Robert Forto

#rocknroller16

Coaster Geeks Podcast Launch

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Join Robert and Michele Forto as they launch their brand new podcast, Coaster Geeks. This fun show is about their travels across the country searching out some of the best coasters.

On each episode you will hear about their travels, their favorite coasters, food at the park, attractions, special events, and more. This project has been talked about since they took their first tour, what they call the Rock n Roller tour, each summer where they hit up rock concerts and ride coasters.

To date, they have ridden more than 350 coasters and been to more than 30 theme parks. Next year, the #rocknroller19 tour will start in August when they visit Florida.

The Coaster Geeks envisions more than just a podcast. They want to do live feeds on social media and more.

Follow the Coaster Geeks on social media

Coaster Geeks on Facebook

Coaster Geeks on Twitter: @coastergeekspod

Coaster Geeks on Instagram: @coastergeekspod

Search the hashtags on social media: #rocknroller16 #rocknroller17 #rocknroller18 #rocknroller19

Please check out the first episode here:

Rock n Roller 16: Wild Waves and Enchanted Village

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We would visit one last theme park on our Rock n Roller 16 coaster tour of America. It would be Wild Waves and Enchanted Village just outside of Seattle. It is the only theme park in the Pacific Northwest and one that we had to visit for sure. Both Michele and I are members of the America Coasters Enthusiasts club. Yep, a club for coaster geeks, and this was technically our ‘home park’ since we reside in the Northwest Region. We would be meeting new friends, Lisa and Ed at the park. They are also ACE members and Lisa is the representative for our region.

Lisa and Ed scored us free tickets and we met in the parking lot. It was a beautiful day and the park was full. We immediately headed to the back of the park and rode the Timberhawk Ride of Prey roller coaster! It is the largest wooden roller coaster in Washington State. and it was a great ride. We ended up riding it three times. Twice in the front and once in the back.

We then headed over to the Klondike Gold Rusher. Michele and I rode in one car and Ed rode in another. Remember how I said earlier in the tour that people sometimes “pad” their coaster total? Well, this is one way to do it and I guess we are guilty. It was set up sort of like the old Mighty Mouse-type coasters where your train car goes one way and the track goes the other around then turns. These types of coasters are always fun for us, Michele laughs the whole time and makes silly sounds!

We next headed over to Wild Thing. This is an older coaster built by Arrow and dates back to 1984 when it opened at Rocky Point amusement park. It was sold at an auction in 1996 and moved to Wild Waves & Enchanted Village a year later. We waited forever! Lisa and Ed decided to sit this one out as well but even with the long wait it was worth it because you get to go twice!

From the Wild Waves website:

The Wild Thing with its loop-de-loop and two corkscrews is guaranteed to raise your heart rate. As if one trip around wasn’t enough … The Wild Thing goes around twice. “When you go upside down, keep your eyes open and look straight ahead, so you don’t get dizzy,” advises our big kid reviewer. The Disk’O Flashback won’t remind you of John Travolta or the Bee Gees, but it may make you dizzy as it spins on its half-pipe track.

We ended the day riding the carrousel. This is an old one, from 1906. Michele and I love riding old carousels. One of our favorites was on this tour at Six Flags America near Chicago. Our rabid readers will remember seeing the picture of this one, a double decker that we rode on the top!

It was a great day at the park and great to meet new friends, Ed and Lisa. we promised to keep in touch and if we are ever in the area to look them up and head to the park together.

Coasters to date on the tour: 98

Do you like what you are reading? Want to see more? use the hashtag #rocknroller16 on social media and you can see pics on Instagram, tweets on Twitter and our daily trials and tribulations on Facebook.

 

 

Rock n Roller 16: You’re in the Jungle, Baby!

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I met up with Michele in Seattle on Friday morning for the last leg of our epic rock n roller 16 coaster tour of America. We would have one more weekend together before we head home to the bee business, dog training and our next semester at school at UAA. This leg of the tour will include the ‘Rock” portion of it in a huge way! Early in the spring one of our favorite bands of all time, Gun’s n Roses announced a tour. I jumped online as quick as I possibly could and bought tickets. We got awesome seats in the first section from the floor directly in front of the stage just about 300 feet away.

