Nothing to do, no where to go-oh
While I was, I think, reasonable in my optimism about bunny_hugger's chances in State Women's Finals, there was a weakness she had. She hadn't any experience on the machines they'd be playing. She hadn't even been to the venue, the Crazy Quarters Arcade in Bay City, before. She had the right to pick any venue she deemed acceptable for the women's championship, but copied the choice of PH, running the open tournament. This was the easiest way to be sure there would be a venue that meets the need for a great number of varied games in good condition. Also, nobody questions PH's judgement and impartiality, so even though he competes in the open tournament, people are sure he's not picking locations and game lists to improve his own chances. They could even less suspect bunny_hugger of trying to rig the tuornament in her favor.
But there is only one good cure for inexperience on tables, and that's playing them. Crazy Quarters Arcade runs a weekly tournament and so she took the drive over that way. From this she learned it's a less onerous drive from campus to Crazy Quarters so she might just make some trips to play pinball after work some days when she has the time. (I've assured her over and over that I don't mind if she plays pinball without me.) She had some time for playing games on her own. In the tournament she didn't have a pick of games, which meant there wasn't any focusing on games she wanted to know better, but it does simulate being in tournament circumstances and being tossed onto a game you wouldn't have picked. (I think at that time PH hadn't yet released the official game list, either, so there wasn't any way to avoid practicing on a game that could not be played.) Everyone else in the open and women's finals had the same idea, of course. bunny_hugger ended with a middle-of-the-pack finish of the 37 people who attended. She took that as a bad sign. I pointed out that last year she had basically same same finish in basically the same-size crowd at the tournament at RLM's venue just before going on to win State Women's.
That's still not getting experienced on the games, though. So the Friday before finals --- the day of that horribly early local-news presentation, and one where she had to be on campus for a morning meeting --- she went back after work for some more practice. This also led her to discover that Crazy Quarters is not so long or awful a drive from campus as she had imagined. This opens the possibility that she might go to the weekly tournaments there after work more often. I've promised --- and mean it --- that I don't mind if she competes in tournaments without me there. She was out to the close of the venue, maybe after (they were slow to shut the place down with all Michigan Pinball congregating on it for practice), but still felt no more confident in herself.
The next-best-thing to playing a pinball is, of course, learning from others' experience. This may not help you figure the reflexes you need for shots, but it can show what shots are possible, what strategies to use, that sort of thing. And that we could learn from the comfort of home on Saturday, watching Ypsi Pinball doing live streams of the Open tournament. We did spent most of Saturday afternoon watching that, but it's hard to learn very much from it. Players over and over kept doing the thing where they hold the flipper up, then drop it as the ball touches it, and flip up again, only now the ball is stopped. It hardly seems possible and yet there they go doing it as if that were possible.
She also asked me for advice on a couple games, particularly the 90s Williams game No Fear, based on the extreme skull. I play it a good deal in simulation, on Pinball Arcade, and enjoy it, but I had to go to its instruction sheets over and over to explain why certain things happen. Or how to break that down into the two or three things to remember during a games. I fear all I did was make her situation worse but, after all, what are the odds that it would come down to strategy on No Fear?
We got to bed early Saturday night, hoping for the best for Sunday.
The rides are done; the park is closing up. Ready for some last looks at Camden Park?
The food-and-drinks stand is adjacent to the Hawnted House and the toy store is at the end of that block.
And a last view from inside the park, of the ticket booth. (It's a pay-one-price park, so it's really just admission you pay for there.) Looks like the booth you might get tickets from at the county fair.
That kids' car ride with all the cars parked for the night.
This is the last bit of the track that I think wasn't shared in the other photos so now you can recreate this ride perfectly in Roller Coaster Tycoon. You're welcome.
Evening view of the Camden Park sign. Sad to say we didn't get to see it by night but most of the neon is missing so it wouldn't be as good a show as we'd hope.
And the sign from a more extreme angle and ... say, what's that underneath, there? That big black rectangle on the lower side of the arrow ...
Trivia: In an October 1945 debate on Capitol Hill Ohio representative Fredrick C Smith (R) denounced the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association --- responsible for settling the tens of millions of displaced persons in Europe --- as ``an international racket of the first order'' and the tool of Communist governments in Eastern Europe. Source: The Long Ride Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, Ben Shephard.
Currently Reading: Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum, Leonard Susskind, Art Friedman.