Thursday has its own peculiar way of saying, 'Hey'

[austin_dern]

Last week was bunnyhugger's Spring Break, so she had more time around the house than usual. Including on Thursday, a day when she doesn't go up to campus to teach but does have to do work for the week to come. So ... you know, since the pandemic we haven't gone to many coed pinball tournaments. Pinball At The Zoo has been about it. But every Thursday night RLM, out in Grand Rapids, hosts a tournament that's become the points mine in the state. We could pop over and play a while. Also, since that's the venue where the women-only Grand Rapids Belles and Chimes tournaments are held bunnyhugger could use the extra experience on the tables. There's nothing like time on the actual tables you play to get good at them. So, bunnyhugger sent word that we planned to go there, and we could look forward to seeing a bunch of old friends from the Grand Rapids Pinball League, plus our pinball/amusement-park pal JTK.

We did not go. The thing about RLM's Thursday night tournament is that it's such a points mine in part because they have a lot of high-value players, but also, they have a lot of games. They play a lot of rounds, going really late. Pinball bestie MWS told us that they routinely have tournaments --- which start at 7 pm --- run until 2 am, and 3 am is not rare. Not a problem at my old job where I didn't have any specific working hours but here, I'd have to be awake and sharp enough for 8 am. And that after a drive home.

In one sense, this is a theoretical problem. The qualifying for the tournament ends at 10 pm, a quite reasonable hour. It's finals that go, round after round, into the small hours of the morning. There's a lot of the best players in the state in the league and we're out of competitive form; what are the odds we'd even make finals, much less go far in them? On the other hand, that's exactly what you convince yourself of just before going on the hottest streak of your life. You know how competitive anything works.

I said we could simply go and, if we're still playing at 11 pm, declare we're done and forfeit the rest. bunnyhugger answered, probably correctly, that we would not. If we were doing well to be in playoffs we'd tell ourselves we could stick around for one more game and see how far we can get, and yeah, we'd probably repeat that until we were very sorry the next morning.

So, disappointing JTK a little, we called it off. There would be no Thursday pinball tournament for us. ... Except ...

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Let me now close out pictures from that day in Ann Arbor and then throw in a couple from a Zen Tournament night at Lansing Pinball League to fill out the six pictures I normally give this sort of thing:

The famous Nickels Arcade, not far off Ashley's and the theaters and all. A hundred and five years old, now! Well, coming on 106 this year. But you see the centennial banners.

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Old hardware in the window of one of the computer shops in the arcade.

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The collections-of-comic-strips section of the Dawn Treader book store. Last time or so that I was here they had like a dozen Gil Thorp collections and they're all gone now. Too bad.

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Sidewalk decor outside the State Theatre. Also below this you can see the cryptic markings of some obscure, unknowable purpose on the sidewalk.

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And now to the Zen Tournament! Which once again bunnyhugger and I did not win. But that's what the trophies given to the winning team look like under a flash photograph.

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Here's what the back sides look like, without a flash, and looking like they're barely even the same metal-colored plastic. I love the complexity of the reflections on them, though.

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Trivia: NASA contracted with the David Clark Company to manufacture nine spacesuits for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program; they would have the serial numbers 801 through 809. Source: Lunar Outfitters: Making the Apollo Space Suit, Bill Ayrey.

Currently Reading: Retail Gangster: The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie, Gary Weiss.

Comments

[reynardo]

Suddenly the pictures are working again.