June 26, 2022: Kennywood

Tldr: today, the treasure otherwise known by non-MOP plebeians as Fruit Snacks has relocated itself to our room. We also had our first foray into adventuring at Kennywood.

Morning Shenanigans

Somehow, we all woke up at around 6 in the morning, so all in all, we got three hours of sleep last night. JC woke up after the rest of us and we all spent a while laughing at him for still being asleep, though now that my brain is not quite so sleep-addled, I’m not entirely sure what we found so amusing.

Also, EL got cold when he was sleeping and had to get his blanket from his room.

Breakfast

Once I woke up, I went downstairs to get some food. There, I grabbed an apple and leisurely strolled up the stairs to the fifth floor. By the time I reached the fifth floor, however, EL was just about to go downstairs for some milk and cereal. However, there’s never actually any milk at the snack table, as milk easily goes bad: rather, the milk is in the refrigerator in the kitchen. The thing is, we can only open the kitchen door with a staff keycard. Ordinarily, this would be an impossible barrier to overcome at six in the morning. It is not so for me, however, as I am lucky enough to have VinL as my good friend, who told me I can climb into the kitchen via the window.

Thus, knowing I could help with his task, I walked down to the main lobby with EL, munching on my apple. Once I got down there and slid the window shutters up, I climbed through and opened the kitchen door from inside.

Success!

After perusing the refrigerator, however, we weren’t entirely sure which of the stuff inside we could actually use, as some of them had names written on them. Thus, after dithering for a while, we decided to just go milkless with the cereal and went out to the snack table for the cereal. There were two types of cereal: one was tasteless brown little rods and the other was all colorful and far too high in sugar. I don’t think I understand: why do humans want to eat something blue and green and yellow and pink? We are such strange creatures.

At that point, I finished eating my apple, so I got another one.

In addition to two bowls of cereal for those people upstairs too lazy to come down, EL also got three cups of water. I helped him hold one of them, but I remain impressed that he could hold two cups and two bowls of cereal. (now that I’m a bit more clear-headed, I suddenly realized we could’ve just brought six cups upstairs and then filled them up there with the water fountain, but, well. Oh well) Thankfully, we took the elevator: I do not want to consider the disaster that would have arisen if we had taken the stairs with all that in hand.

The Mind

I also grabbed The Mind from the lounge so that we’d have something to do as we whiled the time away until Kennywood.

On reaching the fifth floor, an… interesting sight greeted us. While we were downstairs, JW and JC apparently decided to become butterflies, as they were cocooned on the couch in blankets.

Once we all settled down a bit, we started playing a game of The Mind. With all of us sleep-addled, you can imagine how it went. (Strangely enough, I actually felt rather energized that morning, but it was rather evident that the rest of everyone did not feel so)

KS joined us at this point, quietly amused at what a mess we all were.

JW and JC refused to come out of metamorphosis, so they insisted on us telling them whenever someone played a card, the color of the card, and if face-up, the value on the card. Sometimes they didn’t notice when we mentioned a card. When they wished to place a card, they would throw it out of their cocoon rather willy-nilly. It was rather fantastic.

Fruit Snacks

(JC has a very different account of all this on his blog. According to him, he and JW went downstairs to return their blankets to their corresponding rooms after the sleepover. JW apparently had JC‘s nametag and fought with him to get into his room and steal the fruit snacks, at which I showed up and snuck in and stole them. Then JW, MLu, DD, and EW attempted to steal his mattress?)

By the end, JW started looking at both her and JC‘s cards, and then some of the rest of us started giving our cards to her until she was just playing a single-player game of The Mind.

As we did all this, we often passed the cereal around and grabbed a small handful to eat. Instead of saying “Pass the cereal,” however, we said “Gimme diabetes!” or “I want diabetes” or, less commonly, “Pass me the rabbit food.”

Eventually, JW and JC crawled out of their cocoons. For some reason, JW had at that point turned her attention and intense brainpower toward the glorious battle of stealing JC‘s nametag. They grappled for the nametag, but eventually, JW gained control of it. She shoved the nametag at me and told me to go to JC‘s room, so I turned and ran.

