All get around, he's on the rebound Hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby Pinball now to rejoice He's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee Myth of syrup and honey, hopes to laugh with his family And a random tangent, stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're gonna get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 563 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and I'm so stoked today. I not only have the Alaskan state champion, Mr. David Elrod, himself, but also Peter Barclay, who helped bring pinball all the way up to what I would call the great white north, at least of the United States, good old Alaska. So we're going to be chatting with both of them. I was lucky enough to meet David there at Nationals. But yeah, we're going to be talking about all of that on today's episode. Thanks for everybody for joining us. And let's get right into it. Peter and David, how are you guys doing tonight? I'm doing well. Like I was saying before the recording started, we had our week-long Folk Fest here in Juneau, Alaska, which brings musicians from all genres up to our town. And I do production at my venue, so I think I finally recovered from that. Wow. And you mentioned there's like 20-some-odd bands were there, and you were doing a live stream. And you were kind of wearing several different hats, running around, juggling everything. so it makes total sense that you were probably exhausted. And somewhere in there, was there some pinball at the Indie Folk Fest in Juneau, Alaska, or not so much? I had to get custom covers for all of my games upstairs because it was so crowded up there, and I was putting shows on in our, we call it the barricade, part of our bar where we have all of our pinball games, and I had to get all those covered up because there were so many people there and there were so many drinks flowing and rock and roll shows and all kinds of fun stuff. So, no, I think this is the one week that I actually didn't touch a pinball game. Wow. Well, I'll tell you what. My wife normally never travels with me for pinball, but I'm 99% sure if I were going to Alaska, not only Alaska, but going to an indie rock folk festival, she would be totally down for it. So that might be the one way I might actually make it up to Alaska. Now, Peter, how is your week going so far? Maybe not quite as busy as David's, but how are you doing over there? Good. Just, you know, another day in the life of family and pinball projects that I'm working furiously on completing and just my regular job, the job that I can use to afford pinball games, right, and parts and all that stuff. Yeah, what's your day job, if you don't mind me asking? IT nerd. So basically I do, like, security and compliance and stuff for attorneys' firms. Okay, cool. That's, I mean, I know the pay is decent, and you probably can do that mostly remotely, I'm assuming, which is good for being in Alaska and playing pinball. Yeah, yeah, mostly. Mostly remotely. Most of it is just from home. you know i don't need an office for it so yeah i'm a consultant hired gun and that's what i do perfect and i'm just curious like you're you're in uh in anchorage i believe and then david is of course in juno what is the difference between the two scenes between the two towns like what's it like for you there in anchorage well there's only one bar that i've got games at where we have the tournaments and the bars coots it used to be called chill cooch barleys back in the day okay and uh love that uh kind of based upon the the yukon tough guy right the the chichacos and whatnot back in the alaska lore of the early days of the state is he related to the yeti or say again oh sorry is he related to the yeti the yukon yeti I don't know I'm sure they'd use that as a marketing plan if they thought about it there you go so basically there's just one bar that has the arcade games and the pinball games there it's kind of tough in the state of Alaska we cannot put entertainment machines in breweries you can't even put a monopoly board in a brewery because of state law that's wild the alcohol lobby basically prohibits this based on state law. So anywhere in the state, you have to basically have a full liquor license and operate as a bar in order to have entertainment devices. So we're kind of limited as far as where we can go. We can put them in restaurants, but restaurant table space, you know, is very much a tough thing to get out of their hands because they want to use that for turning over tables and making money. so there are a couple of different places around Anchorage that have a few games here and there but most of them are operated by vending companies so as far as like a an actual arcade in Anchorage this is pretty much it aside from the big David Busters you know well I mean obviously then you know there might be a couple home arcades and would you guys even have a league that goes there or is that more so like I see where David's playing in that the brawl the Tuesday Brawl there. Are leagues bigger in Juneau than Anchorage? Well, I would say we probably have about a dozen or so at each tournament, but we have kind of a list of about 50 to 60 people who come for the tournaments, not