AFTERTHOUGHT
JOHN WELLS
The great virtue of a good open-air fairground ride, as opposed to an indoor one with mechanical moans, skeletons jiggling up and down and wisps crf artificial cobweb trailing over your face in the dark, is that it creates an exhilarating unnecessary risk. Waiting to go on the Dugout Canoe Over The Rapids ride at the Expo in Montreal, for example, everyone in the crowd could see the expressions of alarm mingled with delight on the faces of those plummetting down the last watersplash, could feel an agreeable tremor of nervous excitement —what happened if the mechanism broke?— and be not entirely convinced by the brave smiles of the people getting out, with their trousers soaked, at the other end. They could then bump and wobble round the swirling channels in their own log, plunge down the watersplash themselves, get out with their own trousers soaked and walk off down the duck- boarding with the feeling that they had over- come the supreme challenge of the elements, swaggering away triumphant and invigorated to go and throw balls into a bucket to win a six-foot pink dog.
This is probably what is ultimately so stimu- lating about the rather more elaborate - ride provided by New York Airways, by helicopter, from the roof of the Pan-American Building in the middle of New York to J. .E Kennedy Airport. As it also displays the North American flair for the dynamic slamming of passengers from one point to another like whisky glasses along the top of a Wild West bar, the com- posite effect is very satisfactory. The express lift in the Pan-American Building is already a ride in itself, hurtling silently up the shaft in one ear-popping swoop, and with the indicator lights only fluttering up through the last few seconds to ring the bell at the fifty-seventh floor. But the authentic ride sensation doesn't begin until you're up another aluminium escalator and in the departure lounge.
Presumably with the whimsical intention of creating a last-minute illusion of security, the room is furnished in the style of an Olde' English Tea Shoppe, with round-backed wooden chairs and big round reassuring tables with red check table cloths on them. From the windows there is little sensation of height: for one thing they are near the ceiling, and for another they are buttressed on either side with reassuring concrete slabs: the steep buildings below seem more like a panoramic painting on the wall of an underground restaurant, scenic and un- magnetic. Then there is the distant putter of the helicopter, the flight is announced by the Tea Shoppe proprietress sitting at a desk in the corner, a click, and a dull hum as she turns on the one-way silver escalator to the root From the glass-encased waiting room just below the level of the rooftop it is possible, as at the Dugout Splash, to watch the last stages of the previous ride. The helicopter is still some way away, above the roof, and coming in with an approaching roar. There is an announcement warning new passengers that there will be a slight backward movement immediately. after take-off, the fun-seekers hitch up their coats and tet hold of their luggage, and with a great blurr of beating wings the helicopter swings dowp out of the sky, hovers on the roof, tips, and sets itself down. The door falls open, letting down the steps, a stewardess comes down bold- ing on to her hat, and an assortment. of courageously smiling passengers follow her.
Out on the roof the din is terrible and the wind from the blades batters and flaps at every- one's. clothes. Even inside the helicopter "with the door open—the wind-indicator outside in the shape of a little orange aeroplane swings and spins round in the gale—the address system is turned up to a deafening level to overcome the noise of the engine. The flight to Kennedy will be eight minutes, and the best photographs can be taken immediately after take-off. There are some short publicity questionnaires to be filled in during the flight. The sexy hostess then pulls the door up, locks it, and stands with her back to the pilot's door smiling a fixed manic smile. There is a slight sensation of unsteadiness, the engine roars, and the helicopter lifts off.
Immediately there is a vast area of summer- evening New York out beyond the edge of the roof, sunlit square buildings rising from the blue depths of- the parallel canyons of streets. The- aircraft pulls up and back, suspended on the threshing blades, and then with another accelerating roar swings out over the edge. Some buildings, skyscrapers with gleam- ing metal spires and gothic gables; are even higher than the helicopter, still shining in the evening sunlight against the clear blue sky.
Hanging among the skyscrapers, suspended on spinning blades and nothing else, the dynamic forward movement becomes very important. For a moment the note of the churning engine seems to change, the forward movement becomes less comfortably percep- tible, and the perspectives downward suddenly take on a dynamic of their own. Then the sen- sation passes, and it becomes once again a placid, static model of Manhattan, the sky- scrapers descending in broken ranks towards the dusty shadows at the other end of the island.
The rest of the glide downwards to Kennedy, the single white gull swaying out over the green river, the cars growing larger like Dinky Toys in the neat two-storey streets of painted houses beyond, the Budweiser beer placard now clearly legible on the side of a house, the silver splash of Liosepipe washing the roadway, and then the green graveyards with pillared white temples, circular gravelled paths, ornamental gates, and thousands and thousands of ordinary grave- stones following the contours of the hill, is a gentle and enjoyable anticlimax. A sudden last- minute kick, as in all the best rides, as the helicopter swings in above screaming jets moving on the runways, and, below bigger jets rumbling round the sky before landing, and then there's an effortless touchdown in front of the Pan-American Departure Building. The sexy hostess's smile relaxes, and we all -tumble dynamically out, beaming for the encourage- ment of the waiting passengers.' They told me it was much better going the other way.
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