The sensation of falling is short-lived. After a half-second, deceleration rails on either side of the slide slow you Henry had installed them because he feared the rafts were going down Verrückt too quickly. For a tender half-second, I got that cradled-in-Gods-loving-arms feeling. Then the brakes released that He-hath-forsaken-us feeling and we covered the remaining distance at a speed somewhere between 40 and 45 mph.
The g-forces kicked in and the world became indistinct. The raft reached the bottom of the initial drop and Henrys nozzle-drive system kicked in, launching us uphill five stories, higher than any Master Blaster had lifted a raft before. At the apex, the raft lifted off the slide a few inches. We slammed back into the flume, descended a final hill, and came to a stop in a water-filled runout not unlike the first water brake Henry built at Camp Landa in the 60s. The final sensation of Verrückt bolstered Henrys claim that the slide was erotic. I got that postcoital, now-what-should-I-do? feeling. I unbuckled the straps and limped off through the runout. Then I heard the water tank inside Verrückt depressurize, and it was as if the whole slide had let out a magnificent sigh.