always regularly. Right. As far as home games, we don't really have anyone that has followed through on the offer of hosting home games. We've had a couple people up here that have said, oh I've got a bunch of home games let's do tournaments at our place I'm like yeah that's fine let's do it and nothing ever happened so and my uh my games in my garage are all in various states of disrepair and my wife probably wouldn't like me having a bunch of friends over doing it anyways yeah we haven't really got any place else to go fair enough well at least there's the one place and I mean uh so how is it how's the scene different there David and uh in Juno how's it It seems like you guys might have a couple more places to play. I think it's a little less mature than what's going on in Anchorage. Really? Okay. Peter and Max and a lot of the people up in Anchorage have probably been involved in having arcade games and fixing them a lot, whereas in Juneau it's a little bit newer. We have a pizza place that keeps a couple games there at any one point. for some reason they have two James Bond premiums at the two locations, which is always a little bit interesting. Strange. I think I'm pretty blessed to have and my bar owner is also Peter is the reason a lot of those alcohol and liquor laws exist around not being able to have games and entertainment and distilleries which may be a conversation for now or another time, but I'm pretty blessed to have an owner who's fully committed. It's one of the reasons that I stayed in Juneau was because he wanted to open, like I said, the Bearcade, which is the bar above the Crystal Saloon, and he wanted to have games. And for me, being a music professional and then having pinball games, it was a no-brainer for me to take a management role up there. So it's a little bit newer. I don't want to say more organic. It just kind of happened quickly. It's something that we're in a much smaller town with a little bit more dense of a downtown area. obviously it's smaller because it's not Anchorage, but the people who have gotten into it have really gotten into it and really, really dug into it. And I think I have a really good demographic between men and women that are playing, which is really positive to us. And, yeah, we can get anywhere from 12 to 22 people at our tournaments. And I think the big challenge really is just getting games. I think one cool thing about Anchorage is, again, is they have people like Peter who are actually able to collect games and have been able to do that over time, whereas I don't quite have that luxury here. There's nobody here with games in the house. I think one guy that plays in our tournaments has an Earthshaker at his house. But other than that, it's pretty unheard of for anybody to have games at their home here. Wow. Wow. Well, it's kind of funny because to hear you guys both talk about how many rules there are with having a craft brewery, having a craft brewery and having a couple pinball machines seems to just make sense. All the way from where I lived in London, Ontario, all the way up to where I am now in Nova Scotia, most of all the good pinball machines are at craft breweries or craft brewery adjacent, right? Many of our favorite arcades. and so it's in my head as a Canadian I always think like Texas and Alaska is like the the the you know the old frontier like you can do whatever you want there there's no rules you can carry guns I don't know like as a Canadian I always you know even even I got to go up to um Whitehorse in the Yukon and we we actually traveled to this little town that was uh something crossing I don't know it's very close to Alaska and uh there is honestly very little rules up there like guys just walk into the craft breweries up there with like their boots on and there's like mud all over their boots and they're bringing their dogs to get their growler fills done you know and it's just kind of and they're opening their beer drinking it on the way out it's just kind of like it's a little bit of the wild wild west so when you said there was so many laws about having a pinball machine to brewer i just went it kind of blew my head but um i should bring up the fact david that we did get to meet each other and of course the nationals you are the alaskan state champion um and honestly you did very very good there who was it that you uh i suspect some of the listeners might know but who is it that you actually beat there in that first round at the Nationals? Elliot Keith from Maryland. That's right and he was actually on this show last time so oddly enough the last two awesome interviews I did with tournament players both of them him and also Zyra and they were both at Nationals with us And it was kind of neat that I got to meet all three of you And I just thought it was really cool that, you know, we were able to touch base because you were outside of myself. I think that you traveled actually from the furthest. I may have traveled the furthest by car. I'm not 100% sure. I, you know, did see some. So you did? I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. I did see a lot of cars in the parking lot from far away, but what a cool experience. Who did you lose to in the second round, if you don't mind