American Eagle

American Eagle Outfitters (NASDAQ: AEOS) is a major-market clothes retailer, primarily aiming for the adolescent/twentysomethings market. They sell everything clothes-related, from shirts to pants to coats to socks to underwear to scarves, gloves, and any other minor accessory you can think of. Although primarily associated with the upper middle-class and more well-to-do citizenry, AE's prices are reasonable enough on certain items (in comparison to other stores) that buying there wouldn't break your bank. There are currently 700 American Eagle stores in the United States.

American Eagle also owns a group of stores in Canada, Bluenotes/Thriftys, which sells more urban clothes, almost exclusively for the teenager market. There are 111 Bluenotes/Thriftys stores in Canada.

American Eagle's website is http://www.ae.com.

Although I myself don't frequent American Eagle (since I am unaware of how their products are made), I do indulge myself in a purchase there on occasion: their in-store music compilation CDs are always top-notch (featuring artists such as Spoon, Phantom Planet, Gomez, Elliott Smith, Sparklehorse, and more) and always seem to fit the season - the winter CDs are noticeably soft and brittle, while the summer compilations are always fun and breezy.

And yes, they sell Penguin mints.

American Eagle, introduced in 1984, is the regional counterpart of American Airlines, connecting smaller cities to AA's hubs with turboprops and regional jets. The name was actually used for the first time during American's transcontinental services in the 1930's, when they started naming the flights in an attempt to up their glamor factor: planes were called American Eagle, American Mercury, and American Arrow.

At first, Eagle's flights were operated by three independent companies: Flagship Airlines on the East Coast, Simmons Airlines in the Midwest, and Executive Airlines in the Caribbean. AA just sold the tickets. In the mid-1990's, however, AMR Corporation (AA's parent company) bought out the operators and merged the three airlines into one, later absorbing another regional airline, Business Express, which remains separately operated. Executive regained its operating independence in 2002.

Eagle's planes carry a livery similar to American's, but with the fuselage painted white instead of silver, and with a large red and blue eagle on the tail instead of American's AA logo.

Today, American Eagle, when it is treated separately from AA, is the largest regional airline in the world. It has a fleet of 293 aircraft carrying 13 million passengers a year between 132 cities in 12 countries. They operate the Bombardier CRJ-700, Embraer ERJ-135, and Embraer ERJ-145 jets, as well as the ATR 72, ATR 42, and Saab 340 turboprops. Along with American, Eagle is a member of the oneworld alliance.

American Eagle is a 127 foot tall wooden roller coaster towering over the land of Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, IL. Built May 23rd, 1981 by Intamin, American Eagle was the first wooden on the property and is still one of the largest twin racing wooden roller coasters.

The coaster is designed with two tracks that run trains simultaneously in a racing fashion: red and blue. Each track is nearly identical in statistics. While the height is 127 feet tall the first drop is 147 feet, which pushes the coaster to a max speed of 66 mph as the coaster races down the first 55-degree hill. Riders speed over 4,650 feet of track over the course of 2 minutes and 23 seconds. Being a wooden, especially an old one, American Eagle contains no inversions, however has a very high capacity furthermore with the aid of two tracks. It runs four trains with five cars each. Riders sit two across and three back in each car.

The structure took over 20,000 man hours to build using 9,000 gallons of white paint, 15 tons of nails, 129,720 bolts, 1.3 million board feet of lumber, and 2,000 concrete footings.

The ride itself feels quite rough especially in the back helix due to a lack of banking. However, a revision of the track made the ride quite a bit smoother. Six Flags also finds excuses to run one of the trains backwards for a few weeks or so most years. Overall a coaster worth at least one run for the experience (like all coasters) but will keep you coming back from time to time if for nothing but nostalgia.

Summarized Statistics of American Eagle

• Height: 127 feet
• Drop: 147 feet
• Speed: 66 mph
• Duration: 2:23
• Length: 4650 feet
• Angle of Descent: 55 degrees