DATE: Thursday, June 12, 1997               TAG: 9706120064

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  149 lines

CLUB MEMBERS ADMIT THEY'RE CRAZY FOR COASTERS

WHEN THE Rebel Yell at Kings Dominion in Doswell reaches the first turn, about halfway around its 3,368-foot circuit of white-knuckled blur, gravity takes hold of everyone's organs the way old railroad hooks used to grab the mail.

Precisely at this point, Richard Munch feels nostalgic.

``That part was tough to sleep through,'' he remembered Monday. ``The rest, that's not so bad.''

Munch rides the roller coaster with a collected calm so remarkable it's as if he were planted in place - that the rest of the world were rumbling 65 mph around him, not the other way around. His bones, his joints, his gastrointestinal network display an astonishing 20-year-memory. He's still numb, you'd think, from that week when he rode the Rebel Yell 1,134 times straight.

The 43-year-old New Jersey architect isn't so possessed these days. He has three kids and his wife's chiropractor tells her not to ride.

Monday, however, Munch re-lived the past as part of a ceremonial re-enactment of that week when a dozen or so fanatics rode for days on end. Nothing radical, just six or seven hours around the track. ``I'm tired already,'' he said after a piddly two turns on the Rebel Yell. ``Anyone have an aspirin?''

That 1977 marathon is worth commemorating as more than just a spectacular absurdity, though. It was the week that Munch and fellow riders Paul Greenwald and Roy Brashears conceived over some theme park French fries, deciding that roller coaster riding deserved some stature. They left Kings Dominion promising to form a nationwide brotherhood of roller coaster devotees just like themselves.

Today, the American Coaster Enthusiasts is more than 5,000 strong, all of them hands-free types who wax about Coney Island's Cyclone or Altoona's old Leap-the-Dips the way people on solid ground talk about grade school.

About 600 of them are in Virginia this week for their annual convention, half spent at Paramount's Kings Dominion and the rest at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

You'll spot them if you go. They dart from coaster to coaster in their ``I survived the . . . '' T-shirts with name tags identifying the 31 states from which they hail.

Ask one how many roller coasters he or she has tackled and they'll click off an answer. Expect the number to be in the hundreds. Engage them in debate over wood vs. steel if you dare, just don't butt in on their ERT - Exclusive Ride Time. You might just as well ride your mini-van at Talladega or crash the Oktoberfest and hog all the beer.

This is, after all, a group whose literature calls the sight of two trains circling the double-looped Loch Ness Monster in Williamsburg ``absolutely breath-taking.''

The collective ACE mind-set was summed up by Californian Curt Schimmel, a 37-year-old Bay area software engineer who traveled across the country - alone - just for the rides. ``Basically,'' he said, ``I like getting flung around a lot.''

ACE puts out a magazine and newsletters and tries to save old wooden relics. And members gather in parks throughout the country, their hearts going pitter-pat as the wheels go clickety clack.

This year is special, they all say. Members returned to Kings Dominion - the start of it all - and rode their most storied woodie. They went to Busch Gardens - site of the first ACE convention - and tasted the undulating, world's-tallest piece of twisted steel called Alpengeist.

And teen-agers and reporters gathered around founders Munch and Greenwald and asked them the same old question that everyone who's never lived on a roller coaster asks:

You slept? In a jumpy little car that drops 85 feet from the clouds every three minutes, you really slept?

``We really did sleep,'' Munch said, hunched over some barbecued remains at the ACE opening dinner Sunday night.

``It wasn't the first drop that got you. It was that hill in the back where it splits, where it starts turning. That would wake you up every time.''

He started twisting his right hand around in little ovals to illustrate.

``Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Every time you hit that turn. Wake up. Wake up.''

Munch entered the contest on a whim. He was friends with the people who filmed the movie ``Rollercoaster,'' which opened the same week, and they offered him a slot in the contest. He wanted to write a magazine article about the marathon and decided that a few hours on the tracks would flesh it out. He never wrote the article. He recalled, ``I had no idea what I was getting into.''

The marathon started with 14 people, but three succumbed to sickness and dropped out after the first hour. ``As someone who wasn't sure what he was doing, that scared me,'' Munch said. ``They kept bringing those buckets out.''

Daytime was almost fun, participants agree. The Rebel Yell is actually two coasters side-by-side, and the general public got to ride the twin. The marathoners had some company then, as well as a few sinister laughs at the expense of those once-around lightweights.

``We'd yell, `Hey, your wheel fell off!' or `Your chain fell off! Get out!' and they'd get all excited,'' Munch said with a laugh. ``We had a lot of fun with that, for a while. Hey, we had to do something.''

But mostly, days spent on a roller coaster are dreadfully dull - if you're lucky. They can be downright excruciating if you're not.

``The worst was the first five or six hours, when you're getting queasy and things start to hurt and you wonder why you're there,'' said Greenwald, who lasted about a day. ``But after that, you were just numb.''

Nurses checked the riders every two hours or so to make sure their blood pressure was normal. Park employees brought them leftover food from the concessions. The hot chocolate, several recall, was always cold.

The temperature one night hit an unseasonable 43 degrees. With the coaster-aided wind chill: 28 degrees.

Park officials came through with some arctic parkas for Munch and other riders who weren't prepared.

``They came from the meat lockers,'' Munch said. ``They smelled real bad, but boy they were warm.''

One guy on the train kept drinking liquor. Then he ate a piece of pumpkin pie and recycled the whole mix on the side of the cars and half his comrades. He was the same guy who claimed to have ridden a few nighttime circuits naked.

There's another question everyone always asks, by the way. The answer: Riders could leave the train for five minutes an hour.

Munch lasted 50 hours and 21 minutes, having completed 723 miles. He had the most phenomenal headache of his life, and a nurse warned that his blood pressure was too low. ``She said, `You're either bored or tired or dead,' '' Munch recalled. Three other riders eventually reached the 101-hour mark, establishing a new world record that lasted about 2 1/2 months.

Today, the roller coaster marathon world record holder is Richard Rodriguez, who rode a British coaster for 549 hours. Even the most hardcore ACE member thinks he's nuts.

Roller coaster riders don't even try for the record anymore because, frankly, it got a little ridiculous. Munch said Guinness no longer recognizes coaster marathon records. Spending 23 days on the tracks is just too darn dangerous.

So why did anyone ever do it?

Munch's wife, Carol, had an idea, sitting with her husband at the picnic table Sunday when the question arose. She stuck out her tongue, pointed a finger to her ear and twirled it in little circles. ``It can't be good for you,'' she said. ``It can't be good for your head.''

Her husband, the veteran marathoner, really couldn't disagree.

``It's crazy. It's absolutely insane,'' Munch said. ``I never wanted to see that thing again for the rest of my life. ``I've counted it, and I went up and down about 11,000 times before I got off. Can you imagine that?

``It's like being on a trampoline. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. For days. Why would anyone want to do that? It was really a very, very odd experience.

``But, you know, it was an important event in the history of ACE, so it was good for roller coasters in general. I can live with that. That's not so crazy.'' ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY JAY PAUL

Richard Munch, left, and Paul Greenwald - on the Rebel Yell - belong

to the American Coaster Enthusiasts, meeting this week in Virginia.

Photo

JAY PAUL

Roger Lloyd, 12, of Lakewood, Calif., rests while Tim Herre, rear

left, of Hamburg, Germany, and Daryl Johnson of Richmond, right,

wait.

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