When the gales of November came early

[austin_dern]

After leaving the Merry-Go-Round Museum we stopped at the CVS because ... I forget why. Maybe just to use the bathroom. Thursday we'd stopped there to get some motion sickness pills and, along the way, a magazine about The Kinks, who seem to be getting more attention this past month for some reason. Saturday I don't think we meant to get anything particular, but I did see and buy that book about the electric railways that the area used to have.

Why stop at a convenience store bathroom instead of just use the one back in our hotel room? Well, it was a beautiful sunny Saturday during Halloweekends; there was no reason to assume we'd make the couple-mile drive back to the hotel in less than six hours. In fact, it was almost traffic-free, and we were back to the hotel dressing to enter the park in way less time than we had allocated.

But that meant we had more time to enjoy the park atmosphere. Also to go to the park in kigurumi again, this time with bunnyhugger in her Stitch outfit and me in Angel. We ... well, we expected many people to observe us as adorable like this, because we are. Did not get as much comment on this Saturday as we expected, although a few people mentioned, including if I recall correctly one of the people working the entry gate. The Angel kigurumi has advantages over the red panda in that there's much less tail, just a little puffball that compresses easily against a roller coaster seat. The disadvantage is the legs are shorter or a tighter fit. I was terrified I'd tear it while getting on any of the carousel horses. And on the Kiddy Kingdom Carousel --- which doesn't have a stirrup for your left foot --- I had to keep my leg lifted the whole ride, which challenges my butter-like muscles.

While the traffic into the park was weirdly absent, there was still plenty of foot traffic within the park. (Also a couple times an ambulance; I don't know what the normal accident rate is, though. We might have just beeen lucky in seeing the unlucky.) So as we had expected we did a lot of walking around enjoying scenery and seeing fewer other people in Stitch-and-Angel pairs than we expected. (The number would increase Sunday.) And sitting on the outskirts of the stage blasting either that ``The Monsters Are Coming, Charlie Brown'' show we saw last year too or else this year's adult-themed music show about ... I'm not sure what the story was. The stories are always just hooks to hang music numbers on but this one was more inscrutable than expected.

Toward the end of the night, though, the crowds thinned out and the riding got good again. I believe this is when we got the last rides on the roller coasters we hadn't been to yet, besides the closed Iron Dragon. By the last half-hour bunnyhugger and I were looking to session Wild Mouse. Yes, again.

Except. I noticed how little line WindSeeker had. And, yes, this year I'd ridden WindSeeker, and ridden its twin at Kings Island and was only stopped on that for not too terribly long really. But I hadn't ridden either of them at night to see what the park looked like from 301 feet up and twinkling in the lights. I detached myself from my bride and got a ride on that. In seat 13, by the way, which is what you'd hope for Halloweekends. This ride went well, everything behaving itself, and the park is indeed gorgeous as a tiny, distant model of itself covered in darkness. bunnyhugger will take my word for it.

And for all that, I had time to join bunnyhugger and get one last ride in on Wild Mouse for the night, bringing her to something like six rides for the weekend and me to five, the most we'd ridden any specific ride. Great close to the night, except that we did stop in the Breakers' gift shop and look over their trading-pin board. I don't think bunnyhugger traded anything, but now that she was open to the possibility, the possibilities seemed everywhere.

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And in photos: here's more Pinball At The Zoo. By the way I didn't come anywhere near qualifying in Main, the only tournament I put any entries in for.

Miscellaneous stuff for sale, including a lot of arcade and pinball game manuals, flyers, and miscellaneous parts. Do you see the big ramp for Whitewater? Or the backglasses beyond that?

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And here Jersey Jack shows off their latest game, one that hasn't reached any venues around us, which is a shame as it's a fun one.

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Yes, there's a Crocodile Rock jackpot and look at that animated guy.

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There's also crocodiles rocking in the form of plastic miniatures on the playfield.

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Now if you're looking to build an old-school pinball machine here's some playfields from some pure mechanical games. Star-Light on the left is unknown by that name to the Internet Pinball Database; there's games with similar names (usually Star Lite) that clearly don't match. Trik-E-Shot appears to be a 1936 game from Gotham Pressed Steel Corporation, though the Internet Pinball Database has different playfield art.

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Some more pure mechanical pinball-adjacent gadgets, along with the cup of pennies to play them.

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Trivia: The Latin word ``mas'' for ``male'' did not enter any of the Romance daughter languages either directly or as a loan word for learned speakers, except possibly as a dialect term for ``ram'' in Picardy. (Derivative words such as ``masculus'' and ``masculinus'', which have the diminutive suffix ``cul'' attached, survived in abundance.) Source: Webster's Dictionary of Word Origins, Editor Frederick C Mish.

Currently Reading: Comic books.