me asking? I did see you did tie for 24th, I believe, right? So I'm assuming you may have went out in round two. How did that go? I played Garrett Shannon from Texas, who was just such a gentleman. And his parents were there, and they were so cool. But he absolutely mollywhopped me. It was the only thing that made it fun was just how genuinely nice of a guy he was. We played Frontier in our first game, and I think he shot like 1.6 million in his first ball. And I'm just like, I don't know if I've ever shot that high in this game. And then we went to play Iron Maiden, which is a game I know well. Even the one at D82, which I know plays different. I was doing really, I played it in my first round, and I think I had gotten like 95 million on it, which was quite the accomplishment on that particular iron maiden. Oh, for sure. And I played him in it, and it was like, I, uh, the ball save turned off, and, like, so you're trying to just plunge it directly to your flipper, and ball three, I've never had such a perfect left out lane plunge. Oh, God. You know, if secret skill shots were turned on, it'd be 20 million, but, like, it didn't bounce off of anything. It just took this beautiful curve right into the out lane for my third ball, and I was like, I wish I could get that in a normal game. Wow. Beautiful rainbow. Yeah, Garrett beat me. Garrett beat Escher in the next round, if I remember correctly as well. Yes, I think that was one of the bigger upsets of the day, I think, at Nationals. Yeah, Garrett was great. Elliot was great, too. Elliot and I had a six-game just straight-up brawl. The games were really close. And I think, you know, I didn't know Elliot before, but a lot of people just kept saying he's the nicest guy in pinball, and it really showed through, too. everyone was so great there I had a lot of fun I know there's only the two people who are jerks really it's just me and Eric Stone no I'm just kidding I'm just kidding Zyron and I are really good friends I met Zyron and his dad Lucas at InDisc a few years ago and as strange people typically do we start to band together that's so cool I didn't know you knew him I've known those guys for a few years and it was really really good to see him and I'm so close to beating Eric. So close, so close. No, Eric, I'm just kidding. I love you, buddy. Eric and I are kind of like frenemies. We bug each other back and forth from time to time. Both of us are probably highly likely to be given yellow cards first. Maybe the three of us with Adam Becker. I don't know. The three of us would probably be up there first. But I do have to go back to Peter for a second. And I know, David, you were telling me that Peter is kind of known as the godfather of Alaskan pinball because originally, Peter, when you were getting into pinball up there, there was no one doing tournaments. If you could maybe just tell the listeners a little bit more about how you kind of brought pinball to Alaska, that would be awesome. Well, I didn't bring pinball to Alaska. So, honestly, you know, years and years and years ago, there were arcades around town, and they all went pretty much out of business. you know, early 2000s, I'd say. And so there were a bunch of games that were scooped up by local collectors or people sending them out of state or whatnot. And so there was one gentleman named Max Enders who was still running some games over at Coots, pinball games there, you know, some arcades as well, I think his partner's Ed, I forget Ed's last name. but they had not done tournaments there nothing like ifpa ranked or anything of that nature so it was all all just kind of impromptu let's play a tournament and uh you know the winner gets a free beer or whatever it is and so probably 20 2017 2018 i think it was was when i started to I got introduced to Max and came over to Coots to play some pinball, which I'm still lousy at, but I still like going over there and play. And so Max was like, hey, do you know how to fix this? Do you know how to fix that? Because he knew he had an affinity for electronics. And I'm like, yeah, I'll try. So I did some board work for some of his games, got him up and running again, and then I ended up picking up a game from him and someone else and fixed those up. And he said, hey, if you want to put your games here at Coots, you're welcome to do so. I'm like, okay. So I did that and it just kind of started rolling into like a full-on addiction of getting pinball games and fixing them up, selling to other people around town. And then when COVID hit, or just before, I think, when the writing was on the wall, Max took all his games out of Coutts. And I bought a few of them from him. And I ended up having a small collection at that point and moved them into Coutts. And I've been running them there ever since. Well, with the exception of the COVID years. Right, right. Well, I mean, you know, David speaks very highly of you. He was telling me that he certainly... I pay him well, that's why. I think I actually owe you money, Peter. Yeah, yeah. After I sent those boards back, I guess. So how did you two meet? Or who introduced who to, I guess... Because you guys live 600 miles apart, so I'm just curious how you even know each other. Well, I don't