Teen Boys Build 50-Foot-Long Backyard Roller Coaster For $50
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What happens when you mix a group of bored, teenage boys, a challenging bet and a $50 budget?
For Austin Twede and Porter Harding, both 19 from Idaho Falls, Idaho, you wind up with a fully-functional 50-foot-long backyard roller coaster.
The original idea was the brainchild of Harding’s mom, Lisa Harding, who bet the self-proclaimed “adrenaline junkies” they couldn’t build a roller coaster in the backyard this past August for less than $50.
“Within 30 minutes we had rough plans written down on paper, thinking how much we could do with a $50 limit,” Twede told GoodMorningAmerica.com. “We figured it could be about 50 feet long and 10 feet high.”
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The boys are no stranger to building their own homegrown amusement. They’ve built a backyard zip line and front yard ski jump, so they knew exactly which supplies to begin gathering from around Harding’s house to start working on their latest endeavor.
“We already had a sheet of plywood and some fence stakes, then we ran over to Home Depot and bough $49 worth of wood and wheels and we used that to build the roller coaster,” Twede recalled.
After enlisting the help of two more neighborhood friends, Ken Nukaya, 21, and Jarrett Lancaster, 19, the entire project only took about a day and a half to complete.
“We worked around 8 to 11 p.m. that night,” Twede said. “And then woke up the next morning at 8 a.m. and finished at around 4 or 5 in the afternoon.”
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It didn’t take long before “the neighborhood kids saw it over the fence and all wanted to ride,” he added. “We thought about charging tickets.”
Sadly however, all good things must come to an end. Twede left the very next day for college at Utah State University and Harding left for a mission trip in California.
The roller coaster was dissembled two weeks later since the boys were no longer there to take care of it, but that hasn’t stopped them from setting their sights on bigger and better ideas for the future.
“We only had a $50 budget and a small time frame since I was leaving for college the next day,” said Twede, “So now we’re thinking about building one out of PVC that loops back to itself. So we’ll see about that.”
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