Archive for the ‘Trip’ Category

Roadtrip: Pinball Wizard!

Tuesday, August 12th, 2025

We headed south to Laconia today and on the way – specifically at a tiny and somewhat dilapidated gas station on Route 3 – we found this:

In 1961, very near this gas station, an American married couple named Betty and Barney Hill claimed to have interacted with aliens. Their story is a bizarre one that has never been fully explained, and inside this gas station is a memorial (of sorts) to the curious incident.

The walls of the gas station shop are covered with printouts and clippings like the examples shown above, mostly but not all about the Hill encounter. It’s a bizarre display since most of the are mounted so high up as to be unreadable, or so faded by time they are illegible. From what I have read these were created by enthusiasts years ago, and the memorial has somewhat fallen into disrepair in the decades since.

This is quintessential ‘weird tourism’ and I’m glad we stopped for a look (and bought gas!) because to be honest I’m not sure how many more years it’ll exist. As for the Hills… maybe that’s a story for another blog post one day.

Our destination today was a place we’ve been many times before: the mega-arcade Funspot. It was brutally hot today, and we were looking forward to many hours in air conditioning playing games.

And so we did! I was particularly interested in pinball today, especially the newer tables that have seen a resurgence in popularity this last decade or so. Funspot continues to increase their pinball collection and there’s about 50 now including a dozen or more from the last few years, all of which I played.

The new machines are computer controlled, and have all sorts of elements – screens, moving magnets, ramps or tunnels that change position or shape – that weren’t possible with the technology of a few decades ago. They play fundamentally the same as pinballs from yesteryear but are much more complex and dynamic and – I’ll admit – difficult! Ultimately they’re fun though, and if you haven’t tried a recent table from a company like Stern I recommend you do.

As fancy as the new tables are this doesn’t mean the old ones are forgotten! Funspot still has dozens kept in great shape that are fun to play. But I can’t deny they feel a little… simple after playing the newer ones.

They’ve got a lot of loaner tables as well, as well as a pinball club and league that meets weekly and has regular competitions. I’m not very good at pinball, but I think with practice I could be ok, and if I lived closer their club would be very attractive.

Of course I played a lot of video games as well, including the unusual Us vs Them laserdisc game which I don’t recall ever seeing before. It’s not a great game, but it’s apparently very rare with fewer than 20 known working cabinets. I believe this is the only laserdisc game at Funspot right now and at 41 years old I’m amazed it still works!

That’s some weirdo contorting himself while playing Track & Field. Moving on…

No visit to Funspot is complete without the ticket redemption machines, and we probably spent half our time there playing these guys. As I had before, I ended up doing best at these retro spinning wheel machines and walked away with a truly monstrous string of tickets:

In total we ended up with over 3000 tickets, which was enough to redeem for a yo-yo and about $5 worth of candy! Not bad for $80 πŸ˜‰

We spent almost five hours at Funspot and it was great. It’s always great, and I don’t doubt we’ll return again one day. If you’re ever in this area, it’s worth going out of your way to visit.

Our roadtrip ends in a plain but comfy hotel in Laconia, with the drive home awaiting us tomorrow. We’ve got nothing planned for the trip back, but who knows what the road will bring us?

Roadtrip: Training!

Monday, August 11th, 2025

On the way to today’s destination, we stopped at a shop called Chutters which claims to have the longest candy counter in the world!

That photo isn’t even the entire selection, which ran down an entire wall of the store. Hundreds of different lollies were available, and naturally we invested in a few. They had all sorts of other candies also, as well as souvenirs, and to be honest the store was worth a better look if not for the fact we had somewhere we needed to be.

Mount Washington, at 6288 feet, is the tallest mountain in the northeastern USA. In 1869 the world’s first cog railway was built to ascend the mountain (for tourism reasons!) and it operates to this day. Today, we rode it to the top.

The carriages are pushed by a locomotive and ascend slowly (about 5 miles an hour) up a 25-35% grade (the second steepest in the world) along 3 miles of track to the top. The peak is about 4000 feet above the base station and the trip to the top takes about 45 minutes.

Of course the views are lovely, especially north of the track where at one point the mountain falls off almost 2000 feet. At the start the train passes through pine forests but shortly the trees are replaced by scrub and eventually – around 5000 feet above the tree line – just rocks and lichens.

