This column is essentially Part II of last week’s.

In case you didn’t read the last column (and shame on you if you didn’t), I was at Mt. Van Hoevenberg for the UCI Mountain Bike World Series, and thanks to the generosity of Kris Cheney-Seymour, I had a VIP pass. So I was living it up in the manner to which I am not accustomed, but easily could be, if given the chance.

With my access to the VIP lounge, I’d stuffed my face with culinary delights galore, while at the same time had fluffed my ego to new, and undeserved, heights.

Of course I watched the races. But since the track is four kilometers and goes hither, thither and yon in the boondocks, I saw only see brief flashes of riders as they zoomed by. So after a few hours of that, it was time to move on. The only question was Where?

I had several good choices. One was I could go back in the VIP lounge and gorge myself on the afternoon buffet. But since I’d done a masterful job of stuffing it with the breakfast buffet, there was no room at the inn, so to speak.

I could also grab a hold of my pal Amy Cheney-Seymour or her mom and pop and shoot the breeze with them. But since I’d already talked their six ears off, I thought for the health of our friendship, I’d pass on that as well.

That left me with the most intriguing option — riding the Cliffside Coaster.

The Coaster is essentially a roller coaster that follows the original bobsled from the 1932 Olympics.

Ironically, I’m a huge roller coaster fan. I say “ironically” because I’m not a fan of any other carnival rides. In fact, the other rides make me literally green-to-the-gills sick.

But for reasons I can’t fathom, I’m fine on roller coasters. And it’s not that I merely tolerate them, but I love riding them. And I’ve been on some real doozies, including the Cyclone at Coney Island and the Russian Mountain in Mexico City, which for years was the world’s highest roller coaster.

A vital note of clarification: The roller coasters I like to ride are the old time wooden ones. As for the new ones that send the cars into loop-d-loops and all kinds of other upside-down nonsense? I wouldn’t ride one for love, money or at bayonet point. For sure, I’m a weird old dude … but I ain’t that weird.

So off to the Cliffside Coaster it was!

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Bullet Bob rides again …

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The Cliffside is very different from conventional coasters. The cars are small: They can fit two comfortably, provided one of them is a sardine. They’re made of plastic of some sort and have very low sides. But they also have a feature I’ve never seen in any other coaster — a passenger-operated hand brake. This serves two purposes. One is it makes the car look like a real bobsled, kinda sorta. The other is it lets you go the speed you’re comfortable with.

We were given an orientation by the guys working the coaster and after they explained about the brakes, I decided one thing — I was not going to use them. And why would I? The whole operation was built with safety foremost in mind and was engineered down to the finest detail. And beyond that, as I said, I’ve ridden some world-famous coasters and the last thing I was gonna do was wimp out on this one.

There was only one thing that could prevent me from breaking the Cliffside’s speed record, and that was the guy in the car ahead of me. If he braked repeatedly, that’s what I’d have to do. And by the looks of that him, that’s exactly what was gonna happen.

He was a tall skinny piece of work with spiked hair, one half of it kelly green, the other half stop light red. He was wearing skinny jeans and a sleeveless pink t-shirt that, in sequined Raymond Loewy script, said “Femboy Numero Uno.” I knew what numero uno meant, but had no idea who or what a femboy was. To cap it all off, on one pipestem arm he had a tattoo of Snow White.

Without casting aspersions on his, or anyone’s, lifestyle choices, my heart sank, knowing right from the get-go my plan to be Bullet Bob was for naught. But if I’m nothing else, I am philosophic. I figured live and let live — if he slowed down, so would I, and in the future I’d return and would luck out, with some Evil Knievel wannabe in preceding car.

Orientation over, I squeezed into the car, snapped in my seatbelt, and waited for Femboy’s car to get a good distance away. When it did, I was off.

As the car climbed up the track to its high point, two things happened. One was I got that anticipatory tingle I always get at the start of a roller coaster ride. The other was, over a speaker at the foot of the car, the recorded dulcet tones of John Morgan gave the history of the original bobsled track and other Olympic details. I found the material fascinating, since I never really knew anything about either.

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… but only till the first curve

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My car got to the top of the track and my heart started hammering as I went ’round a curve, and suddenly was in free flight!

And soon after I was, my image of Daredevil Dope zooming down the rails hell-bent for Gore Tex vanished like a Will-o’-the-wisp. In its place was the sphincter-slamming realization I was gonna get tossed out of the car as if shot out from a zero-zero ejection seat.

Of course due to the the Cliffside’s safety factors, that wasn’t possible. But guess what? I sure thought it was. My mouth went Mojave dry, my heart pounded my chest wall, and I was grinding my gold caps into powder.

I was pretty much OK on the straightaways, but as soon as I reached a curve, I clamped on the brake. But even then, I couldn’t keep my cool. Going around the curve so slowly had me hanging over the downward side, making me feel I was gonna fall out and hit the ground with The Splat Heard ‘Round the World.

While I didn’t realize it at the time, I was doing the exact opposite of what I should have done. When you go through the curves — and through the whole ride — momentum is your friend. The faster you go, the more stable you are. But the slower you go, the more unstable you are. If I’d zipped through the curves and leaned in the right direction, the forces-that-be would’ve kept me firmly in place. But by slowing down like I did, I just ended up dangling over the side and being an object of derision to momentum, inertia, gravity and anyone who happened to see my sorry self.

Finally, after what seemed like three hours, the ride came to its end. As I stepped out of the car and onto the platform, I was physically shaky from all the adrenaline that had raised hell with my nervous system. I was also psychically shaky from all the ego-reduction that had raised hell with my overinflated self-confidence.

After a minute or so, I got my bearings and looked around for Femboy.

On an ironic Karmic note, he’d come and gone and was nowhere to be seen.