know. We can tell the full story, Peter. But, no, I mean, well, I mean, speaking for myself, I knew around COVID time I was going to be coming. I went to high school in Alaska. My mom lives here. My brother lives here. But I'm ostensibly a Bay Area guy. But around the COVID time, I knew I was coming back to Alaska. The writing was kind of on the wall. I'm a music industry professional, as I was talking about earlier. That was dead. That wasn't happening anymore. so I knew pinball was such a big part of my life but coming back to Juneau before I had met Jared our owner of our bar I knew what he was doing I was like what am I going to do about pinball so I started looking at pinball in the state and the great Alaskan flip out which was what Peter and Max were doing was this thing it's a little bit hard for me to get to Anchorage and especially on a couple weeks notice so I was and then I knew I was getting my games at Bearcade, it was a pretty natural progression for me to try to get IFPA tournaments happening, try to get Juno pinball happening. And it was about that same time that Peter and David Pfeiffer, I think, were doing the same thing. So it happened pretty naturally. Peter and I have gotten to know each other just over the last year as both venues have started organizing with IFPA. and I think we got to be really good friends in states there was some how do I say this nicely we bonded over a mutual disliking of somebody else I guess you could say okay, okay, yeah, that happens sometimes without getting too in the weeds no names we don't speak negatively of Canada here guys, come on, let's not do that today it wasn't it wasn't him but I mean, speaking as being like the state representative it's important for me that the whole state gets represented and I think once we all got in the same room especially it was pretty natural we all became really good friends it's hard not to be when you play pinball it's Josh Sharpe did a great interview with local press here and he always talks about how it's not you playing the other person it's you everybody playing against this game that's trying to kill you and I think we all just have a We form a mutual bond over that at the end of the day. And just being Alaskans and trying to further this game and make it bigger and try to be recognized in a place where it's ostensibly harder than it could be anywhere else. It's a wasteland. It's a wasteland because to get games up here, it costs us literally $1,000 a piece easily. You can't just go drive to someone's house and say, pick up a game, and you know the person knows what they're doing and it's all working right. No, you have to take blind faith to get anything up here. And when something breaks, we don't know someone who fixes it, you're pretty much, you know, a deep kimchi. I like that. Okay, so I kind of live, like I'm obviously the opposite coast of you guys, but I kind of live in the middle of nowhere. And we honestly, like I play in the New Brunswick League because it's too far to me to get to the only league around here. But we also struggle from time to time getting enough people. Sometimes there's only eight people. Sometimes there's ten. Sometimes we get twelve. The odd time we might get sixteen if it's a nice day and everything. What do you guys find? What really helps? What do you guys use? I'm just curious. We don't have a lot of money to do radio or to do newspaper or even to spend online through Facebook ads or anything. How is it that you guys try to find new people and keep the scene energized and people excited to come out? Do you want to take that first? I'll go second. I'll try. So I just run Facebook ads. So I've had that Facebook, you know, the quote-unquote business page for Great Alaska Flipout for a few years. And there I, you know, I don't update it a lot, but I update it whenever there's like a tournament. So I have an event running. I tag Coots in there, Coots the bar, so that they know when we're having a tournament. So they can then, you know, through the bartenders kind of advertise it or, you know, word of mouth or however they do it. Yeah. but I'd just been running on Facebook. I had tried with a couple of the local newspapers for some free advertisement. That went okay but it been really hit or miss For the most part part Facebook has been the number one place that I gotten the most reactions from I've got people following the page that I have never met. Hopefully not all of them are bots. But a lot of people who are interested in pinball or the arcade scene have gotten a hold of me through there for repairs or questions on games and whatnot. So the little bit of money that I make off repairs, I keep in the bank and try to ultimately show a profit. But the tournaments themselves are just, you know, you pay for your quarter drops, you pay a dollar for the IFPA fees, and David and I just throw in random crap for people for prizes, but we're just there for fun. And Facebook is pretty much the only place I've really done any advertisements on that have really hit, you know. Wow, that makes so much sense, Peter. Because with Facebook, it's not like we're with a newspaper ad or with, God forbid, a television ad where you have to pay a set price. With