A week ago Friday we got our filled duffel bags into the car and, shortly after I finished my workweek, we got on the road. What had us away for three days --- and why we needed ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's parents to watch Sunshine --- was the Michigan State Pinball Championship. Not that we were playing in them. Since the pandemic began we haven't played nearly enough events, not nearly well enough, to qualify. Even if we did play enough we might not have made it: the level of competition has gotten ferociously high lately. It's a good sign for the hobby, but it does mark an end of something for us.
But Friday night they were having a tournament at the venue, a six-rounds, two-games, groups-of-four match where you'd get points based on how you finished. I was up for it, although we arrived only minutes before the tournament started at 7 pm. bunnyhugger blames herself for getting to a slow start, as she had pretty recently got back from dropping off Sunshine and didn't know I expected to play in the tournament. I had just assumed that was a given, and figured we had enough time to roll up and join the event.
Well, the tournament went for me, eh, bah. I started out with a last-place finish on Blackout, a game that had always been one of my strengths before the pandemic. And then a tough third-place finish an X's and O's, a game that's mostly about getting the skillshot, which nobody did. I had a couple great rounds after that, first- and second-place finishes, bringing me close enough to the top of the pack --- people like RLM and JAB, serious competitors for the state championship --- for me to get kicked back with three last-place finishes in a row. I had a last rally with a first-place finish on the electromechanical game Big Brave, and then a third place on Time Fantasy, a tough early-solid-state game that I used to know how to play. I ended up in 25th place of the 46 competitors. (Three of them dropped out before the final round.) ACE would finish tied for 12th, JAB tied for 4th, and MWS tied for 35th, a good moment of defeat ahead of the big day to come.
I have no report on how bunnyhugger did. She didn't enter the tournament: she was just hanging around the games not in play, trying out tables for her own purposes, to be revealed later.
Afterwards --- pretty close to midnight --- we took the long drive to the AirBnB that MWS had rented. There are few hotels in Fremont, where the tournament was, and he figured a bunch of people splitting the cost could get a pretty nice spot. He was right. He got a pretty large house on a lake (not Lake Michigan), with a lot of people. Enough that I felt the need to stay masked the whole time we were in communal spaces. I'm still not sure I saw everyone who was there. It was here that ACE --- among those in the group --- shared the good yet sad news about his moving back home sooner than we expected he would.
We went to bed late, trusting that --- as non-players --- we could get up a little later than everyone else and avoid the rush on the bathroom. And this closed our Friday.
Sure, Crossroads Village might be closed but that doesn't mean I'm nearly done with pictures, so please enjoy some more!
The shuttle from the rides section (at the back of the park) to the front, with reflections in the ice and mud. We didn't take it --- we're almost never in that much of a hurry --- but it was worth a picture of the unusual sight.
Here's that giant ornament walk-through light. Everyone was taking a chance to visit and photograph it .
Here's what it looks like from inside, only vaguely resembling that giant wall trap Q put up in the first episode of Next Generation.
Looking up to the 'hanger' of the ornament.
And here's dear bunnyhugger within the ornament.
bunnyhugger and the rings of ornament latitude and longitude lines reaching up to the skies.
Trivia: Laudanum was a tincture of opium. Paracelsus, who claimed to have invented it (and more likely learned of it in travelling to Constantinople) named it, possibly rom the Latin 'laudere', to praise. Source: Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements, Paul Strathem.
Currently Reading: A History of The World's Airlines, R E G Davies.