I took that photo from the large visitors center at the mountain top, which has gift stores, a cafe and a few other facilities. You can see one of the trains in the photo as it approaches the station at the top. Several of the adjacent mountain peaks are visible in the distance.

Aside from the train, you can drive or hike to the top. Hiking is popular but challenging and sadly many (over 170) have died on the slope in the last 150 years. The top of Mount Washington is known for unpredictable and at times life-threatening weather but we got lucky and today experienced clear skies and lovely weather.

There’s a post office at the peak which apparently – although I’m not positive – has a unique postmark. I sent a few cards to check, so if you get one have a look πŸ™‚

The round trip is about three hours, including one at the top. The trip down is even more spectacular than up since all the views are breathtaking. I found it quite relaxing and maybe even had a micronap or two πŸ˜‰

Afterwards we checked into our hotel – the Mount Washington Hotel (now called Omni) – which has been here almost 125 years! It’s absolutely not the inspiration for the hotel in Steven King’s novel The Shining, but regardless has its own ghost named Caroline who is ‘often’ seen sitting on the bed in room 314.

As a historic and very expensive hotel with valet parking, it’s of course too fancy for proletariat like us, so I felt right at home loafing in the room enjoying fine food:

Or partaking of the facilities in the basement:

It’s been a while since I played pinball. It made me want to play them more…

Roadtrip: Ice Cream!

Sunday, August 10th, 2025

Today we drove up to the Ben & Jerry’s factory in northern Vermont for a factory tour. Photography was forbidden, but we got a good view of the factory from above and saw ice cream being made and packaged. Obviously many of the machines are automated now, and it was cool watching the process.

The sample flavour we got to try was ‘Half Baked’ which is a mix of chocolate ice cream and brownie. I didn’t try it (of course) but I had a sample of mango which was delicious.

They have three factories worldwide (two in Vermont and one in The Netherlands) and while they have 80+ flavours only seven are made in this location, to the tune of 400,000 pints a day. Amazingly enough they ship ice cream worldwide including to Australia! If you’re in Oz and get some Ben & Jerry’s from the supermarket it may have been made here.

Outside they have a comedic ‘graveyard’ of retired or failed flavours including the three very short-lived ones above. The biggest failure they ever made was ‘sugar plum’, which sold only a single pint in the first three weeks it was on sale! Apparently the popcorn ice cream was delicious, but suffered from the popcorn getting soggy too quickly πŸ™‚

The drive was lovely, through the mountains and past ski slopes of northern Vermont. We half expected this part of Vermont to be quiet this time of year but it’s the exact opposite, with lots of people out enjoying the sun and the views.

We’re staying in an interesting motel with a bowling alley and mini golf course, and our room has a loft! A relaxing place to write a few postcards and watch trash on tv…

A weird thing we noticed today was the presence of Jaws merchandise in a few shops we stopped at, including T-shirts, stickers and even the above Vermont scratchie! There’s no link between Vermont (a landlocked state) and Jaws so we can’t really explain this.

The Japan Postcards

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025

In my two weeks in Japan I sent a vast amount of postcards! It’s so easy to find good ones there that I just kept buying, and the same is true for stamps. I hope you liked the ones I sent you.

I sent a ridiculous 52 cards home, or about 3.5 every day. About a third were typical tourist cards, and some are shown above. I find writing cards in hotel rooms very relaxing, and every evening I’d do that with anime on the TV and snacks close at hand.

The Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford cards were purchased in Japan a few years ago, and the other two were found in antique shops here and Australia. I actually found a sizeable stash of geisha cards; maybe I sent you one of them?

The Kamen Rider card game from the Ishinomori museum I visited on a day trip, and I regret not buying more from their selection. Almost every museum or attraction in Japan sells postcards, and they’re often good ones. I assume the Japanese must still enjoy sending them.

Illustration cards are very popular in Japan as well, and I’m always spoiled for choice. The ones above were purchased in various locations but the top right one, which depicts a ningen yokai, is something special. The black, blue and gold are not printed ink, they are pieces of paper glued to the background! It’s hand made and was quite expensive (Β₯780) but it was one of about a half dozen designs and so well done I wish I’d bought more.

