So last night I loaded up with a few friends and made the 2 hour drive to Lyons, Co to play in their december pinball tourney and WOW what a fun time that was. Here is their website if you have never heard of Lyons Classic Pinball, http://www.lyonspinball.com/intro.htm

This guy has quite simply the nicest collection of games i've ever seen. They are not even all on display in his parlor at any one time but they are ALL in amazing and cared for condition.

So anyways, we get there last night around 5pm and play some warm up games, drink some beers smoke some bowls, you know the drill. The tourney started around 7ish. It was a x2 elimination bracket style tourney and there must have been at least 50 people in attendance, maybe I am a bit off but damn it was a full event. So I got first draw with an old timer and I drew the Bally table "wizard" to play on vs him. I knew I was in trouble with this machine and sure enough this guy proceeded to kick my ass 10 ways to Sunday, a loss for me. I drew a "bye" in the round 2 and then in round 3 I was up again and drew "players choice" out of the hat so I picked twilight zone and proceded to kick some major ass finally on a table I was familiar with. So I won this round pretty handily and was onto round 4. I again drew "players choice" out of the hat but was unable to pick the same machine twice so I took "whitewater" this time and was up against a really good player who is ranked on the worldwide rankings and the sort. Was a close game and I was ahead by 60 something million on ball 3 but the guy came back due to a really nice multiball series and bested me and knocked me out of the tourney. So close yet so far.

All in all it was a really nice evening and I highly recommend anyone within a days drive to Lyons to visit this place at least once. Especially on tourney night you really get a feeling that pinball truly is not dead (it just smells funny) to borrow a line from ole shaggy.

I can't wait for the January tourney, I hope to brush up on my EM play in the meantime.