So back in early April I saw ads for a fun run called Foam Glow. They were waiving the usual signup fee, only requiring payment for the event insurance and venue fee. I think I opted in for a $1 donation to their charity as well, bringing my total just south of $17. I figured I’d do this once, and then base my decision to return on my experience this year.

So finally the day of the event rolls around. I find out packet pickup is the day before the event unless you want to pay an additional $5 for the privilege of picking up on race day. It probably cost me an additional $5 of gas just to make the additional drive to Conroe and back. To top it off my work assignment was in Lake Jackson later that day (and I still made it back down there in time to get most everything done, surprisingly).

Fast forward to race day, the evening of the 15th. I’m slightly anxious as I don’t really know what I’m getting into at this point. I manage to settle in and enjoy the ambiance for a while before race time arrives. I finish the bottle of water I have (some 32 fluid ounces) long before the race is officially on. So I walk back to the car to drop it off (no sense in carrying

It turns out that, indeed, most do this as a 5K non-competitive walk. In fact, there is no timing apparatus at either the start or finish line. If you want to keep track of your time you are more or less on your own. And I’m okay with that; I still have the occasional flashback to one of my few attempts at competitive running when I was in elementary school (5th grade), a mile run where I got pushed/knocked down at the start. (I went on to finish with a time of 14 minutes, 12 seconds, at the time a personal best.)

The distance as measured via GPS was closer to 4 kilometers than 5, so the organizers took a bit of liberty with the “5K” labeling. My total time according to this particular GPS track reading software was 54 minutes, 26 seconds (excuse the weird start/finish times, those are apparently in UTC not local time). That comes out to around 21 minutes per mile, not bad for a leisurely walking pace.

A lot of the pictures show black lights during the after-sunset portion of the event, so it is easy for the casual observer to conclude the course was lit like this for the entire length. It was not, as these were taken at specific points near the foam machines; toward the end the flashlight feature of my phone (and the phones of other participants for that matter) became quite useful.

I had a good time, despite higher than expected expenses. Parking was $20 I didn’t have in the original budget; besides being a bit of a price gouge (didn’t we already pay a venue fee?), it was mostly unavoidable given the locale (the outskirts of Conroe). It would have been nice to know this upon signup; not all of us are familiar with these types of venues (this is mainly a motocross track and would likely be unfamiliar to even the most seasoned of fun run/walk participants).

I have a backlog to work through as I haven’t felt up to posting for a while. So yes, these are a bit old by now, and I’m posting just for these three days at first as there is one event that deserves its own post.

My travels during this portion of July took me by Del Mar Lanes, Little Dipper, Poison Girl, and Darkhorse Tavern.

First up, July 11 at Del Mar Lanes for a few rounds of Godzilla. Not too shabby, 151.0M+ and new loop champion and heat ray champion (not all in the same game).

Next, July 12 at Little Dipper and Poison Girl. The games I got in at Little Dipper were just to pass a little time before heading to another event. A lot of these, outside of the Creature and (Old Olberholt rethemed) Mata Hari were pretty mediocre for me, to be honest.

Finally, July 13 at Darkhorse Tavern. Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man is gone, replaced by a much newer Ripley’s with a color DMD. Unfortunately it’s far from issue free, with a broken lock gate and (at the time I played) a wire harness hanging down that caused some stuck balls. I’ve done a lot better than 19.1M+ on this particular title, but I don’t think this is too shabby given what I had to deal with.

Running way behind on things, but I wanted to get this up even though this event is tomorrow.

It’s another Rummikub event, I realize it’s being billed as a game “night” even though it’s the afternoon. 1414 Wirt Road near Westview Drive (Trini Mendenhall Community Center) in Houston, same as last time.

I know it might be a bit of a short notice, but I wanted to pass this along for those not on Facebook or who do not check it often enough to see the (by now ubiquitous) advertisements for this event.

Thursday night (7/13) at 6:30pm we will be gathering at the Trini Mendenhall Community Center (1414 Wirt Road) for a few games of Rummikub. If you are new to the game, it is easy to learn and loads of fun, and makes for a great change of pace after a few nights of pinball or arcade gaming. There is an official video tutorial available at rummikub.com. (We are playing classic Rummikub as described in the first video, not “twist”.) If you know how to play the card game gin rummy (or any game similar to it), most of that knowledge should transfer over easily. The main difference with Rummikub is once you have played your initial meld, you can play on other melds on your board including moving tiles around as needed to complete melds, as long as the board is still valid at the end of your turn (i.e. there are no “dangling” tiles not part of a meld including the jokers).

I have posted two maps showing the location of Trini Mendenhall community center below (blue highlight).

So I was at a mainly board-game party for July 4 and the host had a couple of Arcade 1Up cabinets I got to play in between board games. One was a Midway/Atari multi-game setup, the other had The Simpsons and The Simpsons Bowling. Pictured are the scores from two one-coin (2000 health) games of Gauntlet, a two-coin (seven lives) game of Wizard of Wor, and one round of The Simpsons Bowling. Wizard of Wor I need to practice (I feel like I should be able to clear 20k with seven lives), but I think the others are pretty passable.

So not too long ago, yet another change was made to the lineup at Poison Girl. Attack from Mars is out, replaced with a Dolly Parton table (Bally, 1979). I’ve played this game before, most recently at the Texas Pinball Festival this year on Saturday. I put up a rather remarkable 444k+ that, for some reason, I omitted from the notable scores of the day in the original post. That score is about where the high score is on the machine at Poison Girl. Unfortunately, on this trip, I wasn’t able to get anywhere near that score, as this machine is set up much harder than the one at TPF. That, and the TPF score was the best of several games on free play; this one was my best of six games at 50 cents a pop (well, the first one was only 25 cents as there was apparently a half credit on the machine on arrival).

Other than that, a score 9.1M+ on Whirlwind rounded out the evening. Not a whole lot to write about with that one; obviously, I’m capable of much better, but it’s a decent run given I wasn’t really trying that hard.