Among the many things we lost to Covid-19 was Pinburgh, the center of the pinball calendar, greatest contest in the world. It ran as an adjunct to the ReplayFX convention, and alongside Pinburgh ran several side tournaments, the Intergalactic Pinball Tournament and the Women's International Pinball Tournament. The vast collection of the Professional and Amateur Pinball Association was broken up and sold off. It happens a friend who was tech for PAPA lost his job in that too.
But ... the Pittsburgh Pinball, this year, got permission from the dormant Replay Foundation to host a Pinburgh tournament. This would not be the tournament that would have been in 2020, with over a thousand players occupying Pittsburgh's Anthrocon Convention Center. It would be a smaller thing, held at something called ``Rezzanine Esports'' in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, with a mere 144 players buying tickets that were triple? Something like that? the price of Pinburgh 2020. They still sold out in nanoseconds.
But also revived were the Intergalactic --- now dubbed the Bash at the Burgh for reasons not known to me at this time --- and the Women's International Pinball Tournament. I, like many, was skeptical of this revived Pinburgh and wanted, well, to see it succeed but not so much to lay out that much cash. Similarly for the Bash at the Burgh which, following Intergalactic rules, would be playing only a couple of games and then finding out everybody else did much better than me. Not worth going all the way to Pittsburgh for.
But the Women's tournament ... now that would be, as it had been, Pinburgh-esque, six rounds of playing banks of three games each (an electromechanical, a solid-state, and a modern game each), plus finals. And the price was more reasonable. I wouldn't be playing, of course, but ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger? That could be fun. It might have some of the thrill of Pinburgh back. And it would be a good excuse to visit Kennywood again, something we never need much coaxing to do.
All I would need is to take a Monday off from work, as there's no driving back Sunday night and my going into the home office at 8 am the day after. This would make a short week, as I'd already planned at the end to take time off for my family gettogether, but that's all right. We can have short weeks too. (Happily everything at work was stable enough this wasn't an inconvenience.)
So, three weeks ago Friday, I closed up my work computer, tossed my laptop bag in the car, and tried to check whether there was anything else we might need for the weekend, and we started the big drive down to Pittsburgh. Along the way I learned that my rough idea --- ``take I-80, the Ohio Turnpike until it splits off to, uh, I-71 or whatever it is down to Pittsburgh'' --- did not understand that it's I-80 that splits off the Turnpike, which turns into I-76 to go into Pennsylvania. And my talk of I-71, which bunnyhugger associates with C-------ti, only confused matters. OK, but we do pass I-71, which wends its way up to Cleveland, and that's not far, for our purposes, from where the Turnpike becomes I-76, so there was an element of not-wrongness to my loose idea of how to get there.
We would not be staying in the old Red Roof Inn this time. Too far from wherever the heck Bridgeville is. We hope it's doing all right, but we went to a different hotel from a different chain that was right next to a Dunkin Donuts and a mass of overlapping roads our satellite navigator could never quite figure out, adding a moment of thrill to every moment interacting with I-79. I enjoyed the sleep of a person going to Kennywood in the morning. bunnyhugger had the broken sleep of a person whose partner responds to being woken up and told he's snoring with, ``Yes, I suppose I am'' and then going back to snoring.
(That interaction did not happen this trip, so far as I remember, but it's the sort of thing going on.)
Anyway the important thing is, finally, we're back to a trip report that's about both amusement parks and pinball.
Back now to Bronner's and the wonderland of Christmas there last November:
While Bronner's specializes in Christmas it'll sell ornaments for any holiday it can, and here's some Day of the Dead ornaments. The picture should have been rotated but I accidentally forgot to and I like the composition better this way.
And if we're at the Day of the Dead, Halloween can't be far off, can it? And intermingled some? There's a greenish skull down there that you could probably pass off as Jim Carrey in The Mask, in case you needed for some reason.
Here's your office themed ornaments for people who want a wireless printer that, much like a real one, doesn't print. Note the Wordle ornaments at the top, too.
bunnyhugger spotted a college ornament for the place where she took a couple math classes! Also, this year, a photography course.
You ever run out of beeswax and have none of it for yourself for your Christmas tree? Here's all the beeswax you'll need for that, then, and please enjoy!
There are not so many dragon ornaments as you might imagine given that everybody loves dragons and wants them around, but at least they do have some pudgy green glittery dragons, that's something.
Trivia: After the success of the 1906 Intercalated Olympic Games the Greek government formed organizing committees for both a 1910 and a 1914 games, but conflicts throughout the era kept Greece from being able to do more than make loose plans. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. I'm not clear whether there even was an organizing committee to develop a 1918 games.
Currently Reading: Michigan History, July/August 2024, Editor Sarah Hamilton. Cover article on Pop Tarts!
