Star Trek with Charlotte and Ed

My friends Charlotte and Ed were visiting the bay area back in April, so they swung by Alameda to hang out, meet my new cat and check out my new neighborhood.  Believe you me, the highlight of my neighborhood tour is the Pacific Pinball Museum, which is about five blocks from my house.

The PPM has about six newer Stern machines in their front lobby, which you can play using quarters.  You can also pay $15 to access the rest of the museum and their dozens and dozens or other machines.  We decided to plunk a couple of bucks into Stern's new Star Trek machine and play a couple of three-player games.

I'm coming to realize that this is my favorite way to play pinball.  A new, unknown machine, non-competitive friends and a sense of teamwork.  We all watched the game carefully, trying to figure out what was required to move deeper into the game.  "Look!  When you hit those three green standup targets, the lock lit up."  Now we knew what to do to get multiball.  Etc. etc. etc.

This is especially fun with friends because they can read the instructions on the DMD for you, which is hard to do when you are busy trying to make sure the ball doesn't drain!  This is how I got into pinball - playing SW:E1 with Jon in Vermont, and I think I prefer this method to just playing on my own, or competing against people.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and afterward we walked up to Cookie Bar, which has a custom ice cream flavor called Medieval Madness!  (Vanilla Ice Cream with Three Musketeers bars in it!)

So the point is, I like it here in Alameda!