My first time was incredible. It was the most amazing sensation ever to pass over my being. I'll never forget it. I have the Magnum XL 200 to thank for it. I was ten years old.

Before your dirty mind rambles further...

The Magnum XL 200 was the biggest, fastest, steepest, non-looping metal roller coaster in the world when I was ten. We found it at Cedar Point Park in Sandusky, Ohio after stumbling on this gem of a roller coaster park in a AAA book on our way home from visiting family in Illinois.

"It sounds cool, let's check it out," we agreed.

And when we first laid eyes on that towering beauty in red steel, all of our mouths fell open. The tallest and fastest roller coaster any of us had ever been on prior to that were mickey-mouse coasters that rarely topped 150 feet and speeds of 60 mph. The Magnum was a whopping 205 feet and 72 mph.

All four-foot-three of me was in line for that ride literally three seconds after we entered the park. Two of my uncles and my father joined me in line, leaving my the rest of my family, including my grandparents, to wander off to Berenstein Bear Land to keep themselves occuppied.

We wound our way through the queue in about an hour and boarded the train sweating and visibly nervous. This mother was huge...

I was just tall enough to meet the height requirement, but my father insisted that he keep his arm across my lap bar anyway through the entire ride...lest my smallish frame start to slide out of the seat. My uncles rode in front of us. The train jerked out of the station, around a sharp bend and immediately up the enourmous first hill of the ride.

Click, click, click was all we heard for an eternity, as the train slowly made its way skyward. Just when we thought we were about to peak the crest, one of us would look over the side and see that we still had a hundred feet of climbing to do. That little shock hit us more than once during our ascent.

I remember nothing about the instant that our car crested the hill, except that all I could see was Lake Erie. Nothing but the lake, splayed out before me. And the butterflies in my stomach going wild...

My uncles and father inform me that things transpired a bit differently than my memory recalls. Apparently as we reached the top and that moment of "why the f--- did we want to ride this???" I screamed out, "OH SHIT!" at the top of my ten-year-old lungs. I got it out completely and in full earshot of everyone else on the train before the force of the downward flight of the coaster stole the air from my lungs.

There is no other way to say it but to hammer again how incredible a feeling that ride was. I was soaring. A feeling I would live and die for...

That first ride is legendary. We tell the tale of our awe and fear at the dinner table of family gatherings even today.

Since then, I've been on the Dragster, a relatively new Cedar Point coaster more than twice the size of the Magnum (420 ft) and nearly 40 mph faster...if you ever want to imitate the odd esctasy of the sensation of plummeting straight to the ground head-first, I heartily recommend this ride (and I can't f-ing wait for Jersey's new world-record topper this summer)...but still, the Magnum and my first time on a hyper coaster has a special place in my heart.

The telling of that tale officially inagurates the coaster-riding season for me. And it is that time of year to invoke the age-old debate: when it comes to the ride...FRONT OR BACK?

If you believe that the front is the one and only way to ride the roller coaster--I am sorry for you. I used to declare that I would cease any and all conversation with a front-rider, but in my old age, I've become more tolerant. That does not, however, mean that I will relent on my standards.

BACK OR BUST!!!