I could do this very badly with numbers. Here, I'll show you.
2 - minutes
45 - miles per hour
73 - years old
78 - feet high
$1.5M - cost
Now, the better way.
The Phoenix is a wooden roller coaster at Knoebels, a century-old amusement park in the middle of Pennsylvania. It goes up and back, causes you to float out of the seats, seems impossibly faster at the end and once you ride it from the very front or the very back in your dozens of times in riding it, you'll never take the middle again.
OK, some more words of explanation.
Knoebels is a family run place that's free to enter, free to park, and the lines are never really very long because for heaven's sake, you are in the middle of Pennsylvania. I think I've probably ridden this thing a few dozen times, in the day and night, in hot and cold, in drizzle (the best; it's even faster) and dry.
It's a smile machine. Everyone is smiling on the ramp as they leave it. It's magic.
And no matter how many times you get dragged up that hill -- you know the drag, the chunka-chunka-chunka of the chain sounding like oh dear Lord this is the time that it's going to break, isn't it, and the nerves and the adrenalin kick in and you become the person that you were the first time you rode it, rather than the person you are now, if only for those two minutes...
You are present. You are aware.
You are not thinking about lunch or dinner or the mortgage or your in box or your calendar or the healthcare check or the pets or the water heater or the government or anything, really, beyond the chunka-chunka-chunka.
There are very few things in the world better than the Phoenix. (Short list? The laughter of my wife and daughters. My dog when he's asleep or catching a frisbee. Joel Embiid. This list subject to change.)
But in business, there is very much one thing that's better than the Phoenix.
And that's the feeling you get when the chunka-chunka-chunka stops, and the glide starts, and you look down the hill of knowing that everything is about to get very, very much faster.
We've had days of over 4 million vaccinations. The unemployment rate is dropping. Cash is rippling through the country from stimulus checks and pent-up demand. Airports are filling up, perhaps too soon for pandemic safety, but filling up just the same.
Enough people are getting vaccines, or more darkly have had the damn bug already and lived to produce their own antibodies, that the fear of a new wave is likely greater than the reality.
Personally, M&AD has had clients with urgent needs, all of them reading the tea leaves the same way we do. The sports laundry I root for both had home games today, both won, both in front of vocal but responsible crowds that made everything seem just a little bit more like the Before Times.
We're getting dragged up that hill, folks.
After 13 months of too long and too dumb and needless tragedy and I'm skipping the recap, we're in glide, in the last few seconds before Fun.
And no matter how many times you've ridden the ride, this moment is the best.
Hold on tight!
