For the longest time I begged my parents to put a pool or mini jungle gym in our backyard. Long story short, they never did and the only things that can be seen in the space behind our house are patches of yellowed, parched grass and a few forgotten toys from the late ’90s. #Surburbia, ya know?
Luckily for 19-year-old David Chesney, he has something 100x cooler sitting in his Toronto backyard: a 12-foot-tall and 92-foot-long wooden roller coaster, which he made himself. The impressive structure’s named “The Minotaur” and, according to the engineering student, its steel car can cruise as fast as 20 km/h (roughly 12mph). Dang am I jealous.
He assembled the rollercoaster using bits of scrap wood from his home and tools he borrowed from his uncle.
And the steel car he made after acquiring the know-how from working at a metal door factory last summer.
“My dad didn’t like the idea at all from the beginning,” Chesney explained to the Toronto Star. “Mom was kinda, ‘Uhhhh, I guess so.’ I don’t think that either of them understood the scope of what I had in mind.”
Eventually, Chesney managed to put together a ride assembled from 28m of steel-plated wooden track with two 3.6m drops.
“It just got bigger,” he added. “Then it got to the point where my parents said ‘it’s huge but you’ve gotten this far so just finish it and then take it down after.’ ”
For the sake of my own unfulfilled childhood wishes, I hope David never takes it down.
Below, watch a short video on “The Minotaur”: