If a regular burrito from Chipotle just isn't huge enough, you might want to give the Quesarito a try. It's the burrito of your choice wrapped in a full cheese quesadilla instead of just a flour tortilla. You'll have to ask for it though; it isn't on the regular menu.
    
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How much stuff do we really need to lead a normal life? Not as much as you might think. In 2009 I moved into a 200-square-foot cottage. The rent and location were awesome, but there was one problem: Half my stuff didn't fit in the place. So I got rid of it.
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Broken glass can be a real pain to clean up. After you've picked up the big shards, and sometimes even after you sweep, those little glass flecks continue to lurk, just waiting for some bare feet to come along.
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Dear Lifehacker,
I really need a massage, but I'm confused by the dozens of different types to choose from. What's the difference between, like, a Swedish massage, a deep tissue massage, or a Shiatsu massage? How do I know which one to pick?
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Stretching is one of those activities that seems to get picked on a lot. Sometimes we're told that we absolutely need to stretch before exercising, while other times we're told it doesn't matter. AsapSCIENCE breaks down the science of it all and shows which activities benefit from stretching and which don't.
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I have a lot of clothes, and in the dozen or so homes I've lived in, many have had very little closet space. Here is 12+ years worth of tips on how to cram your stuff into the minimal space you have. Women may benefit the most from these tips, but men might learn a thing or two!
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We like to think that Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and Stephen Colbert are secretly super best friends who sit in a treehouse and giggle about their next moves, because how else would an auction of the microwave Colbert stole from O’Reilly’s green room in 2007 be possible? Or we’re all just lucky the universe loves comedy.
Last night Colbert poked fun at O’Reilly on The Colbert Report for auctioning off his notes from an interview with President Barack Obama, an occasion Colbert calls “the interview of the decade, in that he’ll be talking about it for the next 10 years.”
The notes are signed by O’Reilly and Obama and the starting bid was $10,000. That gave Colbert his grand idea, since “everything this man touches is historic.”
“What you are looking at here is the actual microwave oven I stole from Bill O’reilly’s green room,” he explained in the segment. “I had to folks, because this carousel, technically, makes this a spin zone. That’s against the O’Reilly constitution.”
Colbert was going to take a cue from O’Reilly and start the bidding at $10,000 for the “most historically important journalistic microwave since 1977′s Defrost/Nixon” but then he realized after a little research that most 6-year-old microwaves go for around $40. Since O’Reilly used it himself, Colbert adds, “we will start the bidding at $43.”
It’s signed by Colbert and O’Reilly — “if he signs it.” All proceeds will go to the Yellow Ribbon fund, a charity that helps military families.
The description on eBay reads:
“Nation, don’t miss your chance to bid on what one day historians will say I said was history; the microwave I stole from Bill O’Reilly when I appeared on his show in 2007. Not only has it been an iconic piece of my set for seven years, but it is the last known remaining spin zone from the O’Reilly Factor, and it can microwave the heck out of a frozen burrito. It is also signed by yours truly, and one hopes by Papa Bear himself. Bid now, bid often, and bid big, because who knows what other celebrities will sign it, or not. One of a kind.”
As of this afternoon, the top bid on the microwave was at $85,400. O’Reilly’s Obama interview notes are currently going for $30,000.
We just aren’t adventurous enough to even give this product a try. It scares us. We’ll stick to variations on grilled cheeses. One man who is adventurous enough to brush his teeth with chocolate is Kevin of The Impulsive Buy. He went to CVS and picked up this adventure in a tube so we wouldn’t have to.
Let’s be accurate: the product is called Mint Chocolate Trek. Trek? As you might expect, it tastes like mint chocolate chip ice cream. But not good mint chocolate chip ice cream, notes Kevin. “It smells like what mint chocolate chip ice cream smells like in my memory, like some Willy Wonka monstrosity,” he writes. That’s a frightening thought.
He can’t get past the chocolate grit in the paste, though. It tastes too much like food without being actual food. “My instincts say to consume some cookies, but my brain reminds me to eject it, resulting in feeling both teased and unsatisfied,” he wrote. It sounds like the toothpaste is tasty enough, but a profoundly confusing experience. Also, the chocolate tastes and feels a little bit like Oreo grit.
