I'm not wild about amusement park rides. They're usually fine, and sometimes great. I just don't go out of my way to go on them.

Part of the Bray Summer Fest is a collection of pretty good sized carnival rides. Since I was in Ireland, and since I know I normally dodge rides designed for amusement, I decided to try out the Cyclone Twister, or whatever it was called. Picture the Tea Cups. Raise them up about ten feet in the air. When the whole thing is spinning pretty good, have the floor holding all the tea cups start to tilt until it's pretty much sideways. It's a spinny ride.

That night I couldn't find my cell phone -- a really new LG thing that took decent pictures. I mentioned to Jack that it probably shot off while on that ride, and he assured me that the way centrifugul force works, the cell phone wouldn't go anywhere -- only back into its own seat. I went back to the ride and looked around for it. Nothing other than about 60 Euro cents anywhere near.

Two days later, much of our group was walking past the same ride and a few decided to go for it. I warned a couple of the high school Irish kids to be careful about putting their cell phones in their front jeans pockets. In hindsight, the flip-down guard harness was digging into my thighs the whole ride. It must have squirted my phone out like a watermelon seed.

Sure enough, one of the high school boys couldn't find his phone after the ride. We all started looking around -- I could again look for my phone under the pretense I was looking for his... We pretty much gave up and were staning around discussing dinner options when I suddenly felt the urge to duck.

After standing back up and feeling a little silly, I saw what I saw: someone else's cell phone had shot off the ride -- from about 20 yards away -- and had narrowly missed smacking me in the face. I might be without a cell phone for a while. And I'm definitely steering clear of tea-cup-like rides for a while...