Ride, repeat: Commemorating a coaster
82-year-old reaches 5,000th Jack Rabbit ride, 95 in one day
Vic Kleman chooses the fifth seat in the green train and tightens the strap across his hips.
He’s calm as it rumbles down the track and sails through the roughly minute-and-a-half circuit with its trademark double-hump near the end that takes an unknowing rider by surprise.
But not this 82-year-old. He’s done this 4,905 times before.
Mr. Kleman, a retired general manager of a wholesale grocery firm and a local actor from Pittsburgh’s Knoxville neighborhood, celebrated his 5,000th ride on the Jack Rabbit at Kennywood on Sunday and set a personal record of 95 in a single day in honor of the roller coaster’s 95th birthday this season. The feat took 8 hours, 24 minutes.
“I feel great!” Mr. Kleman said in a news release after his finish. “I made sure to move my legs throughout the day to keep from
getting stiff after sitting so long.”
His first ride on the world’s fifth-oldest coaster was in 1959, when he moved to Pittsburgh and asked friends to show him the nearest amusement park.
“They sat behind me, we went around the first curve, and right before we went down the hill, they said, ‘Hey Vic, look over there!’ And down we went. And they caught me again right before we went down the camel hump,” he said. “We laughed so hard after they deceived me, in other words.”
Mr. Kleman’s lifelong love of roller coasters started at Coney Island in Cincinnati when he was 8. In a 1996 interview with the Post-Gazette — when the most rides he’d logged on the Jack Rabbit in one day was 57 — he said he wasn’t big enough to ride that park’s Wildcat coaster, so he borrowed a girl’s shoes and put them inside his own to make himself taller.
To prepare for Sunday’s ride, Mr. Kleman drank and ate “very little” from 8 p.m. Saturday on, a crucial plan, since he hoped to ride the rails without stopping for even a bathroom break. Friends from the American Coaster Enthusiasts offered him water between rides and a medic and defibrillator were on hand. Kennywood spokesman Nick Paradise said he began riding at 10:53 a.m. and ended at 7:17 p.m. Mr. Kleman didn’t leave his seat once.
And why Seat 5? It’s a smoother ride, in the middle, away from the wheels. Pro tip: “If you’re gonna ride over the wheels for a length of time, you’re gonna hurt,” Mr. Kleman said.
He would know. In 2010, to celebrate 90 years of the Jack Rabbit, Mr. Kleman rode it as many times.
Designed by John A. Miller, the wooden coaster was finished in 1920 at a cost of $50,000, according to the American Roller Coaster Database. Its current trains date to 1951, but the design remains the same as when it opened.
“The rider experience hasn’t changed in 95 years, and it’s remarkable,” said Bill Linkenheimer, regional rep for American Coaster Enthusiasts.
Fellow ACE members Sarah Windlisch and Erik Frankenstein, of Wexford, were waiting for their friend on the platform when he reached 4,000 rides and planned to stay for the next milestone.
“He’s an inspiration,” Ms. Windlisch said. Added Mr. Frankenstein: “If I had half his energy when I’m his age, I’d be doing great.”
To prepare for Sunday’s ride, [Vic] Kleman drank and ate “very little” from 8 p.m. Saturday on, a crucial plan, since he hoped to ride the rails without stopping for even a bathroom break.