The main question about this product is, who is it for? It’s very pricey, costing $5.49 for a 4.5 ounce tube. Maybe it’s intended for perpetual adolescents in their thirties who earn grown-up money but only pretend to have grown-up tastes?
REVIEW: Crest Be Adventurous Mint Chocolate Trek Toothpaste [The Impulsive Buy]
Follow Laura on Twitter or on Facebook if you’re into that kind of thing.
The man tells the South Jersey Times that the previous $800 bill had originally been flagged by the city for investigation. The city later determined that the amount, even though it was four times higher than the bills had been for this property in the past, was accurate.
Three months later, the property owner gets his next quarterly bill. This one is 95 times the size of the last bill — $76,052.40.
The homeowner says he had been paying around $1,000/year for water service to this property, meaning he is being charged for 76 years’ worth of water in only three months.
“I’ve been telling them there’s something wrong, and they’ve been telling me no,” he explains to the Times. “Well, there’s definitely something wrong now. I don’t think you can dispute this one.”
It’s possible this is a computer glitch, a meter issue, or a massive leak that has yet to make itself apparent. These are all things that one would think the city would want to figure out and resolve ASAP. Sadly, our experience with covering these sort of water billing mistakes is that the city or utility company will drag its feet and become incredibly defensive.
For example, there was this Atlanta resident in 2012 whose monthly water bill started climbing up from less than $100 to $500 to $758 to more than $1,100. The city sent out a leak-detection expert who found nothing, but her bill suddenly dropped back to $175… before being hit with a new $6,700 bill a month later. All the while, the city insisted that everything with her meter was fine and that it would take weeks, maybe months to work through the process of determining whether this was an error or if she was secretly operating a Sea World in her basement.
Then there was the NYC resident whose bill skyrocketed from $62 to $1,400 after the city installed a new meter. Rather than come out and check on this obvious mistake made by its own employees (or a manufacturer’s equipment error), they wanted to charge the homeowner $180 just to have her case reviewed.
And last year, a California woman was billed for $2,700 worth of water, nearly 50 times larger than her average monthly bill. Even after the local media caught onto her story, the city would only knock her bill down to around $500.
You can now follow Chris on Twitter: @themorrancave
You think bowling alley employees are there just to spray shoes and come running when you start shrieking that a pin is stuck? Well, maybe most of the time, but one worker in Wisconsin added “lifesaver” to his resume after rescuing a toddler who was stuck in the pin resetting mechanism.
A 23-year-old student and employee at a bowling alley in Eau Claire, Wisc. (shoutout to my little bro’s alma mater, what what) was about to leave after finishing up his shift, reports The Leader-Telegram, when he heard people shouting.
A young boy had wandered down a lane to check out the pins and apparently no one saw him. He triggered a laser that sets the reset mechanism in motion, as it would when a ball passes by. A mechanical arm dropped down and pulled the boy into a pit behind the lane, along with downed pins, while a pin setter descended to collect the pins still standing.
The worker sprinted toward the child while bystanders stopped bowling and watched in silence, one bowler said.
“Everyone had stopped bowling,” a witness said. “Then we saw this little guy on his hands and knees near the pin area … then the little kid was dragged into the pit, and we were watching the pin setter come down.”
“Everyone was gasping. This kid was in really serious trouble,” he added.
The employee was able to hit the kill switch to stop the machinery in time to reach the boy and try to coax him out of the pit.
“He was crying and didn’t want to move, but it didn’t look like he’d been hurt,” he explained. “I slid him towards me on his belly a little bit,” he said.
It’s a good thing the employee was slim, he says, as his narrow build helped him work around the machinery and pull the boy free. The boy’s family was grateful, he says, as one would be if their child had almost been swallowed by a pin machine.
“They did say, ‘Thank you. We’re sorry about that,’ ” the worker said. That better have been an effusive thank you, because you did a good thing, young sir. Nay, a great thing.