We spent Friday hanging out and shopping. Living in Alaska you quickly realize how much you miss the things that everyone else takes for granted with all of the stores and shopping. Michele and I love to window shop and stock up on things that you can’t find up north. We had dinner at The Crab Pot. This place was amazing! They deliver you a huge portion of seafood in well, a pot, as you sit along the water. We dove in and got our hands super greasy but loved every minute of it.

Saturday was the concert at Century Link Field. It is the home to the Seattle Seahawks and a beautiful stadium that is known as one of the loudest in the NFL and if it was half as good for concerts as it is for football we are in for a real treat. We arrived early and parked the car about 20 blocks away so we wouldn’t have to pay the outrageous 100 bucks for parking. We walked along the busy streets. This was a place I spent a lot of time in the early 90s when I was in college and in a band at the height of the grunge movement. You know, the Seattle rockers, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains? Our little band thought we would be the next big thing. Doesn’t every band?

Anyway, back to the concert, Michele and I had a couple beers at some hipster bar just outside the gates, spending way too much on appetizers and drinks. Seriously! We waited in line for the gates to open and were one of the first waves in. We found our seats. As I said, they were awesome. We waited for a while for the opening band to start playing. It was The Pink Slips. This is a band that is fronted by Duff McKagen’s daughter, Grace. Duff, if you don’t know is the father to this young lady and just a happens to be the bassist for Gun’s N Roses. Of course he would let his daughter open for his band in their home town!

The second band of the day to hit the stage is my favorite, Alice in Chains. These hometown rockers were right at home playing on their own turf. This was the second time I have seen them since they added their new frontman, William DuVall that replaced Layne Staley when he passed away in the mid-90s. DuVall has become much more of a true frontman now than when he first arrived on scene with the cd and tour for The Devil Put the Dinosaurs Here. At that time it was guitarist and founding member, Jerry Cantrell singing most of the vocals with DuVall doing back up.

This was a great show opening up for GNR. They opened with Hollow, Them Bones and a grinding rendition of Again. They ended the show with an extended version of Man in the Box with DuVall sounding excellent, Would? and Rooster to follow. We waited almost an hour for the Looney Tunes theme to start and the Not in This Lifetime tour to be really happening!

The Gunner’s brought the house to their feet and played for almost 2.5 hours. It was by far one of the best concerts I have ever seen in my life. Axl sounded great, Slash killed it, Duff and the rest of the gang were awesome. A lot of negativity was brought on about this tour and I can say they did not disappoint. Gone are the days of Axl coming in late and throwing tantrums. I guess that was all in the past. I saw GNR here in Seattle almost 25 years ago when they were touring for their Use your Illusion Tour and at that time it was a great concert with Skid Row opening the show.

They played all of their hits and a lot of their lesser known stuff as well. They opened the show with It’s So Easy and Mr. Brownstone with what seemed like 70,000 people singing along. Some of my favorites of the set were Estranged and Coma. With their huge video board in the background it seemed like it was 1985 again at the height of MTV. Later in the set they played a killer cover of Wish You Were Here with Slash starting off on a double neck guitar. There aren’t many guitarist like Slash and I would argue he is the true definition of a Guitar God. People just don’t play like that anymore on modern rock n roll. They ended the show with a raucous four song encore and closed the show with fan favorite Paradise City with everyone screaming at the top of their lungs.

The setlist for the show is here.

Michele here: some of you rabid readers may not know, Robert took me to my very first concert for my 28th birthday! My first concert was at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado with Godsmack headlining!  You see prior to Robert I didn’t get out much. I have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to concert going!  So, I missed out on GNR’s first go-round in the 80’s/90’s and I definitely missed out on seeing Layne belting it out for AIC.  I was so excited about GNR I had goosebumps. They did not disappoint. In fact, I had so much fun, I talked Robert into taking us to see them in Denver in 2017 when we hit the tour again!

