Second round, and what ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger claimed beforehand was as far as she wanted to get. This round was up against TLH, a Grand Rapids regular --- Grand Rapids regulars, turns out, made up something like ten of the sixteen competitors --- and a solid enough player. Her mid-era game is first: Genesis, the odd Metropolis-themed game. The trick I learned --- from RLM, who used to bring this table to tournaments --- and used to win second place at Pinburgh D Division of hitting the drop targets up front won't work here. Completing the set would give only a fraction the progress that Pinburgh's table did, not enough to make the risk worthwhile. bunnyhugger has good control, though, and takes a win.
bunnyhugger's old-era game, Fast Draw, is next, and of course she takes a win. On to TLH's old-era game, Flash, an early solid state machine. This is not the Flash Gordon machine (RLM doesn't have one, but does have Buck Rogers there), but one with a god-of-storms theme. I am good about not hovering near my wife, lest I jinx her, but she wins on this game too. And then on to bunnyhugger's middle-era game, The Shadow.
It may strike you that she picked Fast Draw and The Shadow last round too. So she did; while you could not repeat a game within a match against a particular opponent, you were allowed to pick the same games in successive rounds. bunnyhugger had her preferred picks for old, middle, and new-era games and picked the same ones each round. I imagine she had backups in mind, in case one of the tables was picked by her opponent, or if the table went down mid-tournament. (Her preferred choice for mid-era game, the Royal Rumble pro wrestling-themed game, had gone down Friday night or Saturday morning and was out of action, in fact, which is how The Shadow got place of pride.)
Well, The Shadow was kind to her, one of the two times the weed of crime bore fruit she kind of liked. And so her second round was a perfect sweep, 4-0. bunnyhugger was now in the final four. I thought this a great relief in that if she lost in the next round, she wouldn't be kicking herself for faceplanting. She would only be kicking herself for falling just short of finals.
Before going on to semifinals, and a more complicated adventure, let me put in two things that don't chronologically fit but will let me balance out word lengths.
First is food. We didn't think to pack foods for the day, only heading out with a sandwich each that we ate on the drive over. RLM Amusements doesn't have a kitchen. Ah, but in the next room --- ordinarily closed to all but staff, but today open to all --- was a table set up with wonderful three-inch square pans of brownies. One of the Grand Rapids women has a baking side(?) hustle and she brought in a couple of flavors. More than could be eaten during the event, in fact, even allowing that the rocky road brownie, protected as it was by chocolate chips and marshmallows and all, was nearly impossible to open with the plastic forks available to us. We'd eat a couple there, and take some home for coffee break later.
Second is administrative. The IFPA provided nice blank forms for seven-game matches, and bunnyhugger printed out enough copies for all the games, both winner and consolation brackets. ... We thought. As we got into the last games I noticed we were going to be two or three sheets short. I imagine a couple of people lost their sheets and then grabbed new ones without my noticing, but I don't really know. I snagged RLM in one of the few gaps between his commenting on the stream and getting stuck balls loose. He didn't have a printer, but he had a photocopier and I had blank sheets and we got through the tournament with several spares.
Tomorrow: More pinball!
Today: more KennyKon of July. And the mysterious gathering on the Thunderbolt infield:
People walking their way past the big T inclined flowerbed.
And here's what we're there for: the group picture! You can just barely make out a camera guy in the distance, on top of the ladder there. Also you can see bunnyhugger facing the wrong way. (Not sure if this is just before or just after the picture was taken.)
Couple of people looking at the Thunderbolt supports, from a view we, like, never get to have.
OK, this has to be the group photo, or close to it. See how bunnyhugger is facing the correct way again?
And here she gets some pictures of Thunderbolt from the inside.
We take dueling pictures of the slightly inclined T flowerbed.
Trivia: In the 1920s landscape architect Ernest Herminghaus recommended that, as an aide to aviators, airfields be planted with geometric flower beds to guide their approaches and ranges. For Kansas City's Fairfax Airport he extended the axis of the main runway with a 150-foot-long reflecting pool filled with water lilies and fountains, and with patterns of tulips, petunias, and roses guiding toward the field. Source: Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure, Alastair Gordon.
Currently Reading: Matariki: The Star of the Year, Rangi Matamua.
