The highlight of the visit was an afternoon spent taking the kids bowling and to "Chuck e Cheese" hell. First, an editorial comment from the grandkids: "hell" is a bad word that you are not supposed to say... End of editorial comment. The Chuck folks have learned a lot from the slot machine industry. But instead of taking coins and occasionally delivering some of them back, Chuck takes coin tokens (obtained with real paper dollars) and delivers back (frequently) paper tickets. Huge mounds of these paper tickets are acquired in a very short time playing the games. These huge mounds are then used to exchange for trinkets or cotton candy. The ratio must be something on the order of $25 worth of tokens turned into $1 worth of merchandise. But I didn't think of any of this at the time. The grandfatherly purpose is to dish out the loot and watch the light in the grandkids' eyes. Pleasure indeed!
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| Sawyer Says "Cormick Gr-Grab Them Tickets" |
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| CCH Intensity Eric and Sawyer |
So let me tell you about the bowling. It's a different game with kids, because they use gutter rails, so there are no gutters. Anyone who has had any exposure to bowling knows that you are trying to knock down all 10 pins with one roll of the ball, and that the only consistent way to do that is to strike the balls between the one pin (the head pin) and the three pin--assuming you are right-handed. That's called a strike. All four grandkids got strikes. How they got them is another matter. Kennedy observed Sawyer getting a strike by bouncing the ball off the gutter rail and into the pins. She decided if once bounce, or carom, is good, several are better. Sure enough, throw--carom--carom--carom--carom, down go all ten pins. It is possible to throw a gutter ball even with the gutter rails. I've seen it. You bounce the ball on the lane and it clears the gutter rail and into the gutter. Absolutely fascinating.
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| Kennedy: "Ste-rike!" |
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| Eric: "I wonder if I can knock down the 7 and 10 pins and leave the rest standing up" |
Back at the house, we also had a couple of interesting Scrabble matches. In the kids' version, you see everybody's tiles. So I made suggestions. This made it difficult for me to win. That's fine since I didn't care about winning. But this was anathema to Sawyer, the super-competitor, particularly since the beneficiary was usually Kennedy. With Kids' Scrabble, when all else fails you throw the board in the air, scattering the tiles, and everybody goes to bed.
Miscellaneous shots:
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| Sawyer |
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| Tex |
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| Cormick
Mileage: 20. Cumulative mileage: 6,502.
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