Backyard Thrill Rides (Don’t Try These At Home – Watch Youtube Instead!)

In the newspaper the other day, there was an article that caught my interest about a couple of college engineering students who built a homemade roller coaster in their back yard (with mom’s reluctant approval).  I figured there would be  video of their creation on youtube.com, but I was unable to find the exact coaster from the article.  I did, however, find many videos featuring brave and creative souls fashioning their own various types of thrill rides and testing them out – some so amusing I had to put them together.  You can probably tell by the picture on the video if it’s going to be one you’ll want to watch in action.  And by the way, more than a few of these trials reminded me of that article I read and wrote about a while back about reasons for common ER visits called: Don’t Laugh, It Could Happen To  You…

This guy rides his backyard roller coaster in a little chair, and it even has an inversion:

This guy uses a little mining type cart, and he seems to achieve some pretty good speed:

This one looks more like it’s on train tracks, but it’s a long ride, and he also looks like he hits some pretty decent speeds:

This one’s not a roller coaster, but sort of homemade gravitron:

Are you going to be as surprised as I was about the speeds this ATV uses to wind up this poor lady’s sling shot?  This is one heck of a human sling shot!!

And finally, this video begins with saying this kid’s parents were out of town…  uh, oh.  This guy builds a slip n’ slide off the 2nd story of his house.  Does anyone else find it funnily ironic that the test subject gets congratulated after his run by a guy with his arm in a sling?  The first tester, perhaps?