Sunday for the first time in years we made the not-quite-two-hour drive to Fremont, out somewhere near nothing in the world. The main reason for this is that the Clubhouse Arcade there --- formerly Special When Lit, formerly the Blind Squirrel League --- is the location of this year's Michigan State Pinball Championship, both Open and Women's, and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger needed the practice time. Might still need some more.
But also going on was the first Michigan Seniors Pinball Championship. This event, really a just-for-fun thing, was open only to pinball players fifty years or older, which bunnyhugger and I are both in. (There was also a Youth Championship, which eight kids played in, though one had to leave early.) This threatened to be an all-day thing, and it nearly was, for other people.
Qualifying started with twelve rounds of matchplay, drawing people in random pairs on random games, many but not all of them in the State Championship this coming weekend. And I, dear reader, started out with a loss on Golden Arrow after putting up a should-be-awfully-good 81,120 (or something) score; my opponent got just a couple thousand more. All right; that happens. Then came another loss, this time on my best-ever game of X's and O's, a caveman-themed tic-tac-toe game which has a huge skill shot if you can make it the first five seconds of your ball plunging into the shooter lane. I had practiced this ahead of time and managed it once out of three times, ordinarily enough to win a game even if you don't, as I had, blow it up all three balls. But what do you know but my opponent came back and whittled away all that score on me. Then on to Joker Poker, and a loss; then on to Jacks To Open, and a terrible loss. At this point I was four games in, out of twelve, and was doing as well as if I had stayed home in bed. I can't say I was heartened.
But then my luck changed! With the next game, Blackout, I had a killer first ball and my opponent never got close again. And this started a heck of a winning streak, with my getting wins both impressive and deserved (Future Spa, Barracora, World Cup) and total nonsense (Surf Champ, a race to the bottom that I lost). I even beat CST on an electromechanical game, to my endless amazement. Ten games in, I was at the cut for finals and looking good.
But then my luck changed! With a close loss on Firepower and then having to go up against PH on Scuba, a 1960s game with tiny flippers that I had maybe one good ball on, to PH's four. Ah well. I would have to play a seven-way tiebreaker for the last six spots in playoffs, and on my old Pinburgh friend Jungle Queen. I came in in the middle of the pack, which is fine, as the important thing is that I not come in last.
I might as well have, though. Playoffs were double-elimination group-of-three games and I lost early and often, becoming one of the first players to lose two rounds. bunnyhugger, who'd won more games than I had in qualifying, had a similarly disheartening race-out-of-qualifying, knocked out in the winners bracket by the guy I lost on X's and O's to, and in the second chance bracket to PH who somehow hadn't won his first round. PH would go on not just to beat bunnyhugger but also everyone else in the second chance bracket, putting him up against the winners bracket champion, the always formidable CST. And PH went on to beat CST two matches in a row, taking the first ever state Seniors Championship in dramatic fashion. Do like to see that being exciting at least.
The advantage of being knocked out fast in playoffs, though, is that bunnyhugger was able to sniff around the games, trying them out, gathering intelligence to use this coming Sunday. Hopefully to use a lot of it, but pinball is fickle and anything can happen. I'll share the news with you when it's there to share.
Back to Oostende and our walking around while we could in that truncated Sunday in Belgium, back in June.
Now, if we'd known there would be restaurants we might have got something to eat here. Note the Señorita Daisy so apparently you can get either Spanish or Mexican food in Belgium. Also, burgers and fries.
We were intrigued by what the Bistro Beethoven might be, but also weren't hungry. You can see it's connected to Beethoven's Cafe, though.
Getting ready to return to the tram line and oh, what's this? The drawbridge is drawing!
Look at the underside of that bridge. Almost no chewing gum stuck to it at all!
And here's the boat making its way down the channel, that we all stopped and waited for.
Bye!
Trivia: The mistle thrush is one of the few birds to eat mistletoe without harm. It excretes the semi-digested slime from the inside of mistletoe fruits, which the plant hopes to have land on tree branches, stick and sprout seeds. Source: Slime: A Natural History, Susanne Wedlich.
Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.
