This is as close to a ferris wheel you will catch me. This one is a beauty, it sits at Navy Pier in Chicago and I’m sure you get a spectacular view from the top, but I will never know. My fear for ferris wheels has a very specific memory and it’s the reason I will never step foot on a ferris wheel ever again.

When I was around 10 or 11 my mom took part in driving a church youth group to “Santa’s Village,” an amusement park now closed that was located in East Dundee, Illinois . Since mom was driving I got to tag along and hang with the big kids. I was cool like that. Sometime during the course of the day a bunch of our group was on the Ferris wheel and I was next in line with one of the adults ( I was a little nervous about riding it so he offered to take me on). As we were waiting in line there was this horrible sounding snap, and the next thing I remember I was picking myself up from about 5 feet from where I had been standing. I had been pushed out of the way of the band that snapped from the wheel, if I hadn’t been this huge band would have hit me and my riding partner with what could have been very serious or even fatal results.  But the drama wasn’t over, a bunch of our kids were on that now out of control Ferris wheel, it took hours and many men to control the wheel and get the riders off, alternating from one side to another to keep the weight even. Experiencing this so many years ago that queasy feeling I get when I see a Ferris wheel is like it happened last week. I don’t see riding a Ferris wheel anytime in my future, but I’ll be happy to shoot them!