You can follow MBQ on Twitter if you’re a fan of tweets about her cat: @marybethquirk<
Bowling alley worker rescues toddler from pin machinery [The Leader-Telegram]
This is someone else’s non-urban igloo, and we have no idea if they used kitty litter buckets but you get the idea. (Keltose)
Just because you’re not an Eskimo doesn’t mean you can’t build your own igloo, which is basically the best snow fort ever. All you need is a space to build it, lots of snow, 150 snow bricks and your own roasty-toasty body heat to keep it insulated and warm, notes Modern Farmer.
Modern Farmer spoke with an urban igloo enthusiast who, as it goes with enthusiasts, knows all about building these things.
“Traditional igloos are built with already compressed and packed snow; the kind of rock hard snow that snow plows love to encase your car in,” he says. But you can do it with loose snow, too.
1. Pick a spot: You’ll need somewhere big enough to set up your igloo, so either a nice yard or a park. Draw a circle in the snow about 7 feet wide, or as big as it needs to be for two adults to stand together in. Because everyone knows igloos are more fun with friends.
2. Commit to making 150 snow bricks: Well-packed bricks of snow are a must. Use a sturdy square bucket, like an empty (and washed out) 35-pound cat litter container. Fill it with snow, making sure to pack it tightly as you go. Turn the bucket upside down and bang the side to free the snow. It’s important to let each brick rest for 10-30 minutes so it won’t crumble when you start to build.
“You will be tempted to start building your igloo right away, but you need to resist that temptation,” warns the urban igloo enthusiast. “An igloo with a weak foundation will just not work.”
3. Start building the igloo’s main body: Lay the bricks down along the circle you so helpfully drew for yourself. To make sure it’s stable, keep it circling in on itself, unlike a brick house. Bricks should be as tightly spaced as you can get them, and then fill in the cracks with loose snow to make the rings level. You’ll need to tilt the blocks slightly inward to create that dome shape.
4. Cap it: Frozen blocks will need to be cut with a serrated knife or similar to fit the curve of the igloo. Enlist your tallest friend to top it all off with a single block on top. Thank him/her for being so tall and helpful.
5. Make an entryway: Igloos are much better when you can get inside them, so use a snow saw if you have it, or a serrated knife because you probably don’t, to cut out a doorway that’s big enough for you to crawl through it. This step must be last or your igloo risks being unstable.
6. Brag to all your friends and take selfies inside the igloo: I added this step myself because it’s totally what I’d do once I finished building an urban igloo. While holding a cup of hot cocoa, obviously.
You can follow MBQ on Twitter if you want to find out if she ever builds an igloo or just talks a big talk: @marybethquirk
How to Build an Urban Igloo [Modern Farmer]
The new options available to Facebook users who do not identify as strictly male or female.
“[W]e want you to feel comfortable being your true, authentic self,” writes the website on its own Diversity page. “An important part of this is the expression of gender, especially when it extends beyond the definitions of just ‘male’ or ‘female.’”
Facebook, in collaboration with Network of Support, has added an extensive list of new options for users to describe themselves.
Clicking on the “Update Info” button on your Facebook profile page brings up the gender options. When users select “Custom,” they can choose from any of the following: agender, androgyne, androgynous, male to female, pangender, trans, trans female, trans male, trans man, trans person.
Though you can type whatever description you want into the custom gender field, only the above-listed options will be accepted at this time.
Users can also choose which gender pronouns — he/she/they — should be used to reference them in the future.
Because some people may not want everyone in the world to be privy to their gender identity, Facebook allows each user to control the audience with whom they want to share their custom gender.
“We recognize that some people face challenges sharing their true gender identity with others, and this setting gives people the ability to express themselves in an authentic way,” explains the site.
You can now follow Chris on Twitter: @themorrancave
(Eva_Deht)
As the Cleveland.com reports, the bill banning the sale of e-cigarettes to minors succeeded in the Ohio state Senate this week, after passing the House in November. If the governor signs the bill into law, Ohio will become the first state to pass legislation restricting e-cigarette sales. (New York City regulates where they can be smoked, but not to whom they can be sold, and Los Angeles is considering a city-level sales restriction.)
