austin_dern | We tried to warn you all but oh dear?

Saturday morning had a panel that would have been neat to see, ``Your Plastic Pals'', getting everyone's inflatable toys out together to be seen and played with. It was at 8:30 am. I don't like anything that much. But Saturday would be the most-packed day for programming at the convention, and one that at least did see us doing the least back-and-forth travel between the convention hotel and the place where we were staying.

As alluded earlier the big event was the fursuit parade, for which bunnyhugger would wear not Velveteen but her BunnyHugger outfit. We weren't sure which she had worn in the parade the year before, but, University of Michigan had just been knocked out of the NCAA (Men's) Basketball tournament the evening before so she expected some good response to her Michigan State t-shirt here in metro Ann Arbor. In fact, she got a bunch of ``Go Green!'' or other congratulatory messages, Michigan State still being in the playoffs at that point, and concluded either the rivalry wasn't that strong or Michigan fans just know when they're beat.

Also as mentioned there was no parking anywhere to be found at the hotel or its overflow lot. I dropped bunnyhugger off with her bag, and I went to the nearest spot, in the strip mall across the highway. Despite how close we came to the scheduled start of the parade I had time to walk back to the hotel and even got a good, unobstructed space with big glass windows behind me. It was maybe the best spot I've ever had for a fursuit parade; I could see people in the far background starting off and then passing in front of me for the real parade. The whole thing ran nearly eighteen minutes, the longest yet for one of these. And bunnyhugger, despite her perpetual scheme of finding the back of these parades so she doesn't have to wait around in suit for the group photo, ended up near the front of the parade. Just as well, as they'd taken the group photo inside the Main Events ballroom before setting out, so she didn't have to wait for anything afterwards anyway. (I assume this was because outdoors it kept threatening to rain, although it never did anything too much Saturday.)

After the parade and a little milling around we went our separate ways, so she could change out of suit and I could get the car and drive over. I forget what slowed me down but I was pulling into the parking lot just as bunnyhugger started texting to ask where the heck I was. She wasn't amused to find out how far away I'd had to park.

Despite the business of Saturday we had a couple hours and used the time, first, to get some lunch and second, to give bunnyhugger a little time to rest and work. We got lunch from the Tim Horton's near our hotel. Hospitality, for a change, did offer something promising, a vegetarian option we would actually be into. Among the meals we could exchange our sponsor's meal ticket for was an Impossible Burger. If we'd had the time Friday we'd have exchanged it then, on the supposition that they might run out if we waited too long. Saturday would have been a good time to use it, but we'd left one of the tickets in the hotel room and if we had to leave at all it was going to be annoying to get back. We would get lunch Sunday afternoon, at last, and they hadn't run out of Impossible Burgers. It happens we hit at a moment they were critically low on Tater Tots, so we had a side of fruit salad. More important is they didn't have mayo but we carried on despite hardship.

Since besides Impossible Burgers they had a most wonderful thing in Hospitality: a pinball machine! A Surfers, a 1967 Bally game with zipper flippers and a theme that you notice is about a tidal wave flooding the beach. If you compare the backglass to the main playfield. The art's by Jerry Kelley, as bunnyhugger spotted; Kelley was the person her favorite pinball artist (Christian Marche) was told to draw like when he got hired. It was a little beat up --- for a while Friday night one of the pop bumpers was barely triggering --- but it was there, on free play, attracting people all Friday and Saturday long. And as bunnyhugger said, if she'd known there'd be a game there she'd have scheduled a tournament.

Maybe it's as well she didn't. Saturday evening, when we came in around dance time, the game was turned off, and all Sunday it was turned off as well. We assume something catastrophic and beyond their ability to fix at the con happened. It's quite disappointing; in our time on the table we were finally working through things like how to play it all right, even cracking two thousand points on the four-digit scoring reel.

Something on the table would cause a gate to open, so the right outline instead fed the ball back into the shooter lane, and while I was getting to be pretty reliable about opening it I was never sure just what did it. There's a small rollover target that seems plausible, but hitting both the two blue (non-pop) bumpers also seemed plausible. There are fewer rule guides published online than you'd expect for a 58-year-old pinball game, so we couldn't get confirmation.

We had wondered if Vix brought the game, and had a slow time finding him to ask. No; it'd come from [ Name I immediately forgot ], who'd gotten the table in [ time frame I immediately forgot ] through a process that didn't stick in my head. Vix is still hoping to get Earthshaker up and running in good enough shape to endure a long, hot weekend in the gaming room, but it's not there now.

We'd be away from the con a little while, to eat and rest and all that. And then ... a lot of stuff. That's to come.

With today's pictures I close out our short visit to the Cass County Carousel in Logansport, Indiana.

One of the chariots, with I assume unrestored or minimally-restored paint, so the style is probably close to what this had a century-plus ago.

Tiger yawning right at you!

Here's the bag that the rings get kept in when they're not in the arm.

Historical plaque explaining the Dentzel carousel, with a bit of discussion of how it migrated before being housed here.

The completion of the plaque. The plaque's wording makes it sound like intact Dentzel carousels are exceptionally rare, and for Gustave Dentzel that's true, but there are a fair number of his son William Dentzel carousels and those have equally good claim to the Dentzel Carousel name.

And something outside that, I think wasn't running that day: a miniature train that goes past the carousel and the tennis courts and other things. There's also a miniature golf course but we didn't have the time for that. And why did we not? ... You'll see.

Trivia: In July 1877 when President Rutherford B Hayes ordered the US Army to attack the strikers in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, most of the soldiers had not been paid in months. (Democrats, holding that Hayes had not lived up to his part in the Compromise of 1877 to remove federal troops from the South, had refused Army appropriations.) Source: A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters, Scott Reynolds Nelson.

Currently Reading: One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and Succession, Birch Bayh.

PS: What's Going On In Gil Thorp? Is Emily Thorp back in the strip? January - April 2025 ... worth learning.