Facebook, you can choose, well, okay, this event's coming up on the 17th. You can tell Facebook maximum I want to spend is 20 on advertising, and they'll stop showing that advertisement to people in your demographic once you've hit your max spend out. So I think that's definitely something for people who live in smaller locations, definitely, that they should give a try to. And what about yourself, David? What do you guys try to do to get people up there and good old Juno to come out other than awesome rock concerts? Yeah, well, that's part of the advantage that I have is that I do run production. I run social media. We have a little bit smaller town, so I'm able to run not necessarily print ads in the papers, but I have great relationships with the press here, with the radio, with the local NPR station. a lot of the journalists here are really happy to write about pinball um and i'm able to do like posters um throughout town i try to print everything up i've i've started it when we had we were still putting games up i started doing pinball 101 classes for anybody who was even remotely interested to come in and learn how to do a dead bounce learn how to nudge a little bit i ran those for months before we actually ever ran a tournament um just to help get people energized. I didn't want to come up and just smoke everybody. I wanted to actually build something where people could get better. So I do that a lot. I work downtown Juneau. I'm in the bars a lot. I'm making myself sound like a total alcoholic here right now. But the nature of my job keeps me social with a lot of people. And Juneau is so supporting of anything. It's the arts and the music communities, even the game communities. We have a huge pool league. We have a huge dart league. People are wanting to be out. People are, by nature, very social. Our downtown area is very dense with bars and restaurants. And so, yeah, both working with the press. I use Eventbrite for most of my things. And I can do digital marketing and I can target and regroup and create lookalike audiences to try to get people to come in. But yeah, I just work with anybody. I'm so happy to talk about pinball all the time. And I'll do it with anybody. And thankfully, people actually want to talk about it sometimes and publish articles or come and hang out. Our space is beautiful, too. I think people really like spending time in our space. Wow. So that's usually what I do. But yeah, it can be anywhere from something very elaborate, like I said, creating lookalike audiences in Eventbrite, to something just very boots on the ground, which is just me being out and around and people asking about it and just saying, hey, yeah, come down, man. You might have fun. And then watching somebody get fourth or third or fifth in their first tournament and get hooked from there. Wow. I love that. So I'm just curious, this is a little bit of a sidetrack, but it wouldn't really be a full Pinball Nerds podcast without me going off the rails at least once. I love linguistics and the difference of languages. We are as far apart on the coast of North America as we could be. If someone were playing pinball, what is a word, say like there was a really bad, like a double drain bow where both balls went out the outlanes at the same time, or something really just, you're one shot away from wizard mode. What's something that someone in Alaska might say out of anger or annoyance that you just wouldn't hear in other parts of America or even Canada? I'm just curious. Not both at once, guys. Not both at once. It's usually just a lot of mumbling and grumbling and running away for us. I don't know if this is a certain word. Okay. Looking at you, Dirty Dustin. I mean there's a possibility that expletives may be uttered right right okay there's no like I'm just wondering what words there would happen if I were out hanging out there for a week in Anchorage or Juneau or something what words might I come across at the bar or something that a local might say to me to describe something that I would have no clue what it is so here for instance if you're playing pinball at my most local spot at Spin It Records in Moncton because it's mostly French people. If the ball goes down, you'll hear someone say, ah, tabernacle, which is, I think it's goddammit in French. I'm not really sure. I haven't asked them yet, but they seem angry. So I'm just wondering, is there any cool language stuff there that you don't see in the southern parts of the U.S.? Not necessarily. I think our patterns of speech and what we use is probably really similar to what you'd hear in Seattle or in Vancouver or anything like that or up and down the West Coast. Nothing really special for us. I wish that somebody spoke Lincoln in our league, though, and could come up with some type of lingo or something. I don't know. You know what? Not all questions are great. You know, you've got to try them once in a while. I was very curious. Who knows? There was one phrase that I was going to print on a T-shirt. It was kind of a running joke. Okay. so the running joke was F off and play pinball so when someone starts getting uppity you basically tell them to F off and play pinball and that was just kind of a running joke it wasn't