As previously mentioned, today was a road trip. I was plannin' to take two road trips durin' my vacation, but scaled it back to one so I could spend some time with my wife. Today I headed up to Winchester, MD, to verify two entries on the Free State Pinball Association site... I made this same trip about a month ago, but the first stop was only open M-F and I couldn't find the second. This time I went on a Friday and got better directions. The first stop was Ellie's Carry Out in the charmin'ly named town of Finksburg. There was a T2 there 6 months ago, but it has been replace with a Mousin' Around. While I do appreciate how that game ties in with yesterday's "dropped g gerund" theme, I was a little disappointed. To use an analogy, it's like I went there expectin' a classic Williams game and got a mediocre late model Bally game instead. I played it, had a fun time, ate a pretty decent BLT, so no big loss. The second place was a wash... no pinball in sight.
When I got home I did my civic duty and updated the FSPA site, then spent a half hour or so on the Pinball Rebel Locator site enterin' as many Maryland pinballs as I could remember, includin' addin' 20 of the 25 games there and correctin' the existin' entries (c'mon, guys, BK ≠ BK2K).
OK, I'll stop the Journey thing now.
Today's pin work ended up as gratifying as yesterday was frustrating. I started doing some work on the playfield glass switch, but after taking the newly installed glass bracket off I sort of stopped. Instead I put tops on as many of the pop bumpers as I could easily reach (the main ramp blocks one). I also started goofing with the backbox lock again and found that the coin door lock I was trying to use was too long. Luckily, one of the locks from the Mystery Box was not only short but it also had a key, and after fiddling with it for a while I found that it worked just fine. I even managed to find two security bolts in the huge container of hardware I salvaged. I was extremely happy that the Mystery Box has actually paid unexpected dividends. I even put a lock on the coin door, so that game is ready to be put on location!
I was looking at the calendar today and marvelled that there's only one more month until the Pinball Wizards show. Since it's always the first weekend in May, there's always a chance that it will fall on our Anniversary, May 1st... which in fact it did in 2004. Although I could try to go to the show instead of taking Mrs. Entropy out to dinner, I'm guessing that would be a non-starter in our house. In 2004 I went on Friday April 30th, which was generally unsatisfactory because of shorter hours (4 - 9 on Fri vs 10 - 7 on Sat), and the general suckingness of starting a 3.5 hour drive at 9PM, which got me home around 1 AM. Sadly, it will happen again next year... I might go on Sunday (10-4) which gives me an extra hour, but I'm guessing the flea marketage will be poor at best. White Rose is just the opposite: Friday is 10 - 8, and Saturday is 9 - 6, so I go on Friday and take the extra hour. Does anyone else put this much thought into these kinds of things?
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