The bill adds a provision for “alternative nicotine products” to Ohio’s restrictions on the sale of tobacco to minors. It forbids anyone under eighteen years of age, unless accompanied by an adult parent, spouse, or guardian, from purchasing, ordering, using, consuming, or possessing “cigarettes, other tobacco products, alternative nicotine products, or papers used to roll cigarettes.” The penalty for selling e-cigarettes to minors would be $1000 per violation.
The bill–supported by the Lorillard Tobacco Company, among others–met with opposition from the American Lung Association and American Cancer Society because of the new legal categories created for alternative nicotine products and electronic cigarettes. The new product category isn’t taxed at the same deliberately discouraging rate as tobacco products, and advocacy groups argue that encourages the use of e-cigs.
E-cigarettes are still somewhat of an unknown quantity as a nicotine-delivery product, but some have proven to be unsafe in other ways–namely, by exploding.
Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine was one of the attorneys general from 40 different states and territories that co-signed a letter asking the FDA to regulate e-cigarette sales at a federal level last year.
Bill to ban electronic cigarette sales to youth: How they voted [Cleveland.com]
Maybe your planned flower delivery is delayed. Maybe the nasty weather has you stranded at home and unable to head outside to shop for gifts to mark the holiday. Or maybe you have a package of bacon and some toothpicks sitting around the house and some time to kill. It doesn’t matter. You don’t need a justification to make bacon roses. You don’t even need a holiday.
Foodbeast and Popsugar teamed up to make this video guide. They also have a recipe page, but there are very few ingredients here. Just bacon, chocolate, and maybe a dollar-store plastic rose to steal the stems from.
How to Make Chocolate-Dipped Bacon Roses, Because ‘Murica [Foodbeast]
If there’s a disgraced hockey team from days of yore that were lost and wandering in a cornfield for eternity, or maybe a pair of figure skaters who threw their performance and are doomed to regret it in the afterlife, they’ll be happy to know there’s a place for them to go, a la Field of Dreams: A farmer in Minnesota (because of course) has built his own ice skating rink in the middle of his land.
This isn’t just a field flooded with water that’s frozen over, reports CBS Minnesota. Nope — it’s the real, $20,000 deal. The farmer paid a hefty sum to set up the rink with professional boards, glass and lights, and do it up right. And it’s totally worth it, he says.
“Needed a place to skate other than the rink in town. Needed a little more ice time, so we thought ‘Why not get some buddies together and build our own rink?’” he explained. He figured if he built it, they would come.
And while he hasn’t said if any athletic ghosts have ventured onto the ice, it’s paying off — this way he doesn’t have to pay $100 for ice time, and eventually he hopes to start hosting hockey leagues.
“Got about five of us together and it took us about 20 hours because we didn’t know what we were doing,” he said. “It’s our rookie season, but next year we will have it done in about five or six hours.”
He wanted to save his friends and family money and give them much needed ice time (because again, this is Minnesota, so, hockey).
“We work on a bunch of stuff like stick handling and stuff like that,” the farmer’s son says.
The warming house? A pole barn. Time to clean the ice? He attaches a broom to his bobcat (machine, not feline) and his Zamboni is a PVC pipe attached to a hose.
It can get too cold to skate after dark, but the neighbors say the weather hasn’t kept the kids away.
“The kids love it. You have to keep an eye on them to make sure they are still the right color and not frozen,” one neighbor says.
Don’t worry too much, folks. We Northern folks have an extra layer under our skin to keep us warm in the winter. At least that’s what Wisconsinites learn growing up.
Follow MBQ on Twitter if you don’t mind hear overbearing love of Aaron Rodgers: @marybethquirk
If You Build A $20K Ice Rink On A Farm, They Will Come [CBS Minnesota]
The grilled cheese feast commences.
Odds are many of you out there in this vast country of ours are looking out the window and seeing a snowy/sleety/icy/otherwise yucky wintry landscape. What’s better than a warm, gooey grilled cheese on a day like today? Maybe a grilled cheese fried not in butter or olive oil, as you might be accustomed to, but in (drumroll, please)… mayonnaise.