It was only after I’d scanned open his door (thankfully, his roommate, MLu, had already woken up and gone up to the fifth floor at this point: otherwise, this would’ve been even more incredibly awkward than it already was) that I realized I wasn’t… actually sure what I was doing down there. Note, further, that I sometimes struggle with scanning open these doors, possibly because I’m too impatient, possibly because it knew I have guilty, sticky fingers :P. I don’t know, but it took a few tries to get his door open. 

I stood in front of his room for some minutes before deciding this was too stupid. Then, I took the keycard out of his name tag, tossed the lanyard in, and wandered away. I wanted to express that I had been there, but I was not entirely sure what to do with that fact.

As I wandered away and started going back upstairs, JW suddenly rushed around the corner. “Hurry, hurry!” she gasped and, laughing in breathless excitement, dragged me right back to JC‘s room. (Honestly, the more time I spend on this journal, the more I feel like I’m writing a novel here, what with this tone. Also, the tenses are so inconsistent, gah)

Once we were back in his room, I finally understood what she was after: she snatched JC‘s box of fruit snacks (if you’ll recall from an eternity ago, he stole all the fruit snacks left in the box—at least twenty or thirty, I am sure—from the snack table), turned tail, and shot out of that room… 

Right into, of course, JC. They started scuffling for possession of the box of fruit snacks. Then I walked out and got dragged into the struggle. JC and I jostled until somehow he got his keycard back, and then JW was running off with the box and JC took chase.

I followed, but got quickly distracted when we ran past DD‘s door and inadvertently woke him up. When he came out to ask about the ruckus (and I believe EW may have been present as well), I stopped to give a quick, spirited (and thus not very helpful) explanation of fruit snacks and sleepovers.

After that, I wandered the halls in search of the fruit snack thieves until I reached the fifth floor. According to the quote log (it was the first entry of the day), they ran into BW at some point. JC said, “As a TA, you’re supposed to help the students, right? So can you help the three of us instead of him.” From what I can garner, I believe what happened from this point was that VH, KS, and JW were running with their stolen goods, at which point they ran into Brandon and fell into an argument. Eventually, they spirited their precious commodities away until they ended up in the fourth-floor girls’ bathroom.

Somehow, the water pump bottle also ended up there, but I am still confused about how that could have happened. The people who technically own the water pump/guns are JW and FYe, as they are the ones who bought them, but as I doubt JW returned to her room to get it, I’m at quite a loss.

I knew nothing of all this until around 9:40. Those of us on the fifth floor cleaned it up a bit (by which I mean we threw the bowls away and took our blankets back to our rooms). After dropping things off and picking things up from my room, I proceeded to the bathroom to put in my contacts and brush my teeth.

There, I found the water pump and fruit snacks. On checking my phone, I discovered the following message: “Dont give anyone the fruit snacks in the 4th floor girls bathroom. Especially if its JC. Dont give anyone the spray bottle either.” – KS

I moved the fruit snack and water gun further from the door of the bathroom so that no one could accidentally catch sight of it.

Then, while I brush my teeth, somehow, all the players in the game show up in the fourth floor lounge right outside the bathroom.

I gave them what I would like to imagine is a gimlet look, but was most likely just unconcealed amusement.

Because they all stood there for so long, JC managed to spy the fruit snacks within, even though I moved it. IZ, my roommate, just so happened to walk out of our room into the bathroom, so JW waylaid her to hide the fruit snacks to our room. IZ, not being any part of the dispute, casually tucked the fruit snacks under an arm and started walking to our room. My role in all this was to scan open our door for her.

Recall, however, that I am inordinately horrible at scanning open these doors. I tried to open the door, but it would not yield. By then, IZ had been holding the fruit snacks for at least thirty seconds, so, even as unobservant as JC was, he noticed it tucked under her arm. IZ and I gave one another panicked, wide-eyed looks, then dashed away.

After a winding, merry chase down halls and up stairs, we end up back where we started with no one in sight. With a breath of relief, we scanned into our room.

