“Life In The So-Called Space Age”
In neither of these cases was I aware I was being filmed 🙂
Me whacking moles:
Me running hurdles and throwing a hammer:
As a comment on that final video, yes I have gotten that far (and further) before. It’s just that it was > 20 years ago.
Also, look closely and you may witness me busting out the legendary ‘triple flapper’ technique at one point 🙂
This was the view from just outside our cabin yesterday morning:
As you can see, the weather had cleared and the ice had receded. Shortly after taking that photo a curious boat cruised past:
Much later in the day we returned to find the view outside had changed significantly:
Look at all that ice! The person at the end of the dock is the proprietor of the motel, who was frantically breaking the ice sheet that had slowly drifted east across the lake and was now threatening to crush his docks.
He explained to me the boat I’d seen earlier cruised back and forth all day to create a wake to keep the ice sheet on the western shore, but it hadn’t been enough yesterday and he seemed quite concerned it would damage his property.
Afterwards we returned to Funspot and didn’t get back until dark. This morning the ice was on the other side again and the docks intact. I think they dodged a bullet!
That’s a 306 foot tall monument in Bennington, VT built in the 1880s to commemorate a battle that occurred nearby over 100 years earlier. That little silhouette at the bottom is KLS! There’s actually an elevator inside that takes visitors up to a viewing platform but it’s still closed for winter so we couldn’t go.
We had stopped there on our way home today from our short “lakefront video game holiday”. While the trip itself is done (and was great), there’s still one more blog post to look forward to…
Today we visited Funspot. It’s the biggest arcade in the USA, and has over 500 games in total including arcade, pinball and redemption machines.
It’s awesome!
Our visit was almost 7 hours in total, but that only cost us about $60 ($43 in tokens plus golf and snacks). Not bad at all considering how long we stayed.
Of course the biggest activity was playing video games, of which they had about 250 on offer. The collection spanned the late 1970s up until the early 2000s, with a heavy emphasis on the early 1980s. Most of the games are in fantastic condition with original cabinets and controls.
I had heard of/played most of the games before, but there were some real obscure machines as well. Here’s every game I played (about 25% of those they had):
Tutankhamen, Trivial Pursuit, Leprechaun (the smallest video game ever manufactured), Computer Space (the first video game), Nova 2001, Zero Hour, Smash TV, Dragon Spirit, Rastan, Kung-Fu Master, Lifeforce, Forgotten Worlds, Space Harrier, Exerion, Video Pinball, Stargate, The Wiz, Juno First, Gaplus, Tetris, Krull, Gyruss, Track and Field, Lode Runner, 1943, Flower, Black Tiger (my #1 fav arcade game of all time), Mini Golf, Chiller, Pengo, Wonder Boy, Rush’n Attack, Timber, Frenzy, Heavy Barrel, Contra, Zombie Raid, Dark Adventure, Cliff Hanger, Domino Man, Alien Syndrome, Tiger Road, Galaga ’88, R-Type and Star Trek.
I didn’t ignore the more mechanical games though, and while their pinball section was smaller (maybe 30 games) the quality and variety were high. I played these ones:
Hercules (the biggest pinball ever made), Paragon, Xenon (somewhat infamous; google it), Black Knight, Black Knight 2000, Big Guns, Close Encounters of The Third Kind (yes, licensed), Pinbot, Grand Lizard, Time 2000, Middle Earth and Playboy.
The video games and pinballs span three floors, and to play everything would take ages. If I lived closer I certainly would though since it’s a well maintained and very comfortable arcade and it’s really inexpensive! Using a coupon our tokens cost $0.16/each and almost every game was only 1 token per play.
The rest of the tokens – and we bought over 250 – went into ticket machines like this one:
We put loads of tokens into many different types of machine and ended up with about 1100 tickets (which cost about $28!), which we ended up redeeming for two souvenir glasses 🙂
Oh yes, we played mini golf as well:
In which KLS beat me 46 to 47 despite me getting two – TWO!! – holes-in-one! We were competitive; it was fun.
The walls were covered in all sorts of ephemera on the history of video games, as well as displays of related material such as the VFD home game exhibit shown above. For a lifelong fan such as myself Funspot was dreamland and I could easily spend several days playing and reading everything.
Of course I have many other photos, but even better are the two videos KLS captured of me playing Whack-A-Mole and Track and Field. You can look forward to seeing my technique in a few days.
Needless to say I loved Funspot. In fact it’s one of the best attractions I have ever visited, and easily made the trip over here worthwhile 🙂