What a show! After the concert we had to bop and weave through the rowdy streets to make it back to our car. We made it before the 1am cut off, otherwise we would have to come back in the morning to retrieve it.

The rest of the weekend we managed to see all we could of Seattle. We spend Sunday morning over on Bainbridge Island as we took the ferry across the sound. What a cool place. We drove around, ate a great lunch and shopped at all the cool shops including a way cool toy store. We rode the Big Wheel and saw a not-so-funny comedy show at the Hard Rock Cafe after a mediocre dinner. We walked around City Park and Michele managed to score a close parking spot and managed to squeeze in our rental from Enterprise in a wicked parallel job. We hung out at Pikes Place Market looking at old Playboys and hippie herb shops too.

Sadly the tour comes to an end but we will continue to rock on. In fact we will be back in Seattle in December to see one of the coolest bands around, The Pretty Reckless. Did you know I bought tickets to this show while I was still in Denver on this portion of the coaster tour. So, I guess the rock n roller 16 tour continues on…

We will be back on the road in the summer of 2017 visiting new theme parks and searching out some epic coasters and more concerts. I hope you will follow along.

Tomorrow: Wild Waves and Enchanted Village

Coasters to date on the tour: 92

Do you like what you are reading? Want to see more? use the hashtag #rocknroller16 on social media and you can see pics on Instagram, tweets on Twitter and our daily trials and tribulations on Facebook.

Rock n Roller 16: Atlas and Michele Heads Home, Again…

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Before Michele heads home again to work for another week at her ‘real’ job we headed up into the mountains to visit a good friend of ours, Jayne, the owner of Rocky Mountain German Shepherds. We were here to pick up a little pup, named Atlas that we are going to be training for a lady in the Anchorage area for service work.

We have done a lot of business with Rocky Mountain German Shepherds over the years. We have bought and trained at least a dozen or show dogs and trained them in everything from full fledged executive protection to service dogs for young kids with autism to PTSD service dogs for a variety of clients. RMGSD breeds some of the finest German Shepherds in North America and imports quite a few from Europe as well. If you are looking for one of the best dogs in the world, contact Jayne and tell her I sent you.

We spent some time hanging out with Jayne and catching up. It had been a couple years since we had seen each other and it was good to visit.

After our trip ‘up the hill’ we had a great meal with the in-laws and Michele got ready to fly home. Before we headed to the airport we had to make a stop at Voodoo Doughnuts. If you have never been, you have to check this place out! They have all kinds of weird concoctions for your sweet tooth.

Before Michele headed home we had a little bit of business to attend to. Do you remember way back at the start of this trip we rented the truck from Enterprise? Do you remember when I told the guy that we would just be visiting family and friends? Well, now it came time to turn this bad-boy in. We have driven close to 6300 miles on our triangle trip across America. True, we did visit a lot of family and friends along the way. That was no lie, but we took the benefit of UNLIMITED MILES to the extreme! I was just a little leery, to say the least, to turn the truck in. We usually rent from the airport and just quickly hand the keys over, take our receipt and walk away, quickly. Not this time. The clerk came outside, inspected the car and wanted to make a little small talk. The little voice in my head kept saying: “don’t look at the odometer, don’t look at the odometer!” Well, he did and didn’t even say a word. In fact, he had another renter lined up in just a few to take the truck. Whew! Can I just say, I love Enterprise rent-a-car?!

I would spend the better part of the week here in Denver. Over the next few days I would have dinner with a really good friend of mine, Russell and lunch with good friends, Ron and Leah. I would drive my father-in-law’s old Ford truck around in the sweaty 100 degree heat and visit my old stompin’ grounds. I would have an excellent meal with Kyle and play a few games of pool at the sports bar and watch the Broncos play the Chargers in a pre-season game.

