The fragrance that she leaves hangs in the air

And then the other pinball thing, from just last week. This would be the split-flipper or 'Zen' tournament, a not-for-points thing that's the traditional close of our league season. bunnyhugger went in with high hopes about this was the first tournament she'd ever won --- when we played together in the second season of the league --- and that she and I had one win each, with other players, and nothing since then. I pointed out she had another win, since we have five Zen Tournament trophies on our mantle. This we hotly debated, but not hotly enough to go to the mantle and count. Still, it's been a while.

We would go in as a team again, and in practice put up a score on The Beatles high enough to get on the high score table. This seemed anomalously good. But in another tradition, we had an odd number of people show up for the tournament. There was someone who's sometimes in the league at the bar but he wasn't interested in playing. So, we had to find someone willing to double up and play with IAS who, in an annoyingly piquant touch, always appeals for partners on the league Facebook group and never gets a response. I was glad to play with them, though, and they were glad to play with me.

Except that, as luck would have it, our first match based on team seeding put me and IAS up against me and bunnyhugger. Whenever someone gets on two teams there's some divided loyalties but somehow it didn't strike me that I'd have to deal with that. I played my best, throughout, of course, but me-and-bunnyhugger beat the higher-seeded me-and-IAS, two games to none.

Me-and-bunnyhugger would go on for some time in the winners bracket. Me-and-IAS would also be a pretty solid team in the second chance bracket too, winning pretty steadily. I was starting to think that I was a lock for one of the Zen trophies, either with IAS or with my wife. And then, what do you know, but me-and-bunnyhugger got knocked out of the winners bracket.

We had some interesting things happen. Like, people kept taking me --- in either group --- to Star Trek, a game that it turns out I can play very well just on the one flipper. With IAS I'd take the left flipper, with bunnyhugger the right, but either way we just didn't lose on it. And yet different competing teams would take me to it, acting like they had a sure game ready to knock me out. There's a clear lack of information about matches in this tournament.

In the end, bunnyhugger and I went up against the power team of JAB-and-MAG, two of the top players in the league this year. And we beat them, two-games-to-none, knocking them out of the Winners Bracket! We just had to do it one more time and we'd take home our second couples trophies.

And that's when we faceplanted. JAB-and-MAG took their second chance and beat us two games in a row, winning the tournament and the trophies. Well, we had some good play getting there.

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Now some more Jack Rabbit love from Seabreeze Park.

Jack Rabbit 101 logo, celebrating when the park was able to actually open and commemorate their roller coaster becoming the fourth coaster in the centennial club. (The park didn't open in 2020, but according to its Wikipedia entry they did run the coaster for staff and such private riding.) In the gift shop they had stickers and patches that looked similar but celebrated 102 years.

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A commemoration from the US House of Representatives for the centennial (actually for 2021), noting that the house will ``publicly acknowledge those exemplary individuals, organizations, and roller coasters who have attained outstanding success in their respective fields of endeavor''.

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That beam in front, I promise you, says, ``Pay As You Leave'' in extremely faded paint, reflecting the long-ago instructions about how to pay for your ride, back before the park took up the pay-one-price model. And really before that too; they uncovered the sign in renovations done in the 90s, I think it was.

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Historical sign explaining the Pay As You Leave thing. I have never seen anyone explain what you did if you rode without the pay.

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Another historical marker about that time in 1977 when they showed a guh-guh-guh-girl could throw levers just as well as a man could.

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And here's a picture of Seabreeze's second-most-important coaster, one that nobody talks about but should: Bobsleds, a wonderful weird little terrain coaster.

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Trivia: At the festivities in Oradell, New Jersey, celebrating his 1962 spaceflight Eagle Scout Ronald Nillsen gave astronaut Wally Schirra a merit badge made specially by his old scout troup, Number 36, for ``achievements in Astronautics'', which Nillsen called ``the first Astronaut merit badge''. Nillsen said the requirements were:

• Present yourself fully clothed for the test, a nine-hour space journey in the vicinity of the Earth
• Take off and come to an altitude of at least 100 miles
• Maintain minimum speed of not less than 16,000 miles per hour
• Make no fewer than six orbits, coursing a distance of at least 155,000 miles
• Upon landing avoid carelessly placed rescue vehicles.

Source: Sigma 7: The Six Mercury Orbits of Walter M Schirra, Jr, Colin Burgess.

Currently Reading: Defining NASA: The Historical Debate Over the Agency's Mission, W D Kay.

PS: What's Going On In Judge Parker? Is there even a Judge Parker anymore? July - October 2022 gets a plot explanation.