The first thing we hoped to get to Friday at Motor City Furry Con was the roller coaster furries meetup. It was labelled ``Furry Thoosies'', ``thoosies'' being modern Internet slang for ``roller coaster enthusiasts'' that ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunny_hugger hates. I'm not sure I have an opinion yet myself.
I had assumed we got there when it was still setting up but, no, it was as set up as it would get. The projector wasn't working so there wouldn't be any showing of on-ride videos which is probably fine, since picking out and showing videos is the least interesting part of the discussion. Instead the host was throwing out a series of questions and taking one, in rare cases two, answers from the audience before moving on. It was hard to escape the feeling that bunny_hugger and I and this one other guy were monopolizing the discussion, although after about a half-hour two other people warmed up to answering things.
We never quite got a good cross-discussion going, though, and we didn't get to talk much about our most interesting roller coaster riding of the past year --- The Ride To Happiness in Plopsaland de Panne, and The Wild One at Six Flags America. We weren't even able to offer our knowledge that Kentucky Kingdom was now owned by the same company that owns Dollywood; the park's ownership was discussed by several people none of whom would stand aside for the people who knew. (Also it's weird to get into opinions about who owns it when it's a reasonably easy-to-look-up fact, except that Internet in the Ren Cen was very minimally available.) Well, it wasn't our panel and it's not our responsibility to correct people even on matters of fact.
We had to leave it before the panel was quite done, though, because while we weren't able to hold any panels we were able to oversee an event. Last year someone had brought a Surfers pinball game to the convention, and a couple weeks ago we got confirmation they were bringing it again. So I got permission to hold a pinball tournament on it. This wouldn't be a sanctioned tournament, in case anyone cared about that, but it could be fun anyway. We picked Friday evening for it, as we could see two hours with nothing particularly interesting to us and, based on past years when machines were brought in, we weren't sure it would survive if we held the event on Sunday.
What we failed to do was make up signs before hand. Also to contact the person bringing the game or running the game room the moment we arrived that we were ready to go. We got to the game room and the people keeping watch had no idea what we were talking about, and we didn't have anything but a cute little trophy bunny_hugger had made to show off.
So there wasn't anything to do but lunge at anyone taking even a long glance at Surfers and tell them there was a tournament going on, would you like to be part of it? And most people were a little confused, as if suspecting a trick --- the trophy, in its comic smallness, did much to convey our sincerity --- but went along with it. It helped that we pared the rules down as much as possible: play up to two games, better score counting. The four people with the best finishes at 8:30 would be invited to play one game each, highest score getting the trophy.
In the ninety minutes or so of this we got a healthy fifteen or so putting up games --- it'd be hard to fit many more games in, even for as short-playing a game as Surfers --- and we even got many of the players following instructions and getting back at 8:30. Only one of the top four finishers didn't appear, and fortunately the fifth-place finisher did, so we could have a four-person playoff.
The lone drawback is that Surfers is a one-player game, so everyone had to play their games sequentially. It turned out the pinball guy had brought another game, the four-player Bow And Arrow, but it had some scoring problems with player three that would have made it inappropriate for four-player games. I mean, experienced pinball players could have rolled with it, but for what we supposed tobe novices playing their first tournament-like thing ever? No, keep it simple. Simpler than that.
So Rock 'n' Roll Dragon, the top seed, started out, and put up a decent but not impressive 1,376. bunny_hugger, second second, went second --- she likes going as soon as she can in one-player games --- and had a slightly better 1,678. This was almost a thousand points behind her qualifying score, but it was still better than anything I ever put up, which is why I wasn't in finals. Next, Moki --- fourth seed --- started out with a killer first ball and while the rest was not as good, it was still worth 2,490 points, third-best score anyone put up in qualifying or finals. And then, Akira, the third seed, came up and threatened to break the everyone-does-a-little-better with three lousy and one okay ball. But then on the fifth ball, suddenly, everything starts coming together. They get the ball up and into the valuable candycane scoop, they get the ball back up into the pop bumpers, they just keep on going, passing Rock 'n' Roll Dragon, and bunny_hugger, and closing in on Moki ...
And then the ball drained, at a mere 2,231 points. Moki took the trophy and we did our best to announce to the world --- and, for me, to the Motor City Furry Con Telegram group --- but if anyone besides our half-dozen players and onlookers noticed, I don't know.
We hope to do this again next year, though, and with the experience gained in this we should be better prepared. If we know for sure they'll have pinball machines in enough time, for example, we could even do sanctioned tournaments. We might yet make it into something too complicated to be fun.
And for some plain, simple fun? Motor City Furry Con pictures. Enjoy.
Journeying from the Looney Tunes area to what lies past the miniature railroad ride.
That's right, it's Mardis Gras! Although we already passed Ragin' Cajun before this. Mardis Gras: not just for go-karts, though.
It's the section that held The Wild One, which we certainly weren't going to visit the park without riding a bunch.
Cute little hill in The Wild One's infield. Not sure why they put one there; maybe it was useful before the roller coaster was moved.
The ramp up is your nice classic slow incline, like we know from older parks and coasters like Conneaut Lake Parks's Blue Streak (RSVP).
bunny_hugger pauses to get a picture of the coaster coming back.
Trivia: The 1977 movie 2076 Olympiad tells the story of the Olympic Games that year being sponsored and broadcast on an erotic cable network, with the Games therefore focusing not on athletic skills but sexual performance. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. So the appendix about Olympics-inspired movies lists that, but not Animalympics. Fursecution is real!
Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.