Thus ends the tale of how the treasure loot landed in Room 411.

To Kennywood

After all that nonsense, IZ and I walked down to the main lobby to meet up with our group for Kennywood. A few days ago, after we all signed up to go to Kennywood, we had to sign up for a TA to be grouped with, as well. I signed up to be on Turtle‘s group with the TJ cult. Interestingly, Turtle‘s signing up for Kennywood was a bit of a mess: initially, he signed up for it, but then some student disgruntled with either ELMO P4 or TSTST P1 (both of which were quite difficult for a 1/4) crossed his name out. When he later brought this up to JB, she’d already printed out a sign-up sheet for the Kennywood groups, so I just created a new grid for Turtle.

As we wandered around downstairs, those of us involved in the sleepover mentioned it to some of our friends until, seemingly, everyone in that too-full-lobby knew about it. Then Turtle told me that apparently he saw us at around 4 am and simply didn’t feel like waking us up. Besides, he was already too tired to shout at anyone, being still awake due to grading TSTST 1. Another TA also found out, who then told JW‘s brother who told her mom who told my mom who told me that she already knew when I went to tell her that we may or may not have stayed up a bit late :P.

Turtle always hangs a green turtle around his lanyard. RW recently took to stealing that turtle from him. Today, Turtle gave that turtle to me, so RW began to beg me to give it to her. I was initially very resistant to her entreaties, but her puppy dog eyes were too cute, so I gave in. She claimed that I might lose it because I’m going to Kennywood, while she could keep it safe since she wasn’t going to Kennywood. She named the turtle “Herb,” with a not-silent h.

I decided we were taking too long loitering in the lobby, so I went to eat another apple.

Once I finished my apple, we finally got going. Knowing that the ride to Kennywood was quite long and we would not eat breakfast once we got there, I grabbed another apple to eat on the way, and then we were outside, standing at the bus stop.

And standing.

And standing.

We stood there waiting for what must’ve been at least thirty minutes or an hour before the bus finally arrived. I’m pretty sure we missed the bus we were supposed to catch.

TJ Gang finds my apple-eating very strange: I eat everything in the apple, even the core and, if there is no trash can on sight or I’m just too lazy, the seeds. I find it simply prudent.

Eventually, the bus finally arrived, and we filed onto the bus. I was close enough to the front of the line that I could sit in a seat, but there were so many people who didn’t have a seat that I felt bad and stood instead. 

I stood next to DX and MCM. We (along with LuT) talked about friendships. We sort of applied graph theory to friendships and talked about how many people it takes before a friendship group is no longer a complete graph. With larger friend groups (greater than three or four) it’s like there must be a sort of leader in the friend group, keeping them together. 

DX sort of mentioned that, in middle school, he was that glue in his friend group, and then when he went to a different high school from them all, they sort of became a less cohesive friend group even though he kept in contact with them all.

It was a very deep conversation. I often have rather deeper conversations with the TJ gang.

At Kennywood

After that interesting conversation, we eventually got to Kennywood :). After I went through security, I waited a bit for IZ and DX to get through, as well. While they were coming through, I talked a bit to a nice lady who works there. She said that her whole family has worked at Kennywood and she has very fond memories of coming to Kennywood as a child, so she always wanted to work there. She said she quite liked her job. She also mentioned that the security checkpoint has become more efficient: it used to be that everyone had to put their stuff on a conveyor belt and take off their belts and shoes and all, like airport security, but now they just need to walk through and get their bag checked a bit. It explained why there seemed to be two lines of security: the first seemed inactive as we walked through, with the airport security-esque setup, and only the second part that we reached was actually doing anything.

Then, DX and IZ came out, so I bid the nice lady adieu and wished her a good day. 🙂

The first ride we rode was called the Sky Rocket, which had a loop in the middle. I sat in the same car as DX and he was very nervous because he hadn’t gone on many rollercoasters before. It was quite endearing (sidenote: while trying to figure out a word that would convey my meaning, I read out a bunch of synonyms of “endearing” to MK and AnZ at g2. Once I got to “bonny” (which I pronounced “bony”) and “adorbs,” they found it so utterly hilarious that it set off a laughing fit. That laughing fit completely threw off their focus, messing up their conversation and lasting for three minutes). I find it honestly amazing how willing he is to try new things at MOP.

