What motivates - riding coasters

I don't want to loose good posts so I am transferring them here to my blog. Here is one I posted last week.

Been reading a lot of different peoples goals. I guess we all have a ton and a while back I my a list of both my vain and my real reasons for doing this. I have to tell a little story though. From June 26-July11, I went to Florida for my dream hoilday of two weeks doing all the theme parks. I have wanted to do this for such a long time, but never had a companion, then my best friend agreed to come. Our goal was lots of screaming on all the coasters. I had a secret fear though that I would be excluded from the coaters on account of my size. What if the harnesses weren't big enough for me? So I tried and tried to start induction about 10 times from Jan-Jun. I just couldn't do it. Days 2-3 shattered me every time and I caved. So much of the success or failure I believe has to do with being in the right space emotionally and stress wise too. For me anyway. Work was major heavy, and with my best friend preparing to move cities I was struggling on an emotional front too, so it just didn't come together. If you can do full induction, go for it, but if you can't then OWL is great too. In a different space and place you may be able to tackle induction more successfully.

The holiday was a rip raoring success. I could use all the harnesses in the Disney parks. However, the Universal rides, and Busch Gardens were more embarassing. They provide extended belts in select rows, for larger sizes, but this was so typically a male minded design. As men tend to put on mosty in the gut, this is a adequate solution for them. But us girls grow in the hip and the butt too. I was mortified the first time I tried to sit in the bucket seat of the coaster. I had to push myself into the bucket seat, but in most cases I was actually wedged in by my hips and my backside was not even touching the back or bottom of the seat. Because I wasn't sitting back fully, then the strap (even extended) wasn't large enough. My friend finally worked out that by pushing down REALLY hard on the harness while I held my breath, the buckle would eventually go in. Each caoster was a varying degree of discomfort. I do not know why they couldn't have made the bucket of the seat a little wider, there was room in the coaster design for this. If I had been able to sit back into the seat, there would have been strap a plenty at the front. I felt not only hard done by for being big, but for being female and carrying my weight in female ways.

In all though I only was excluded from two coasters at Busch Gardens. We managed to squeeze me into all the other coasters multiple times and beside embarrasment and shame, there were screams aplenty.

Now though, my mum and dad have booked a theme park holiday this Christmas at the Gold Coast, Australia with their 9yr old grandson. They have asked me to come, so that he will have a ride companion as neither of them like coaster. Great, but now all the fears and embarrassments of not fitting the harnesses are rising up again. So, I am setting myself a long term goal of 240lbs by Dec 15. That will be a loss of 51lbs if I am successful.