GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Col. – Looking straight up all I can see is blue sky and puffy white clouds as I lie on my back and the roller coaster hauls me 110 feet atop a tower.

Every moment the coaster carriage rises, it increases both the distance I'm about to drop – and the size of the nervous pit in my stomach.

There's a pause that feels like minutes. And then we fall.

Dropping at more than 30 feet a second, the coaster car rushes us – face-first – back to Earth.

Since there's a little curve in the otherwise vertical track, we actually fall slightly backward, which really alarms some little part of my brain even though I know it's coming. 

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Without pause we careen on: loops and twists and banana rolls. We top out at 56 mph and then there's a final twirl, and we then ease to a halt.

The whole experience takes less than a minute, and just like that my approximately 30-year personal ban on roller coasters is over.

I've had the chance to be among the first people to ride the new Defiance coaster at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park in western Colorado, and I've been thinking about this ride for weeks. I don't normally cover amusement parks, and I generally don't like rollercoasters. I'm not afraid of heights or g-forces, but I don't love being hung upside down – and I really don't love feeling queasy.

I've been avoiding roller coasters since a high school trip to Six Flags Great Escape back in the 1990s ended with a barfy 75-mile bus trip home. But a recent conversation with a bungee-jumping friend reminded me that life is for living, not for hiding, so here I am, 150 miles due west of Denver to check out what its builders say is the highest looping roller coaster in the United States. 

To be fair, the coaster is so high because it's perched on a side of a cliff – I had to ride a ski area-style gondola to reach the summit.

Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park has many other rides, including a ride where a 6-year-old girl died last fall. In that case, investigators concluded she wasn't properly buckled in. 

During my ride, workers checked my belt multiple times, and at one point they re-latch the padded shoulder harness to make it tighter.

"I suggest you take a deep breath," park manager Nancy Heard advised me. "It has a lot of punch in a short time."

Heard has already ridden the coaster more than most, and she knows there'll be staff and guests clamoring to claim the title of most frequent rider. Designed in Germany by Gerstlauer and installed over the past year, the ride is almost silent – except for the screams of the riders.

Friends Taryn Miller and Mason Main, both 17, were among the first park guests to ride the new coaster. They'd planned their visit in hopes of getting a ride, and pronounced themselves impressed. Then they got in line to ride again.

"Even our friend that was terrified says it was good," Miller added.