We called Denver home for almost a decade. We had a lot of roots here, lots of friends and lots of memories. We opened our first dog training center here in town and we still miss living in the ‘big city.’ Things were about to change though. We always stayed at Michele’s parent’s home in Littleton when we were in town. They had just bought a home in New Mexico and were going to be moving away in October. Our oldest son, Kyle would be getting his own apartment and we would need a new place to stay when we visited. We will really miss hanging out here with Ed and Jude, and hope that things work out for the best for them down in their new home.

I would be meeting Michele in Seattle on Friday for the last leg of the Rock n Roller 16 coaster tour but as they say, we would leave some of the best things for last! Over the next few days in the Emerald City we would meet up with new friends and coaster buddies at the Northwest’s only theme park, we would hang out in the woods, eat some cool food, see a comedy show and attend one of the best concerts of my life, Guns N Roses at Century Link Field!

Tomorrow: You’re in the Jungle, Baby! 

Coasters to date on the tour: 92

Do you like what you are reading? Want to see more? use the hashtag #rocknroller16 on social media and you can see pics on Instagram, tweets on Twitter and our daily trials and tribulations on Facebook.

Rock n Roller 16: Colorado or Bust

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We were back on the road bright and early. We were only in North Texas and Amarillo for a little less than six hours but we had a long drive to make today. All the way to Denver, Littleton to be precise, to meet with Michele’s parents and to pick up a new service dog puppy.

We headed over the rivers and through the woods, at least figuratively towards the Mile High City. We stopped at a little convenience store near the New Mexico state line and found the coolest thing on the trip so far. It was a little coffee shot called, FORTO Strong Coffee. How freaking cool is that! They have a coffee shot named after us. This has got to be a sponsorship opportunity for our coaster tours, right?

As we crossed over into Colorado and down the hill from Trinidad. By the way did you know that this little town in the middle of nowhere is the home of more gender re-assignment surgeries than anywhere else in the country? Anyway, as we headed down the hill we came upon a motorcycle accident that had only happened moments ago. It was a real bad one and the second death we would see along the highway on this trip. I guess if I was into actuarial studies, my probability for being involved in, or at least seeing, a deadly accident goes up considerably the more you drive on the roads. Most people don’t drive 7000 miles in a year and we did that in less than a month on this trip.

We pulled into Colorado Springs around lunch time and decided to stop at Cracker Barrel. I hope our impromptu visit didn’t cause the eventual divorce of that dude’s wife. What was his name, Brad? We try not to stop at chain restaurants on our trips but we haven’t been to The Cracker Barrel since we moved to Alaska. It was busy. Heck, when is Cracker Barrel not busy? Even the ole’ ladies were rockin’ in those chairs out on the porch. All they needed is a guitar, some sweet tea, a boy in overalls and Andy singin’ the hits. We waited around and looked through all the bric-a-brac. This store sold everything from honey to full ensembles of ladies fashion in that country-chic motif. If we looked hard enough in the CD section we could probably find that sought after Andy Griffith Greatest Hits collection for a cool $9.95.

We finally sat down and I ordered the fish. Funny, I never have the fish. It reminds me of one of my favorite lines from the movie, Airplane with the two fellas talkin’ jive:

Bat babe, slide a piece of the porter drink side run the java (I’ll have the steak)!
Lookie here, I can dig grease and chompin’ on some butter drag it through the garden (I’ll have the fish)!

Well, I didn’t get violently ill, start drooling all over myself and turn into a quivering pool of jelly but I did play a game or two of that triangle game with the golf tees that they have on every table at the Barrel.

We made it to Denver by dinner time and visited with the in-laws, well into the night. Tomorrow we will be picking up a new service dog puppy for training and Michele will leave once again. I will spend the better part of the week hanging out in the Mile High.

Tomorrow: Atlas and Michele Heads Home, Again…

Coasters to date on the tour: 92

Do you like what you are reading? Want to see more? use the hashtag #rocknroller16 on social media and you can see pics on Instagram, tweets on Twitter and our daily trials and tribulations on Facebook.