After we all got out of the Sky Rocket, we realized something strange had happened.

RQ seemed rather… different from before. It was a very subtle change, one hardly noticeable, but such that he seemed a whole other person.

HIS HAT WAS GONE!!!!!

His hat, which has been a constant companion through all the highs and lows of his experience at MOP, had flown off in the excitement of the rollercoaster!

I immediately told a random guy to my right who was about to ride the rollercoaster to take off his hat, you’re welcome. 😛

After we got off that rollercoaster, we realized that we’d lost MK! She opted out of riding the rollercoaster because she thought she might throw up, but now she was gone! We went off in search of her. When we eventually found her, we learned that she had gone off to eat Dippin’ Dots.

When we went on another intense ride, this one called the “Phantom’s Revenge,” MK left and found a slightly calmer group. It was a great ride! It accelerated so quickly, at one drop, I felt like I literally couldn’t lift my head from where it was pressed to the headrest. Eventually, on my third ride on that rollercoaster, I figured out that if I tilted my head forward in preparation for the acceleration, I could prevent my head from being pressed against the headrest.

Another ride we went on was a water ride (I believe it was the Pittsburg* Plunge Boat Ride). Turtle was being rather silly: he wore a raincoat on the ride. Why bring a raincoat if you’re planning to get soaked?

We did that ride three times. After all, if we were going to get soaked anyway, why not do it a few more times?

After that, we found MK and LZ eating ice cream, so I went and got some mango-flavored Italian ice.

We also went and ate lunch at Johnny Rockets and spent at least an hour just sitting and chatting. They gave us a lot of fries in huge servings. Each burger or chicken tender was accompanied by a huge serving of fries, and of course, not know this, we’d already ordered a few huge servings of fries. I probably ate just a bit too much, but it was very fun! 

While we were at Johnny Rockets, we also ran into LR and people in his group, who had just gotten to Kennywood. Apparently, they were supposed to be in SR‘s group, but because it was forecast to rain while we were at Kennywood, SR didn’t see the point in coming. After all, it had been forecast that it would rain today after 2 pm. We were really lucky, though, and not a drop fell! We stayed until past 6 pm!

Also, we discovered something really cool about soda machines! Apparently, there’s this little tab with three droplets of water next to the lemonade option in a lot of soda machines that, if pressed, will give you water! A really nice guy told us about this when he saw us filling our water bottles at a water fountain. I think I thanked him, but I wanted to thank him properly, but when I turned around, he was gone and I didn’t even remember what he looked like :(.

Throughout the day, LZ and I recorded some videos for our vlogs.

Another ride we went on was the Turtle ride. According to the website, it is “A Kennywood tradition since 1927 [and] still a favorite today. Six turtle-shaped cars travel on a circular track through a series of hills and dips. The Turtle is the last operating ride of its kind in the world!” We went on it for no other reason than because, well, we can hardly not go when we have our own turtle in our midst, now can we?

I think at least twenty MOPpers were on that ride at once. It was a lot of gray on one ride, as many of the MOPpers were wearing their MOP t-shirt.

We also went on the wave swinger. I was being rather stupid about getting into the seat: instead of sitting on it and then bringing the metal safety thing down like a normal person, I placed the metal safety down, jumped in from above, and twisted myself into the seat. It was a quite relaxing ride.

We also went on the Ghostwood Estate, in which we traveled on buggies indoors while using toy guns to “blast spirits.” I only hit one thing, compared to, like, dozens by the others, so I would like to imagine my gun was broken :P.

We also attempted to ride the Exterminator. However, after waiting in line for an eternity, we were told that the ride needed maintenance and might take a while to fix. At that point, we turned tail and left. It was still fun, though, because we got to talk a lot while we waited and that is always precious.

