A Fun Spot? Part 3 – The Trip Begins!

With all my ‘pre-flight checks’ taken care of, there were only really two things left to do. The first was to pack my tiny suitcase. As I was limited to 12 kg of cabin baggage, there’d be no dinner jacket or cummerbund on this trip. But fear not, I still had space for not one but two pairs of long johns, with room to spare. Not as some kind of hidden fashion statement, but for reasons related to the second item on my list – my worries about the weather!

Now, hear me out. Obviously, I was excited about the trip. But at the same time, I was keenly aware of the very large bag of spanners the New Hampshire climate had the potential to throw in the works. You see, as Mark Twain (never) mused, it can get very cold there in the winter. So cold and icy, in fact, that Funspot occasionally closes its doors to avoid staff and customers skidding into oblivion on the road home. There can also be heavy snowfall, with proper blizzards and drifts that block the routes from Boston to the lakes. I’d clearly taken a risk, here. The price of getting to Funspot at bargain basement rates in February could easily have been delayed flights, an inability to get from Boston to Weirs Beach, or worse still, getting there despite the odds, only to find ACAM’s gates barred for health and safety reasons. As far as returns on investment go, and I’m talking both financial and emotional, that would have been tragic.

While I tried not to, I couldn’t help but keep an eye on the weather forecast. Two weeks before I was due to leave, the mercury began to drop. On the 4th of February, with windchill figured in, the temperature in the Weirs Beach area had dropped to -20°F. That’s -29°C, folks! Eeek! 50 miles up the road, however, at the summit of Mount Washington, the windchill temperature plummeted to -108°F (-77.8°C), the lowest ever recorded in the USA! That was just a wee bit disconcerting… Fast forward to the week after I came home, and the region was hit by three winter storms in a row, with many inches of snow causing mayhem on the roads, and some Funspot closures. Thankfully, as the day of my departure approached, the weather flipped, with the prospect of 16°C in Boston towards the end of my visit. Phew! I was able to sleep easy that night, but not – as it happens – for very long.

Thursday the 16th of Feb: 3 am

Yes, you read that right, folks, three o’clock in the morning – GMT. That wasn’t even when we got up, but when we had to leave to get to the airport in time! The drive to the airport was a dream, thanks to my wife, who very kindly drove me in. We neither passed nor were passed by a single car until we turned onto the A8 in front of the terminal. Despite the eerie silence, the familiar buzz of the airport dropoff zone confirmed there had been no zombie apocalypse. 20 minutes later, the gate was anounced. 10 minutes after that, I was sat there sipping a cup of overpriced coffee.

I still had a 4,000 mile journey in front of me, but the next leg was a short one – from Edinburgh to Amsterdam. I’d been lucky enough to bag a window seat, but better than that, the flight turned out to be half empty – so I had room to stretch out and sleep pretty much the entire 90-minute flight to Schiphol. For those of you who haven’t been there, Schiphol’s a big old airport, with quite a schlepp between the gates – up to 30 minutes if it’s busy. Fortunately, it was still surprisingly quiet, which is just as well. As I stumbled towards Gate 53, still half-asleep, it seemed like I was already in some kind of amusement centre. Shame those dodgems weren’t switched on. It would have livened up the two-hour wait for the next plane.

The next leg was the long one – 3,400 miles and seven hours across the Atlantic to Boston Logan. I’m sure we’ve all heard horror stories about transatlantic flights, but it seemed that luck would be staying with me on ths one. Once again, I had a window seat, and once again, the flight was far from full. Stretched out across two chairs, I enjoyed a very pleasant journey.

I used the time to get in the mood. In between snacks and snoozes, I watched a couple of movies on the in-flight entertainment system. Having seen the most recent offerings, I went for Trading Places and Beverley Hills Cop – mainly to remind myself how to talk to folks in America (not!). Staying with my chosen theme of retro gaming, I washed them down with the latest edition of Retro Gamer magazine. Then, as the frozen wilds of Canada hoved into view, I dialled things up to eleven with a private screening of The King of Kong. My destination was getting close now. What would it be like? Would I too have to negotiate a succession of well-meaning ‘enthusiasts’, press-ganging witnesses for a ‘Kill Screen’, while I was busy trying to beat my top-score on Canyon Bomber? I pondered the most appropriate swerving techniques, and had another snooze.

Before I knew it, and well ahead of time, we’d touched down in Boston. It was only 12.30 pm (EST), and with the weather being dry and mild, the likelihood of me getting to Funspot later that evening was as close to 100% as it was going to get. Yee-to-the-ha!

Having no hold-luggage to collect, I was down at customs in no time – only to experience an unexpected… ‘inconvenience’, albeit the only one of the trip. While I was fully prepared to swear that I had never been a member of the Communist Party, and to not make any stupid jokes about other kinds of party, or the contents of my bags, none of those situations came to pass. Instead, I had all of my fingerprints scanned into a US government database, like I was some kind of common crim – as opposed to an excited nerd coming to pump tonnes of money into their ailing economy. Nice welcome, guys.

After that minor annoyance, I made it down to the car-hire centre and was sitting in my Nissan Efficient by 1.45 pm. A couple of minutes of fiddling around with Android Auto later, and I was hooked up, directions enabled and heading out onto the highway.

