‘I plan to be riding roller coasters when I’m 100. . . .’

The small red and gold train of the Gold Runner ride hissed to a stop for the umpteenth time Tuesday morning, and its load of passengers--old and young from places like Watertown, Mass., and Natrona Heights, Pa.--broke into applause, as if they had just seen “Madame Butterfly.”

Then they waited, not really patiently, for the train to move again. Some raised their hands in anticipation. Some sat dead still, staring ahead. Some changed seats.

In seeming conflict with the laws of amusement parks, they were not ushered politely to the exit.

Only one, a slender, athletic man in a blue beige shorts, was asked to leave the train.

He was Randy Geisler, a 38-year-old Social Security claims processor from Chicago. Although not exactly delighted to do so, he got out in the name of duty to answer questions from the press.

Geisler is president of the American Coaster Enthusiasts, a club for people who would rather ride a roller coaster than see Old Faithful or Niagara Falls.

This week, on their 10th annual convention, about 230 members are hitting Magic Mountain in Valencia, the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz and the Great America park in Santa Clara after a stop-off in San Diego to pay their respects to a community group that is trying to reopen one of California’s early roller coasters as a historic monument.

Eventually they will get down to the boring business of plenary sessions and roller-coaster politics.

Until then, the name convention is just a euphemism for fun.

On the convention trail, ACE members are allowed in before and after open hours, getting the rides all to themselves.

Monday night, they rode the Colossus until midnight. Tuesday morning it was the Gold Rusher, beginning at 8:30. Tuesday night, the Revolution, all to themselves.

“We just don’t sleep a lot,” Geisler said. “We figure, if you want to sleep, you stay home.”

Once, he said, he and two other men traveled 5,200 miles in 16 days, to ride 48 roller coasters in 19 parks.

Geisler looked back wistfully at a young woman who changed positions at the last second and almost got left behind.

“Just let me on,” she shouted. “I just want to ride.”

“If they don’t have to get off, they never do,” he said.

He is no different.

“I plan to be riding roller coasters when I’m 100, paying my dues till my last gasping breath.” he said.

Most members of ACE, it turned out, have felt the same way since they were children and just never found anyone to share their fixation with.

Marie Miller, a 71-year-old ex-Vaudeville dancer from Washington, N.J., said she has been a fanatic since she used to sneak through a wood to get in the back of West View Park in Pittsburgh when she was only 8.

Mike (Coaster Mike) Danshaw, an ex-hippie rock ‘n’ roll player from New Jersey, got his start at the same age against his mother’s orders. She warned that he’d end up dead if he rode the roller coaster.

“That made me want to do it even more,” Danshaw said.

For closet coaster riders around the country, everything changed in 1977 in the hoopla for the movie “Roller Coaster.” As one founding member recalled, “We realized that there were others out there like us.”

From a small beginning in 1977, the club has grown to 1,300 members, most from the East Coast and Midwest, though some are from as far away as Europe.

Now new members seem to be drawn in almost psychicly. Madonna McGovern, a 34-year-old fingerprint analyst for the FBI in Washington, was a late bloomer, originally not in the name of fun.

“I had a fear of heights,” she said.

It got so bad she had to give up the balcony at baseball parks.

“I thought, ‘If I could just learn how to ride a roller coaster, I could conquer this.’ ” she said.

She and an FBI associate began going to amusement parks together.

“To be honest, I hated it,” she said. But hate turned to acceptance, then enthusiasm and, finally, zeal.

Coaster operators often told them that they had just missed someone from the club.

“We were desperate,” McGovern said. “Where are the people who ride roller coasters?”

Finally, they ran into Danshaw at a roller coaster.

Theirs was a platonic meeting. Others have met and married at amusement parks.

But surely the most intense of meetings was between Mike Chew, a banker from San Francisco and Charles J. Jacques Jr., publisher of Coaster Journal. After meeting for the first time a few years ago, they talked in a motel room until 4 a.m., throwing questions back and forth like thunderbolts.

Their passion is for roller-coaster lore. They pore over old newspaper clippings, sift through patents, interview old roller-coaster operators, on their deathbeds if necessary.

To them, the roller coasters of America are as grand as the cathedrals of Europe.

Tuesday, sitting on a bench outside of the Shock Wave, they debated the merits of different architects.

Then their talk drifted to methods of counting the number of roller coasters one has ridden.

“Do you count racing coasters as one or two?” Chew asked, referring to the coasters that have two tracks side-by-side. “I count them as one.”

“I can gain 25 by counting racers twice,” Jacques snarled back.

“Besides,” he added rather unphilosophically. “We’re trying to up our totals, Mike.”