That’s right, I said mayo. Well, I wrote it, but you’ve picked up what I’m putting down. Perhaps you’re thinking, “Mayo is the grossest, you crazy person,” or maybe it’s more along the lines of, “Why have I never thought of this before?” We here at Consumerist HQ hadn’t heard of it until one day when we did, so yours truly gathered up some brave pals and some basic ingredients and went to it.
THE SET-UP
I gathered five friends together with promises of free cheese (and also tomato soup because come on, necessary) and prepared a blind taste test. Each plate was marked with simply A, B or C, and only me and my trusty photographer knew which was cooked in what. All grilled cheeses were cooked in pans that varied in size but were otherwise identical in their makeup/coating, all at a little over medium heat.
THE INGREDIENTS
I decided to go the classic route and use American cheese singles and white bread for four out of five friends to maintain consistency in general taste, cooking time, heat, etc. One friend brought his own wheat bread and white cheddar because he grew up with hippies.
Then of course there was mayo, salted butter and extra virgin olive oil, just for funsies and because some people like using it. Note that I have no brand preferences, I just grabbed whatever was at the store.
COOKING OBSERVATIONS
This is what it looks like when you have mayo on bread and it’s grilling.
As the master griller, I clearly could not be blind while cooking. That’s just irresponsible. Here’s what I came away with.
Butter: I made sure to soften the butter for easy spreading. These took a bit longer to achieve a nice, even brownness, but if you’ve ever made a grilled cheese this way, you’ll know there are no surprises.
Mayo: Super easy to spread on the outsides of the bread (not the inside where the cheese is, because gross), and I only used a thin layer because I’m not a huge fan of condiments in general. It cooked quickly, but not the “Oh my god I can’t control this, it’s already burning!” quickly. The result was a nice, even browning that had a bit of crunch to it, similar to the crust on French toast.
Olive oil: This tends to burn faster, as it has a low smoke point due to its flavoredness. The bread also sucks up the oil quickly, making it harder to get an even coating on each side. It was my least favorite to cook.
THE RESULTS
Each participant had a feedback form to fill out their reactions and vote for their favorite grilled cheeses. Then everyone basically chowed down and stuffed their faces with cheese and soup — wine is optional but was a delightful addition to an already delightful day.
KEY
A = Butter
B = Mayo
C= Olive Oil
Tim: A. Better than C — creamy and delicious. This is the grilled cheese for me. B. Different — tangy but you know, I kind of like it. C. Classic, what I’d expect. Real meat and potatoes without the meat and… you know the rest.
Liz: A. Winner B. Least favorite C. Boring Overall: Never make a grilled cheese with B AGAIN.
Katy: (Full disclosure, she took pics during the process so wasn’t blind testing but her opinion is still valid and awesome) A. Has the richest flavor B. Has a mayo-y flavor which I don’t like C. Is the most bread/cheese taste, favorite overall.
Luke: A. Greasiest, light color B. Crisp, not soggy, tangy C. Dry, darkest
Jim: A, C, B in that order.
MBQ (again, clearly I was not blind): A. Always delicious, no qualms there. B. Surprisingly good, didn’t detect any noticeable mayo flavor, favorite C. Dry, a bit charred because I burned it.
THE WINNER
Although mayo made a good showing, the strongest preference in the group was still for butter. But because I’m the one writing this post and mayo was my favorite, I will tell you that it was delicious and I highly recommend it, even if you normally despise mayo as a sandwich add-on. It could be good for when you don’t want to soften butter, due to its easy spreadability. Go on, try it. You can trust me, and you can trust cheese.
A very special thank you from the entire team, taste testers and photographer Katy! Also to friend Casey who wanted badly to be there but was too sick to eat cheese, the poor thing.
You can follow MBQ on Twitter if you don’t mind Tweets about cheese often: @marybethquirk
The recall comes after reports of five frontal impact crashes and six fatalities related to ignition switch failure in the 2005 to 2007 Chevrolet Cobalts and 2007 Pontiac G5s, The Detroit News reports. Both the models are discontinued.