At the end of the day, half of us, including IZ, went to ride Sky Rocket one last time, while MK, LZ, LC, RQ, DX, and I went to get funnel cakes. It was delicious! Just as we about finished those (very unhealthy) delicacies, the rollercoaster riders returned. And guess what! IZ found RQ‘s hat! She noticed a bunch of hats on the ground behind a fence while they were waiting for the roller coaster, climbed under that fence, and got RQ‘s hat! 

She was a true hero <3.

That was the last ride of the day. After that, our group rushed to catch the bus and return to Stever. We were the last group of MOPpers still at Kennywood.

Something we started doing was, every time we got on a rollercoaster, we’d make half a heart with one of our hands and then try to form a heart with the person next to us. DX and I did really well at it on the last ride, but we weren’t allowed to take a photo of the photo they took :(.

The TJ Gang was a lot of fun to talk to! I especially talked to DX a lot. It was fun 🙂

After eating the funnel cakes, we all started running to the entrance of the amusement park. The bus was coming soon, and we didn’t want to miss it and have to wait for the next one. So we ran like our lives depended on it until we reached the bus stop, panting with relief and grinning at each other: the bus had not yet arrived.

And we waited.

There was something strange about that bus stop, though. The instructions were very specific about where we were supposed to stand, yet the place they sent us to had a sign hanging above it that said something to the effect of, “If Kennywood Amusement Park is open, the 61C bus will not stop here.”

We were supposed to take the 61C bus, but the instructions were very specific about how to get from Kennywood to CMU. What was going on? Perhaps the sign was outdated and incorrect?

So Turtle took a picture of where we were and sent it on the MOP discord channel, asking for verification that we were where we were supposed to be.

We were not.

Turns out, we were simply supposed to go to where we were dropped off in the first place, a large pavilion that we passed five minutes ago as we were running for this bus stop. These instructions, through no fault of their writer, were wrong: JG has never been to Kennywood before and thus based his instructions on Google, which in this case, was sadly wrong.

As such, Turtle, being the best staff and thus the only one who read the instructions carefully, was the only one who did not go to the right bus stop. To make things even more amusing, according to ESh, Turtle did the same thing in 2019.

Eventually, after far too much running around and ridiculousness, we got on the bus and return to CMU.

Back (hi back!)

Once we got back, we went to Sushi Fuku. (It’s funny: on the first day of Pre-MOP, I believe KS saw three different Sushi Fukus.) We ate the sushi at Tepper (or, well, DX and I both started eating while we were still walking). As I was sitting there, chatting with TJ Gang, MK stole my phone to take a bunch of random photos. Then, I suddenly got a phone call from an unknown number, so she handed it back to me. After I picked up, there was a lot of indiscernible white noise on the other side, so I thought that it was a wrong number call of some sort. 

Finally, through the noise, I discerned a “Sophie, look up!”

I looked up. There was nothing. I briefly considered the possibility that it was a very coincidental wrong number call wherein the person it was meant for was also named Sophie—after all, Sophie is a pretty common name, right?—when suddenly, I see MLu and ESh, basically hanging over the banister on the top floor above Tepper, waving at me.

Oh, hello there. 

I tried to ask them questions (mainly: wHyYyy????) but the connection was poor and I could hardly hear them. I tried to shout up at them but that was rather ineffective, too: they were too far away. Eventually, they told me to go upstairs, so I did (taking the stairs in order to keep talking while we were at it). 

MLu‘s voice began to sound a bit strange at that point. “MLu?” I asked.

“I can tell you slept three hours last night—Sophie, it’s DD.”

Following that exchange, I constantly doubted myself during the rest of the phone call. For one thing, I somehow didn’t notice when the voice of the speaker completely changed, apparently. For another, a moment ago, DD had been on the first floor with me. What had happened???

By the time I reached the top floor, MLu and ESh had stopped hanging themselves halfway over the edge, so I faced some difficulty finding them. By which I mean, I could not find them at all, for those two trolls decided to completely vacate that floor and, in fact, the building. After looking around and puzzling over where they could be in this huge, vacant space, they told me through the phone, “Sophie, look outside the window!”