meant to be offensive but just like you know get over it well that's kind of the way I think of judo you'll hear the Jurassic Park game is probably our most popular game until we got Jaws in but like you'd hear shoot the left ramp in just weird places just a normal conversation or after like oh man i'd add a bad ball like well did you shoot the left ramp so it became like a local kind of a joke right like if you effed up then you should hit the left ramp more kind of i love that um one of the posters i made i put a little dinosaur in the corner with like a shoot the left ramp uh like comic uh blurb on there there you go i love that when we had uh when we had uh with a stargate you know the gottlieb game stargate here it was always uh was it shoot the glider or shoot the pyramid and so whenever somebody screwed up and just felt like being cheeky about it would say oh but to shoot the pyramid did you shoot the glider that's about it shoot the pyramid shoot the pyramid yeah it was i used to play dollar games shout out at my buddy uh mike diamonds's house another uh content creator here in canada who runs pinball shenanigans and uh you know somewhere sometime if anyone on a friday night we were playing loony games here in Canada, of course, dollar games, I guess, for you guys. If anyone anywhere was playing that game, all I could hear is shoot the pyramid, and I couldn't turn it off in my brain. It would drive me nuts. I don't particularly love that exact call-out, so I totally get where that one comes from. A question that I asked the last two gentlemen that I interviewed, I want to ask you guys, and we're probably going to wrap pretty soon, but I'm just curious, like, say for people listening, because I know I even had a, I won't call it hate mail per se, but I think it was very they were trying to be very constructive criticism, and I'm easily offended, but one of the things they said is that they really just don't like the tournament play, so they'll just skip any parts of any episode that has any time of me talking about tournaments, and it's like, but I love pinball, and I love playing tournaments, and I, to me, playing in tournaments is probably my favorite part, like, I can sit here and play pinball by myself in Orbeez Arcade, and it's still fun, if I get to wizard mode or something, it's still fun, don't get me wrong, I love all forms of pinball, but then it goes up a step if you're just playing with friends or family, and then it goes up another step if you're just playing for a beer, or you're playing for a buck, or you're playing to see who doesn't have to do the dishes after your barbecue from Berrio, right? Or you're doing some type of, you're putting something on the line. To me, it's almost like playing poker. If you play poker and you go, oh, it's just for fun, and there's not even $5 on the line, everyone just goes all in every hand, it's not very fun. And that's why I try to explain to people who maybe have played pinball lots with their friends, but they've never actually, they're so intimidated by going to a tournament. I wish they just knew how, you know, for the most part, for beginners coming out to tournaments, 99% of pinball nerds are just so welcoming and forthcoming and excited to have newer people there. And kind of, if anything, maybe we're too nice and trying to teach them too much too fast. But what would you guys say, like, what do you guys think is, to anyone listening right now who just doesn't play tournaments or maybe had one bad tournament experience, what would you say to encourage them maybe? And I don't know who would like to go first. I'll let you guys choose. But I'm just curious what you would say to someone out there who doesn't play a lot of tournaments to try to get them to come in and play their first tournament. I can go first. Do you want, Peter? Sure. I think it's a big social club. I think especially in Alaska here where it's not – again, I came from San Francisco where it's this mature scene, and I can't tell you how many times I've gotten my head stomped in by Andre Mazenkov or Brian O'Neill or Gabe DeSilveria. But even still at that point, it's social. It's a club. It's still everybody against this game, and everybody's encouraging to try to do that. And also you get to hang out in the bar and have fun. the longer you the better you get the longer you get to play and um i think i kind of hope zyron give the same answer but it's it's so much more than just a tournament it's not it's we're not playing softball or basketball here it's not constant in your face competition it's it's it's really about like coming together and being social and especially in alaska where gets cold and dark and you really need that here I think maybe more than anywhere else it a good excuse to get out and be amongst friends and be encouraging and you know when you when you do something great you know when you have that great ball of iron maiden or whatever it might be and like everybody like cheering for you Um I don I don't know that there's anything like it and it's, it's, it's easily approachable. It's, it's easy, easy to learn, impossible to master and, um, everybody's going to support you with that. I love it. I, I, I absolutely love that. And