The ignition switch may fail by switching out of the run position if a key rink is carrying added weight, the vehicle goes off road or experiences some other jarring event, GM reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Additionally, the timing of the movement from the run position could interfere with the sensing algorithm resulting in airbags not deploying in a crash.
Officials with GM say they are aware of 17 additional crashes involving frontal impact and non-fatal injuries where the airbags did not deploy.
“All of these crashes occurred off road and at high speeds, where the probability of serious or fatal injuries was high regardless of airbag deployment. In addition, failure to wear seat belts and alcohol use were factors in some of these cases,” Alan Adler, GM spokesman, says.
In all, GM is recalling 619,122 Cobalts and G5s’ in the United States, as well as 53,310 vehicles in Canada and 6,130 in Mexico.
Owners of the two cars are urged to take non-essential items off their key ring and visit a dealer to have the ignition switch replaced.
Last summer, GM recalled 7,000 vehicles and the NHTSA investigated an addition 400,000 vehicles for airbag problems.
GM recalling 778K vehicles to replace ignition switches after fatal crashes [The Detroit News]
The streets covered in snow and ice aren’t the only changed landscape many of us woke up to this morning. As we learned overnight, Comcast has reached a $45 billion dollar deal to purchase Time Warner Cable.
The companies themselves are confident that federal regulators will allow the deal to move forward. Comcast said in their press release that in order to “reduce competitive concerns,” they’d make sure to shed 3 million subscribers while they picked up Time Warner’s 11 million, bringing them to a total of roughly 30 million nationwide. And in their investor call, Comcast executives said, “We believe this transaction is approvable. It is pro-consumer, pro-competitive, and strongly in the public interest.”
While it’s true that Time Warner and Comcast do not currently operate in the same markets, there are still plenty of genuine “competitive concerns” to be had. A business analyst speaking with Bloomberg made it clear just how big this deal is for Comcast: “This leaves Comcast as the sole king of the cable hill, with John Malone and Charter hitting a brick wall in their hopes of becoming a close No. 2. This is a game changer for Comcast.”
A game changer not just for Comcast, but also for consumers. What’s good for the cable behemoth can be a very bad deal indeed for the rest of us. Time and time again we see that a lack of competition makes service and prices worse for consumers, while access to options makes things better. When the possibility of a merger rose back in January, law expert Susan Crawford wrote, “If merger and acquisitions activity in the telecommunications realm had a soundtrack, this moment would be accompanied by the menacing bass rumble of Jaws.”
Now it seems we’re up to the part where all the brass and percussion jump in. As the LA Times bluntly puts it, “There’s no way this combination can conceivably be in the public interest.”
Consumer advocacy groups agree. Consumers Union announced its opposition to the merger, with Delara Derakhshani, policy counsel for Consumers Union, saying, “Under this proposed deal, two huge companies would become a behemoth. This has the potential to be a very bad deal for consumers.” She added:
This industry is notoriously unpopular with consumers due to poor customer service, not to mention ever-increasing bills, and a deal this size doesn’t exactly convince us that things will get better. It’s hard to understand how this kind of concentrated market power, which would account for almost three-quarters of the cable industry, is going to benefit consumers. It raises several red flags about the power and influence that one company would have on the marketplace, and the impact it would have on your wallet and the choices you get. We’re counting on regulators to take a very hard look at what this enormous merger would do to competition, customer service, and bills that continue to climb year after year.
Other organizations are also strongly against the merger. John Bergmayer, senior staff attorney for Public Knowledge, said in a statement, “Comcast cannot be allowed to purchase Time Warner Cable. Antitrust authorities and the FCC must stop it. If Comcast takes over Time Warner Cable, it would wield unprecedented gatekeeper power in several important markets.” Bergmayer added:
[Comcast] is already the nation’s largest ISP, the nation’s largest video provider, and the nation’s largest home phone provider. It also controls a movie studio, broadcast network, and many popular cable channels. An enlarged Comcast would be the bully in the schoolyard, able to dictate terms to content creators, Internet companies, other communications networks that must interconnect with it, and distributors who must access its content. By raising the costs of its rivals and business partners, an enlarged Comcast would raise costs for consumers, who ultimately pay the bills.
