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Alright! Finally the big trip I had. It really wasn't that huge of a deal. I just basically visited my old grandpa in Unalakleet, which is an obscure fishing village on the west coast of Alaska. No big deal.

So I went up there and I had my new laptop which I use, but yet I still use the old G5 which can take pictures; if you're wondering why all my pictures are taken from the same place. Anyways I was up there and I had no internet for the majority of the time, although I could get one every once and a while but it wasn't convenient.

The first few days were spent in a good fashion: riding about the countryside taking beautiful pictures. That country is really great in the summer. I drove that four-wheeler around and it was really fun. After a while they actually started deteriorating; one got crashed, and one got a dirty carberator from dirty gas.

I did manage to shoot however. We rode up and it's bumpy, loud, and windy; on these fairly well-made yet unpaved roads. There's this one bridge that everybody goes to for swimming or other purposes. We took out this nice futuristic-looking 22 caliber pistol and shot stuff. I did one good thing: At about 15 yards, I shot the middle of one of those mini-gatorade bottle things, police style. It did take a while to aim, but still it takes longer if you want to be accurate. We had other shooting adventures there that you might be able to imagine. The eskimo guy that owned the gun could shoot it pretty well. For example there was this empty bottle floating down the river and he was on the bridge with us. He extended his left hand and shot without much hesitation, and hit really close; if he didn't hit it. It was a good shot.

So that was one of the good things but the other good adventures were just me driving that four-wheeler around. Just going really fast wherever you want with no real goal is a good situation to be in; especially when you have no idea what's there, but you know it's going to be something good. I found this big quarry one time. It's weird because it's just a huge mound of rock and rocks. I don't think I was supposed to be there, but I went there anyways and slammed some massive rocks down on other massive rocks from the top and it was fun. Also I found some quartz and I stole it.

I did stuff on a beach and we drive by'd a walrus carcass.

Eventually I found work at this pizza place but I only actually got payed once. The other times I just ate their food. I played some serious ping-pong. I was on my way to being really good, and now I want to play somebody good here but I don't think there's a place. I got to know that whole family and it was pretty cool. Sometimes I just slept at their house, and I played Guitar Hero a lot too. In like 3 days I went from normal to hard. It was hardcore. There really isn't much to do in Unalakleet BUT get really good at ping-pong and guitar hero. Somebody did achieve that; the older brother of the family. So life there really wasn't that bad. Just hanging out with the enterprising, white, monopoly-having pizza place and salon-having, entrepreneurs. They had a nice house; just like one you might find in suburbia. It was extra nice because all the other places are like the worst houses ever. Just like two room, one floor pieces of crap. Nobody spends or makes any money there; the natives that is. The white people pull a profit if they want to. You can easily have a monopoly there that is profitable but a lot of work as I observed.

So then some people left because ol' gramps was having some problems. This changed everything, but not really for the worse. Now I can go to school this year I think. Plus that place is only cool when everything's new. It gets really boring pretty fast. The city is good. There are movies that you can go to. I found that to be a big difference. Also I like arcades. And pinball, that's good too. None o' that there.

So old gramps went to a hospital in Anchorage where we visited him almost daily. If I wasn't visiting old gramps the other time was spent in a nice house doing stuff. I might get a video of that house on the inter-web pretty soon. I really like that house. Also there was pretty good food; these cans of soup that you can just slam into a bowl, heat up, and eat; and they're pretty good. There were two kitties and a puppy there too, all black and/or white in color. Black puppy, mostly white kitty, and mostly black kitty. Good animals except a few bad normal animal things.

Also I had the maritime adventure while there.

Also arcade experiences happened. I just plain went to an arcade in anchorage. It was crappy except it did have DDR Supernova. Problem was that I was bad at using the machine and it was really hard to make-go. The steps were like impossible to actually get them to register and the rail was really far away; so not only are you slipping around and not getting arrows, but you're in a really awkward position that makes it impossible to do things efficiently; which is a big deal at my level of the game. So basically I did badly but it was the machine's fault, and mine too, but still that machine was crappy; I'll stick to my crappy beat up DDR Extreme 2 at the theatre.

Then I went to a movie theatre in Anchorage and there was an arcade there. I went in and there were two pinball machines: The terminator, and the lord of the rings. Weird combination if you ask me, but whatever. The terminator looked good I can tell you that, but I'm guessing there was a ball stuck in the machine. I couldn't actually see the ball and I tried to nudge it out but to no avail; it really was out of order. There were like 23 credits in there from stupid people that don't test out the game to see if it works. If it says: "Ball 2" you play the ball. If there is no ball, or if something really doesn't work and you can't fix it, then DON'T PUT MONEY IN!! I mean the same crappy thing happened at the theatre; Bruceyboy can attest to the machine with 27 credits in. It's like a dumb-guy counter because it's easy to tell if the damn thing works or not; you don't just walk up and push a pair of quarters in regardless.

Anyways I played the lord of the rings machine and it was easy for me to do. I played well and I had too much credits as usual before I had to go.

Then another good thing happened to me in an unusual location: the airport. It was the St. Paul airport, which should be reasonably close to Colin. It had four pinball machines stacked side by side. A sight to behold for sure; I've never seen that many in the same place. I was really excited, as you might imagine, to play these games. We had like 3 hours and I had a 20 in my wallet that I was willing to spend. But it really didn't work out that well. I started on the left on the game that looked the most fun. It was "Ripley's believe it or not." I believed it and started to play. I put in my two bucks as usual and started going. This thing was the easiest ever; or I was really freaking good. But that couldn't be the case since:

A: I hadn't played pinball in a month
B: I was really really hungry; and I don't do too well in anything when I'm hungry.
C: I had just been on a plane flight and had slept perhaps 6 hours. It was 6 in the morning.

So I was crappiest possible, yet still I managed to at least get a lot of games to play; although I didn't get a highscore. I mean, I played and an hour later, I had the same amount of credits in there! It was insane. I probably could have played that thing for 2 hours if I wanted to. That's only 1 dollar an hour. Quite thrifty on my end of the game. So I decided from this experience that some games are really easy to stay alive, but hard to get big points; while some are quick and you can easily get bigger points. I prefer medium. I want to play, but I really like to be able to get somewhere and get gratified for my skill; that's important and mainly this is done by giving the player easy multi-balls because this multiplies the skill you have.

Anyways, that was great but then my mom really didn't want to stay around, and she got really really mad. So I had to go with 3 credits in there, and I started with 5 an hour and a half ago. Dang. Anyways, I didn't get to play the fabulous: Sopranos game, or the Nascar game which I've played and is in my town. Or most regrettably the Pirates of the Caribbean game. I did want to play that, but oh well. I got good pinball here. There's this guy initialed in the top score: BOB. I gotta beat that. Nobody beats my score in this town. There's only room enough for one of us.