed the Wildcat at Lake Compounce in Connecticut. But Rodriguez's true heroes were aviators: solo balloonists such as Ed Yost and Steve Fossett and, above all, Charles Lindbergh. Two years after crossing the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis, Lindy rode the Cyclone at Coney Island and said, "A ride on Cyclone is a greater thrill than flying an airplane at top speed."

So, in the summer of 1977, 18-year-old Rich Rodriguez set out to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Lindbergh's flight—and the 50th birthday of the Cyclone—with an audacious act of his own. "I don't want to overdramatize this," he would say years later, "but Lindbergh was a longshot in '27. He would have been 20-to-1 in a horse race. He wasn't well financed. And here I was, not wealthy, from Brooklyn, and I thought, What can I do in Lindbergh's spirit of adventure? Can I accomplish something?"

Carrying only a pillow, a blanket and a note from his doctor—plus the blessing of management at Coney Island's Astroland—Rodriguez set out on Aug. 18, 1977, to break Michael Boodley's world record of 45 consecutive hours on a roller coaster. He selected the sixth car from the front. "It's the most stable ride," says Rodriguez, who would soon make the sixth car his signature. As he traveled 50 mph in the frigid Coney Island nights, with the wind whipping off the Atlantic, his face swelled grotesquely. He resolved, then and there, that next time would be different. Next time he'd bring lotion.

There would be a next time, too, for Rodriguez shattered Boodley's record, set on the Cyclone, by staying on that angry mechanical bull for 103 hours and 55 minutes to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. Then, between 1977 and 1982, Rodriguez would break his world record nine times, the last two on corkscrewing coasters in Quebec and Germany.

Under Guinness guidelines, a rider can spend an average of five minutes of every hour off the coaster—or a total of two hours a day, to be divided as the jockey sees fit. Rodriguez used his time to eat and go to the bathroom, which is to say, he did all of his sleeping on the coasters, snoozing through every terrifying turn of the corkscrew. Soon the word went forth: There was an undisputed King of Coasters, a man the British tabs called Queasy Rider, a misnomer if ever there was one. "I was blessed with a strong stomach," says Rodriguez. "I never get sick." He was, in short, the Natural, and the trade magazines all headlined his ONE TRACK MIND.

But his one-track mind was wandering. In 1982, after spending 328 hours on the Super Werbil at Holiday Park in Hassloch, Germany, to set his 10th world record, Rodriguez walked wobbily away from marathoning. There were, simply, no more Magic Mountains to climb. For the next 12 years, the Natural squandered his gift. He matriculated at Columbia, receiving a bachelor's degree in history and political science. In 1987 he joined the Army, serving his country for 2½ years before his diabetes was diagnosed and, at his request, he was honorably discharged. He then moved to Chicago to educate America's youth as a substitute high school teacher. It was all very wasteful, this attention to duty, and Rodriguez watched his record fall to a younger jock, the Quebecois upstart Normand St. Pierre, master of Le Monstre at La Ronde Park in Montreal.

By 1991 Rodriguez was a 32-year-old diabetic injecting himself with insulin loin-times a day, and it appeared that his train had long since left the platform. Or had it? "George Foreman had come back to boxing," recalls Rodriguez. "Mark Spitz was trying to return to the Olympics, and I began to wonder, Why not? At first it was hard to find a park to train in, but I'd buy some ride operators at Coney Island a couple of beers, and they'd let me ride all day."

He went to Blackpool in 1994 and rode for 549 hours to reclaim the record that St. Pierre had held, in his absence, for 11 years. Rodriguez returned to form on the Big Dipper, which was built in 1921. Today's brakes are almost all hydraulics, but at Blackpool, as at Coney Island, large men still pull enormous hand brakes. "If he misses the brakes, I could be dead," says Rodriguez. "If my hand falls out of the car when I'm asleep, I could lose a limb. I'm going around something like 12,000 circuits, and any number of things can go wrong."

In 1979, at the Vancouver Pacific National Exhibition, Rodriguez was on a coaster that was "double training," or running two trains on one track. When his train pulled into the platform, the train behind it failed to brake. Rodriguez bailed out before impact. "Otherwise," he says, "I would've broken my neck."

Last summer, feeling stronger than ever, Rodriguez returned to the Big Dipper to go head-to-head against his nemesis, St. Pierre, who would be riding Le Monstre in Montreal in a kind of transatlantic staredown. In all fairness, the Francophone never stood a chance. Rodriguez forever lowered the lap bar on his own place in history. "The first couple of days are always a shakedown period," he says of the marathon. "It's almost impossible to sleep. By the fourth day, my body has a will to adapt. After two weeks, it feels more normal to be on the coaster than off." (When he is off, Rodriguez still feels the ride, like the phantom leg of an amputee.)