The card on the left is some sort of melon girl mascot (for Matsushima?) and I bought a blind pack of three cards (there were 20 different varieties), and the one on the right was in a pack of cards I purchased in Sendai. As for the middle one, it’s over 30 years old and came with a VHS tape we bought decades ago πŸ™‚

On previous trips some of the unusually shaped cards took ages (sometimes months) to arrive and I always wondered why. I’m happy to say I now know it was always simply me not putting enough postage on.

So now I know how to mail large or unusual cards from Japan, and I took the chance to send this gigantic lenticular example, which is twice the size of a normal card! It arrived in only a week or so, which means that next time I may be able to send and even bigger lenticular card I purchased a few years ago.

As for the backs of the cards, I took the chance to imprint eki stamps on them whenever I could. I didn’t find as many as my last trip, but most of those I did was of extremely high quality. The Hakodate Ropeway stamp in particular is amazingly detailed, and I wish I’d had more than onky two cards with me when I found it (up on the mountain). Why can’t all eki stamps be that good?!

It’s fun buying stamps in Japan. It’s almost always the same routine: the postal workers are hesitant and nervous until I show the translator screen and then they seem surprised and delighted that a tourist is actually buying postage stamps!

Often two or three clerks help me at the same time, and I assume this is because I’m a foreigner and some of them want to practice their English. With the exception of the larger post offices in Tokyo, very rarely do they actually speak English but sometimes they seem to have a basic understanding.

You may recall the old Japanese stamps I received from a Postcrosser? I used them all during this trip and I was pleased to see they all ‘worked’!

Much like Australia, Japan issues collectible stamp sets and while the majority are anime-based, how could I resist these cute animals? Maybe next time I’ll get the Frieren or Dungeon Meshi ones…

While I’m traveling solo in Japan I rarely speak, and perhaps this is why I don’t run out of things to write on postcards. The ones from this trip are now in my Japan binder, which is so full it’s time for me to begin a second one. I’m already looking forward to the cards I’ll send myself from the next trip πŸ™‚

The Australia Postcards

Monday, June 30th, 2025

During my recent trip, I sent 27 postcards home from Australia, which was two each day plus an extra one to document the (temporary) loss of my hat. In previous years I’ve documented here all the cards and stamps, but that’s a lot of work so I’ll be showing highlights only in this post.

The most common card theme was animals, with a full third of the cards I mailed being kangaroos or koalas, and a few extras of other Antipodean beasts. You’ll see from the excerpts above I went ‘all in’ on a new series of AI art cards I found in Sydney, since I believe in the future they’ll be an amusing snapshot in time πŸ™‚

The middle card above is a Delta airlines card, perhaps given out on flights decades ago? I wrote this in multiple parts while in-transit to Oz, and posted it as soon as I arrived. The other two cards were brought with me to Australia; I always bring a stash with me when I travel due to the potential difficulty of finding cards in shops these days.

Sue gave me several retro cards she found in an antique store and the two rural cards above were part of that stash. They’re wonderful, and it’s my dream one day to find an antique shop in Australia with a massive display of old (70s/80s) cards to buy!

The Men At Work card 40 years old and when I found it in the postcard shop not far from our house I knew I’d be sending it to myself from Australia one day. The Mickey Rourke card was purchased in Japan years ago, and Warren Beattie was found in a PA antique store a couple of years ago. I like finding (and buying) unusual postcards since I always know I’ll have the chance to send them home or to someone else one day.

As usual I did my best to make the stamps on each card unique, and this was helped immensely by Sue also giving me a bunch of retro Australia stamps she had purchased from ‘an old man’ sometime last year. The spaceship one above is one example, and here’s some more:

The middle strip above is nostalgic since I recall having them in my childhood stamp collection and loving that they formed a continuous image. Now I own them again!

Australia issues lots of stamps, and I didn’t come close to running out of variety. Even beyond the ‘normal’ stamps there were a dozen or more packs of collectors stamps available in post offices, of which I only purchased the Gremlins set. Did you get a card with a gremlin on it?

The above is an a true story of the time Sue and I saw a wild emu during our road trip, written one evening in a hotel room in Wellington. As usual I wrote a mix of what I did, ate or saw on the card backs and collectively they make for a fun diary of my trip.

It’s a lot of work writing and sending these cards, but apparently more than two per day in Australia wasn’t enough work since I sent even more from Japan. You’ll see what I mean in the next post…