I, I agree with everything that you said. It's just like, people don't even understand I know when I used to go to my tournament sometimes the entire night we'd barely talk about pinball like maybe maybe maybe sure if you learn something new on a game you might but some nights if you hadn't seen certain friends and you're playing in different groups you'd spend maybe five percent of your night talking about pinball all the rest is oh how's it going or how's your band going or how's your family or your friends or your job or what you've been up to since last time I got to chat with you or just how was your week you know and I think that people think that when they listen to I think that maybe pinball nerds who haven't played in a lot of tournaments who have listened to a lot of content they assume you get there and it's all like you're studying notes and you're you know there's very few people are doing that you're there to have fun you're there to shoot the shots you're there to have a couple beers listen some tunes let loose and primarily just socializing a cool group of people right so and what about yourself peter what do you think we can do to encourage you know non-pinball players to go play on their first tourney i mean it's all about socialization there certainly can be some people who are more competitive. So if that's what they're worried about getting into, is being in a really competitive situation, yeah, I mean, just try to hang out and talk to people who are maybe newer at it than you are, or maybe have some common interests, but really you need socialization up here for sure. Yeah, and you guys have, like, how many months is it? Like, I know I wasn't quite as far north as you guys in Whitehorse, I don't think, but, or anyways, I was there in the summer, so it wouldn't have mattered, but how many months in a row do you guys go with less than a – don't you go three or four months with only an hour or two of light or something? About two months in the middle of winter, like December, January. Damn. And then pinball is really important. I'm south of Whitehorse, so I don't have it quite as bad. Whitehorse is one of our sister cities. It's a four-hour boat ride and a two-hour drive for us. It's not as far as you would think. So I still get, in the wintertime, I still get like three or four hours of daylight. I also live in the rainforest, so it's cloud covered even if there is sun. Did you say you live in the rainforest? There's no rainforest in Alaska. Come on. Yeah, this is the temperate rainforest. The Tongass Forest is an actual rainforest, and Peter has snow ties too, and I know he's been through the rain. wow so that must be like similar to the rainforest you would hear that's in like uh whatever like going up through like british columbia and vancouver and everything right yeah yeah we're yeah right uh i'm sure they have different names but it's it's built built the same that's awesome wow well gentlemen um we're probably gonna wrap her up soon i've been trying very hard to not do any more three-hour podcasts of course but uh thank you so much both for all of your time. I wanted to kind of just go around. If you guys had like a shout out to like maybe someone who inspired you to get into pinball or like if there's a Facebook page where I guess you want locals maybe to follow you and where they can go to learn about stuff like that, go ahead and give that a shout out. And I mean, whoever, maybe Peter, if you would like to go first, you can do that. And, but other than that, just thank you both very much. Oh, and I almost forgot, David. I almost forgot. You're probably, you're probably not maybe, like you might have heard the other shows you probably know what's coming but i definitely said the top five rad pinball nerds that i met when i was at my trip to d82 at nationals and pinmasters we're gonna get a huge monetary prize of 50 canadian as well as 50 of schwag so i almost i almost finished the podcast and forgot to tell you the the giant news that you're gonna get at least two meals at McDonald's for free, my friend. It's one meal at Alaska prices. Oh my god. That's awesome, man. I'm honored to be on that list. There were so many rad people there. Yeah, I made it. You were really kind. You were really funny. I'm pretty sure I chatted with you a little bit at Lumberjack Johnny's as well. I know I talked to you at D82 a couple times. I think somehow, maybe, I don't know if you had a couple too many beers or what, but you did let me be in that one tournament at Lumberjack Johnny's, which was really nice of you, David. No? For me to be able to... No, I'm just kidding. You beat me in both, didn't you? I don't remember. I don't remember either. I was looking at it and I was like, wait, did I beat him? Or maybe I'm thinking about... I did see that you beat Zach Sharp, though, in Nationals, I believe, or no, at Pym Masters. Yeah, I also got to Heads Up Games. I was able to beat Colin Urban and Jason Wardrick yeah that's just like oh wow like I like I remember playing Colin on hot dog and I'm like did I just beat him that's so awesome well you are an incredible player I think you're probably the best player on planet earth that's ranked like you're like 1926 here