Free Press president and CEO Craig Aaron echoed the statement, saying, “No one woke up this morning wishing their cable company was bigger or had more control over what they could watch or download. But that — along with higher bills — is the reality they’ll face tomorrow unless the Department of Justice and the FCC do their jobs and block this merger. Stopping this kind of deal is exactly why we have antitrust laws.”
So is a Comcast-Time Warner cable behemoth likely to be halted in its tracks by the Justice Department or the FCC? It’s hard to tell just yet. Comcast is clearly girding for battle, trying to rebuff anti-trust pushback right out of the gate.
Current FCC chairman Tom Wheeler spoke just this Monday about “the primacy of competition, competition, competition” as it related to net neutrality, and he reiterated the FCC’s commitment to “securing the public interest.” Those could yet turn out to be fighting words.
From film and TV content, to distribution, to cable, to phone and internet service, Comcast is reaching for vertical and horizontal integration on a scale the 20th century could barely even dream of. The silver lining? At least it makes for great jokes.
It’s one thing — albeit a potentially terrifying thing — to be stuck on a roller coaster at any height for any length of time in even the best of weather. But when you’re strapped in at 60 feet during a chilly downpour for more than an hour, well that just sounds like the suckiest of awfully bad experiences.
Rescue workers were called in to help 16 people stuck on Busch Gardens’ newest coaster, the Cheetah Hunt ride, and it wasn’t an easy task.
“They were at an angle probably 30 degrees, so just unbuckling them caused anxiety for both the passengers and our people, but (we) were able to put a nice harness on them, get them into the buckets, and lower them down to the ground,” the Tampa Fire special operations chief told USA Today (warning: link has auto-play video).
The conditions didn’t make it any easier, as heavy rains poured down on the heads of what we can only imagine must’ve been some pretty miserable people.
No one was hurt during the ordeal, despite enduring the cold, soaking rain for more than an hour.
“They walked away under their own power and they are at a hospitality place within Busch Gardens,” said a Tampa Fire Rescue information officer last night.
Busch Gardens has engineers working now to figure out what caused the ride to malfunction, and it’ll stay closed until the investigation is through.
6 rescued from stuck roller coaster in Florida [USA Today]
Good news if you like to laugh at people stuffing frozen meat and seafood down their pants! It turns out that the suspect in Tuesday’s steak-and-lobster-down-pants incident may not have carjacked and kidnapped an older man and a teenage girl. That’s what witnesses thought they saw, prompting an Amber Alert on the vehicle, but no one has reported anyone matching that description missing.
Police were able to identify the driver, and now have a suspect in custody after people in the neighborhood recognized the man featured on surveillance video from inside the store.
Sure, the situation wasn’t really the urgent kidnapping of a teenage girl. Police decided to put out an alert based on the information that they had, and witness accounts made it sound like the suspect threatened strangers at knifepoint and forced them to drive away. “We have to treat it as a carjacking and kidnapping. We would be negligent if we did not,” a police spokesperson pointed out.
Prince William County community calendar, Feb. 13 to 19, 2014 Washington Post Thursday, Feb. 13. County student art exhibit, works by elementary, middle and high school students from the central area of the county. 7 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays through March 14, Edward L. Kelly Leadership Center, 14715 Bristow Rd., Manassas. Free. School Closings, Delay Info for Manassas Area SchoolsPatch.com all 13 news articles » |
Fairfax County Animal Watch Washington Post FAIRFAX COUNTY. No incidents were reported by the Animal Control Division of the Fairfax County Police Department. For information, call 703-246-2253. Bahraini girls, with their faces painted in national colors, participate in a march for ... |
Prince William County crime report Washington Post Prince William County. These were among incidents reported by Prince William County police. For information, call 703-792-7245. NEW BRIGHTON, UNITED KINGDOM - FEBRUARY 12: A miniature sandstorm whipped up unusually high ... and more » |