There they were, standing at the center of a huge football field, waving up at me with their whole arms with the stupidest grins on their faces (presumably, anyway: they were too far away to see their expression. I may or may not be a teeny tiny bit prejudiced. How could you tell?). I rolled my eyes at them and started filling out a form for g2.

Eventually, they grew tired of standing out there and returned to the top floor of Tepper. At that point, JC called MLu to ask where he and ESh were, as he wanted to discuss MIMO Coordination with the two.

MLu and ESh most assuredly did not want to discuss MIMO Coordination, so instead, they persuaded me to help them prank JC. Namely, after telling JC that they were on the third floor and he went there for a futile search, they ran down to the stadium while I took charge of the phone for the coup de grace and persuaded JC that the two were actually on the fifth floor, at which point I’d hide behind some corner or other. Then, once he got upstairs, I’d tell him on the phone to look outside to the field.

It was all rather amusing.

Eventually, we went downstairs. I started spinning around on one of the ginormous chairs while upside-down and pushing myself on MLu’s chair. Then, MLu decided to be a meanie and move his chair away from me so I couldn’t keep spinning :(.

Storytime!

Just as I was going to bemoan having to get up and actually return to Stever for story time (the last one, because tomorrow, he’s not going somewhere) (9 pm – 10 pm), Po announced on Discord that they’re doing story time at Tepper! (It started to rain a bit. It wasn’t bad at all, but it was sufficiently wet to make sitting on the grass an issue) I spun around a few more times in giddy delight. Then, Po arrived with a whole flock of little ducklings MOPpers so I spun a few more times and then got up to help arrange the couches in a circle for story time.

There were a lot of people today: quite a few people were still at Tepper to hang out or do MIMO coordination (by which I mean JC was there to do MIMO coordination and everyone else was being uncooperative), so they joined story time, and then of course there were also the people who usually come to storytime. 

The storytime topic today was “How to make money!” Po picked it because he figured it would attract a large crowd. Essentially, he talked about how 10^6 and 10^8 money are not really all that different: the difference is just a matter of how comfortable you can make yourself and your friends and family. 10^9 is when it becomes different because, once you have 10^9, you can actually sort of noticeably help other people and the world as a whole.

He pointed out that, as MOPpers, we have the sufficient skills (if our goal is to make money) to get 10^6: just go into Wall Street or software development or something. As such, we should instead try for 10^9, even if that might be a bit riskier. Go the startup direction, or something. (Ever since I mentioned this, my family likes to bring up the 10^6 vs 10^9 thing a lot. They’ll be like, “Jason, you should jump on this hammock five feet in the air because it’s perfectly safe and besides, if you don’t learn to take risks, how will you ever try for 10^9?”

(regarding the “sufficient skills” point, he also mentioned that even were the worst to happen, we would be able to find employment just by finding kids to tutor and mentioning that we’re MOPpers. Then we sort of all laughed at the mental image of Po leading a pack of MOPpers through ruins and wilds and hanging up colorful advertisements for Mathcounts tutoring :P).

He also mentioned some stupid decisions he made with the stock market when he was younger. At one point, he decided the way to play the market was, whenever his mother told him to buy something, he should sell it, as if she knows that it’s doing well, then everyone else also knows it’s doing really well, so then it’ll start going down. He made other similar decisions and, looking back, he realiezs that they were (again) stupid, but back then, he thought he was being very smart. He actually made quite a bit of money from it all, but that was more due to prodiguous luck. (See DX’s blog for a slightly different summary)

After storytime, we returned to Stever for singing troupe in the piano room until curfew. It was very fun! TJ Gang has started doing something where we all link arms in a line and start doing high kicks during the instrumental at the end of “Another Day of Sun,” right before the honking at the end (we shout “Honk” in five groups at staggered times, creating a “Honk! Honk! Honk! Honk! Honk!” effect.)

I finally went to bed at the same time as IZ! As we were lying in bed, we talked a bit, and it was nice. I wish I started getting to know her earlier :(.

The people who sleepover last time tried again today, but they were busted in the early morning. Turtle came upstairs and shooed them all away, but they later discovered that he actually saved them, as JB went up afterward to check.