My baby is leaving home... *sob*

I really haven't been posting a lot lately because I really haven't been doing much. It just hasn't been a good pinball year. Work on T2 is stalled because I need to sand the cabinet, and I can't do that while it's cold and there's almost 2 feet of snow on the ground (OK, there isn't that much on the ground right now, but there has been that much this month, and there's still a non-zero amount as I write this). And that leaves league stuff, which is that I'm #2 in A in VA and #Crap in B in MD. If you're surprised by the former, don't be... it was largely dumb luck. I had two average weeks and most of the guys I've played against had crappy weeks. I expect to be beaten back down the ladder soon.

And there's actually news, but I'm going to hold onto it for a while because of this:

The league sponsors a tournament every year that is coming up next week. League members usually bring in extra games, but the problem is that most of those games are trapped in basements by the aforementioned snow and mud caused by the melting snow. The guy organizing was lamenting this fact, and I mentioned that I have one game that is not in my basement, Quicksilver. So before I mentally talked myself out of it, I volunteered to bring it and leave it at John's Place for a week.

Now, for some context: Quicksilver has not been on location for about 25 years, and has been in my possession for 24 of those years. It has been moved a couple of times, but always in a truck... never in my SUV. I have never removed the game's head. Even when my wife and I promoted it out of the basement, I kept one bolt in the head and pivoted the head to get it through the too narrow porch door. But I had agreed to do this knowing that it would be a great big anxiety-inducing adventure.

So this weekend I got it ready for Quicksilver's location comeback. Two of the player displays had problems, so I replaced them with displays from Eight Ball Deluxe. This proved problematic, until I realized that I needed to jump pins 11 & 12 of the Bally displays to get them to work in a Stern game. I tested the coin mechs, cleaned out the coin box, set it to 50 cents per game, verified that the tilt worked, replaced most of the LEDs with normal bulbs because I didn't want to annoy paying customers with the flickering, changed the door lock from the identically keyed one to a unique one, zeroed the audit statistics, verified that the backbox lock worked, removed some magnets I had stuck on the coin door, cleaned some strapping tape residue that's been on the game since we moved to Maryland 15 years ago, changed the replay scores, printed a new pricing and replay card, switched the game to 3 balls, cleaned out the coin box, and gave it a quick cleaning.

Then I did the unthinkable. I removed the head. I set the backglass aside for safe keeping, panicked when it slid down and fell on the ground (thank gooseness it didn't break), and put the backglass somewhere safer where it couldn't fall. I started unplugging plugs from the boards, labeling them as I went. I also had to unscrew most of the wire holders to get the wiring out, and when I rescrewed them I left one end open so I could re-thread the wiring easily later. I didn't realize this, but I had to unplug just about every plug in the backbox, including the displays, because it was all cable-tied together (and I had to cut a few ties before I realized this). I dropped the wiring into the body, unbolted the head and... took it off. It was extremely nerve-racking.

With my wife's help I removed the legs -- the leg bolt-sized socket wrench I got as a prize in last season's league was great for this, btw. Finally, after my wife had cleaned out the SUV, I loaded it up and it is there now.

And tomorrow is Take your Pinball to Work Day. We will find out how it goes.