While I’d driven on the right-hand side of the road plenty of times in the past (in countries where it was required by law!), I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous when the city underpass threw me out onto a five-lane freeway. Given the very finite nature of my journey, and the need to not get stopped by the cops or done for speeding, I was keen to keep within the limits. I was a bit surprised that nobody else was. More worryingly, however, there were no obvious safe lanes for ‘sensible’ drivers. Cars were zooming past on both sides, bobbing and weaving from left to right – and back again – pressumably to steal an extra second on their journey rather than simply for the sheer thrill of it. OK, so there may have been times when I fell into ‘the flow of the traffic’ myself. Thank goodness that Android Auto has warnings for mobile speed cameras!

As I sped away from the city, the traffic began to thin out. While it was still busy, I felt relaxed enough to turn on the radio. Having spent the afternoon in 80s nostalgia mode, I was hoping to tune into some WKWotnot rock station. But that bubble was soon burst. I couldn’t find anything less bad than the UK’s dreadful Radio 1. So I turned it off. Passing into New Hampshire, the speed limit had ramped up to 70 mph, and I began to see the remnants of the previous weeks’ snow drifts at the side of the roads. Best I concentrate in case it was icy.

Just over two hours later, I finally rolled into the hotel carpark in Laconia. While it was still light, the sky had started to cloud over. Ominous, perhaps, but at least I’d made it that far intact, and only down the couple of dollars I’d had to spend on tolls. By the time I’d checked in, and dumped my bags, it was 4.36 pm EST – or 8.36 pm GMT – almost 18 hours after my day had begun. But it wasn’t finished yet. After reporting back to the mother ship, it was time for a power snooze. At 5.45 pm, I’d spring into action, get myself coffeed up, then head out into America!

When I woke up, it was starting to get dark. And like a panther, I pounced into action. OK, so I was still a bit tired from the long journey – not sleepy-tired, you understand, but a touch weary, and possibly not in the optimum condition for a primo gaming sesh at Funspot. Nevertheless, I felt I should get in there, stake out my claim – so to speak – and figure out how I was going to spend Friday and Saturday. Besides, I needed something to eat, and I’d heard that Funspot had good pizzas.

15 minutes later, I was back in the car, and navigating the unfamiliar US infrastructure. They don’t seem to be quite so big on signposts, or roundabouts, as we are over here. What they have instead is a system of filter lanes, which can break off from the main road without warning if you’re not exactly sure where you’re going – forcing the inexperienced driver into wrong turns. But not I, being ably assisted – as I was – by Anroid Auto. By this point, I was starting to feel rather fond of it.

As keen as I was to get to the Amercian Classic Arcade Museum, there was something I had to do first. Something important, but paradoxically, not something that deserved any quality time during the day. I had to visit me a Walmart – and not just out of curiosity (we read about them a lot over here, in various contexts); I had to stock up on supplies.

In my mind’s eye, Walmart would be like a supersized ASDA, filled with customers manouevering heavy trollies laden with oversized packages. But it wasn’t like that at all. Perhaps it was just the branch I visited in Gilford? The store had a massive footprint, but only a small part of it was given over to food and drink. There wasn’t a massive range to choose from, and what was there was tended to be not just expensive, but excessively so, IMHO. There were no bargains as far as I could see, with prices substantially higher than you would pay in Lidl, for example. Apart from the sack of cheetos, and tray of diet coke, I needed some deoderant – as a precautionary measure, of course! Of the 5 or 6 familiar brands, none cost less than $5.95 for a standard-size tin! That’s the same stuff you’d never see for more than £3 over here, and usually discounted closer to £2. There was one exception. At $1.29, I had no choice but to become a mad axeman!

2 kg of ‘Murican chee? $18. I didn’t buy this!

400 g Extra-large Cheetos? Yes please!

The rest of Walmart was like a giant crossover between Primark and Home Bragains, with next to none of the latter. You could buy clothes, tech, kitchenware, gardening equipment, and sports gear. There was a whole aisle devoted to fishing rods, for example. And a special counter stacked with… GUNS! Time to go!

One, or maybe two sneaky cheese puffs later, and I was on my way. Not long after that I was passing the the famous 50s-style sign for Weirs Beach. Although it was only a smidge after 7 pm, the sign and its surroundings were shrouded in darkness. What a relief to conitnue two minutes up the road and see this…

I’d arrived. But to what? The enormous carpark was all but deserted. I had kindof anticipated that a dark Thursday evening, nestled between winter storms, might not see the venue at it’s liveliest. But was it shut? Had they checked the forecast and closed down for the day? Had I missed the memo?

No! It was open! I headed in.

Rather than zoom straight up to the holiest of holies – ACAM – I followed my stomach to the DA Long Tavern, where I ordered myself a pizza and a couple of drinks – one soft, one not so much. By that stage in the evening, however, ‘ma een’ had apparently grown too big for ‘ma belly’. While the pizza was very nice, it was a lot heftier than it looked, and in the end, I couldn’t finish it. #Pizzafail. A ‘Regular’ serving would have sufficed. But I should have known that. For when you’ve come 4,000 miles to experience the spiritual home of the video arcade scene, you need to stay limber and light on your feet!

Next up: ACAM!