- BLOOMINGTON, Minnesota --
How can two geeks amuse themselves on a rainy afternoon in the middle of
the Midwest? Go to the Mall of America, advised everyone from our hotel's
staff to a couple of random strangers we quizzed on the street.
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- We're not big fans of malls, having no need for scented
candles, key chains, cute socks or junk jewelry. But this mall is the mother
of all malls. In fact, it's not just a mall. It is, Anna Lewicki from the
Mall of America's media relations team told us, "the nation's largest
retail-and-entertainment complex."
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- Crammed inside the 4.2 million-square-foot complex are
520 shops, the nation's largest indoor family theme park, the nation's
largest underground aquarium, a 14-screen movie theater, a college campus,
a women's health clinic, a bank, a post office and the Chapel of Love.
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- More than 4,000 couples have tied the knot at the Chapel
of Love, but we decided it'd be way more fun to check out the mutant fish.
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- Underwater Adventures, the mall's own aquarium, has a
swell display of GloFish, those trademarked, transgenic zebra danios that
have been genetically modified to produce a brilliant fluorescent glow.
Unmodified zebra fish sport simple black stripes on their silvery-gray
scaled bodies.
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- We'd heard about these fish, which were created by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National University of Singapore,
but had never actually seen them, despite the fact that they are sold commercially
across the United States (except in California, where they're banned).
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- The GloFish that are being sold as pets and are on exhibit
at Underwater Adventures are the beta release -- they emit a rosy, pink
glow all the time. Scientists are attempting to modify the fish further
so that they will glow different colors when they are exposed to specific
pollutants. The goal of creating fluorescent fish that could act as a living
early warning system, alerting scientists to the presence of dangerous
pollutants in water, was the reason the zebras were modified in the first
place.
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- The fish glow -- and they really do glow quite brightly,
especially when their tanks are put under ultraviolet (black) lights --
thanks to genetic material from a jellyfish and sea anemone that were injected
into zebra danio eggs. The resulting fish, and all of its offspring, are
considered transgenic -- that is, animals that have genes from an entirely
different species. They maintain their color throughout their life and
pass it on to their offspring.
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- "A lot of people are disturbed by the idea of genetically
engineered pets," said Michelle Furrer, who handles media relations
for Underwater Adventures. "But as the staff prepared the exhibit,
they had the opportunity to meet with a world-class geneticist from Harvard
and were impressed when he explained his and many colleagues' passion to
use genetic engineering projects like GloFish to repair the environmental
damage that we humans have caused."
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- Not everyone was thrilled with the fish.
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- "What's next? Pets colored to match your iPod?"
grumbled one visitor to the exhibit.
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- After we had fun with the fish, we headed to the mall's
Lego Imagination Center. We sat down on benches made of Lego bricks, and
staffers came and dumped boxes full of Lego bits and pieces in front of
us on tables made of Legos. We built race cars, and then got to try them
out on the Lego test track. Some 9-year-old kid's car kicked our cars'
butts.
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- Onward to other racing: We clambered into a racing simulator
ride which involved getting buckled firmly into a scale-model NASCAR racer,
complete with working instruments, gas, brake and clutch pedals, and a
floor shifter. Then, through the miracle of modern technology, we got to
"race" our immobile car, competing against a variety of human-controlled
and computer-generated opponents. Happily, the 9-year-old kid was otherwise
occupied and we won the Indy 500.
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- The car simulator is realistic enough that each car has
a panic button that queasy riders can push if they want the motion effects
in their car to stop right away. You really do think you feel the engine
revving, your car bumping against other vehicles or the sides of the track,
and centrifugal force pushing against you when you turn. It's very cool
-- and all done with custom software and some audio-visual and motion-simulation
effects.
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- For yet more stomach-turning amusement, we ambled over
to Camp Snoopy. Despite the cutesy name, the amusement park was packed
with a plethora of highly menacing rides and attractions, including the
Disco is Dead bumper cars, a Hunter's Paradise shooting gallery, the Pepsi
Ripsaw Roller Coaster, the Treetop Tumbler, the Screaming Yellow Eagle
magic carpet ride, the truly terrifying Mighty Axe and the park's newest
ride, the Timberland Twister, the first spinning coaster of its kind anywhere
in the world, according to Robin Thompson, Camp Snoopy's director of marketing.
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- Each Twister car spins on its own axis as it travels
around the five-story-high track. It reaches speeds up to 31 mph. Go on
the ride with just two people (the cars seat four, but in this case, the
more the less merry), lean left on the curves for maximum spinning effect
as the cars twist around the track, and you can work yourself into a full-on
dizzy fit.
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- But the most terrifying ride at Camp Snoopy was the Mighty
Axe. As the Axe's main arm rotates, the platform that riders are strapped
into spins in snappy, 360-degree rotations, both forward and reverse. So
you spend much of the ride upside-down, hanging trembling 10 stories above
the ground.
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- The park brochure cheerfully notes: "Aggressive
and unexpected forces are generated during the ride. Riders may experience
rapid directional changes." Definitely not advised for those who have
just eaten lunch or just plain suck at spatial orientation. And there's
no panic button to stop this ride -- once you're on it, you're doomed.
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- "People think Minnesota is kinda bland, that the
people are boring, but a lot of folks here have Viking blood -- they like
to go a little berserk every now and then but only in short bursts,"
said one of the park's staffers, who asked to be identified only by his
nickname, Chip.
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- And if freaky fish, fiddling with Lego bricks and panic-producing
rides in the company of Viking descendants just aren't enough -- there's
a nice shiny Apple Computer store in the mall for all you Mac users, too.
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