so like honestly with the skills that you have like even even just looking at your um you know when we look at your rank as far as match play and stuff like that, we can see that your rating is 1700th and then your rank is 223rd in that through match play. And overall with your rating, you're sitting at 685th in the world. So you're obviously a lot better than your ranking would show because you don't live in Chicago or even the Bay City anymore where you'd get the big whoppers. But I believe they're on their way. They are soon coming to Alaska. yeah so Peter are you I think that you are back you've made it back I'm just wondering yeah what really to kind of finish it out here if you had any shout outs you wanted to give or anything like that well definitely thanks to Max Max Enders for like getting me started in my pinball addiction and it's really great to have people up here who love to play pinball of all ages you know men and ladies of course uh it's just it's just nice to come to a place where you can just hang out talk pinball and and everything else under the sun and just have a kind of a common love over uh these entertainment devices are fantastic and uh if anyone's interested more about what i do is my my hobby just go to great alaska flip out on facebook and hit me up um i do restore work on pinballs and you can check it out. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for that. I bet you up there in Alaska, there's not too many people restoring pins. There you go. Yeah, not many. Thank you guys so much. I do really appreciate you guys coming on the show. It's been a pleasure. David, make sure you just send me PayPal and I can fire you off that money. You also get like $50 in swag at some point in the future. $50 Canadian, I have to say that because it's only like $1.75 American or something. It's basically just enough change to get on the old bus there. I don't even know if they have those in Juneau. We do. There you go. Okay, big enough for that. How big is Juneau? I got to know how big is Juneau before we go. $33,000. Okay, that's not bad. I'm in River Hibbert's, Nova Scotia here, which they haven't done a census for a long time. but we think there's about 600 people. We're not sure. Well, I'm also not on the road system, so we're completely just water locked in here. But we're also the biggest town, and we can extend it out to Whitehorse or Anchorage, I think. Wow. Hundreds and hundreds of miles. We're the biggest town around here. I have a few shout-outs I'd like to give, if it's all right. Yes, yes, yes. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to. And I'll try to keep it brief, but I just want to thank everybody from the beginning who's helped me get into pinball, starting in LA with John Su and Michael Polero, especially back home in San Francisco. I want to thank the entire San Francisco pinball department, Russ and Shannon Sweetser, Andre Mazenkov, who's just been such a, he's been so helpful throughout my time playing, Brian O'Neill, who not only helped me in pinball, but in life in so many ways, the Wagon Sauners, Eric and Louise, who I've always called my pinball mom and dad. I want to thank Peter, and I want to thank David Pfeiffer up in Anchorage just for keeping it going and expanding I think what we all hope that Alaskan pinball can be a thing and whether it's me or somebody from Anchorage that goes next year to Nationals to not think we're going to be pushovers, we're going to come to play but yeah, just everybody and anybody who's helped me get into pinball You're welcome That's so awesome Well, guys, thank you both so much. I really appreciate it. I'm glad we were able to get together. Honestly, sometimes I'm not like a sound engineer. Sometimes the sound quality with three people is a little bit difficult to try to adjust the levels. I tried to do a little as we're going, but for the most part, I think it did very well. And I really appreciate all of your time. And hopefully in the future, I don't know if I will qualify again, David, for New Brunswick as the champ. But I would love, you know, if somehow I do win at some point in the future and you happen to win also, I'm sure we'll get to hang out then. And if not, I'm not even kidding. Peter and David, I want to go to Alaska. Don't tell all the American states, all the other listeners who live anywhere else but, you know, Alaska in America. But literally, you guys are the number one state I want to come visit. I think you're by far the most beautiful. You're very remote. You're kind of, I think of you guys as being the opposite side of the coast as me. and I've always wanted to kind of, well, I mean, BC is, you know, one of my favorite provinces outside of Nova Scotia, of course. So hopefully someday I'll get to come check out both places up there. It sounds like you're a little far apart, but I'm not going to come to Alaska and not go to Juneau and Anchorage. So hopefully I'll get to come play a little pinball with you guys someday, sometime as well. Yeah, hopefully. I got an extra bathroom for you. Yeah. All right, well, I'm looking forward to it. All right, guys, until next time, say it with me if you know it remember to eat, sleep, and breathe Alaskan Pinball Woo!