Top Of The Rock Reunion
This past Thursday, Drink hosted the 10 year reunion of Top Of The Rock, Club 911, DV8, whatever the hell it was called when you went. I had completely forgot about it until that day. I managed to con my mother-in-law into babysitting Ethan for the night so we could attend. Marie & I caught up with a few of our friends from the present and past.
Click here to see the pictures
The last two weeks in pictures
Holly, Steve, Marie, Me, Nico and Kristy @ 49 West
100th Street Crew Reunion - Dib, Me, Missy, Andrea & Stephanie
Ethan’s birthday present from Steve & Carol - took me 8 hours to put that thing together by myself!
Ethan eating his first birthday cake
Sega Afterburner cockpit
Marie & I picked up the Afterburner cockpit I won off of eBay last week Saturday and damn was that an experience! We left about 10:30am and got there around 1:30pm. When we arrived, his garage door was open and I saw the game was at an angle. Upon closer inspection, I see that the right side has both wheels on the front and back but the left side doesn’t have any. And to make matters worse, this thing is close to 1000 pounds and the seller didn’t have anyone come over to help load it up, nor did he have anything to put under the left side to help roll it onto the trailer. So Marie, this guy, his wife and I tried to push it unto the trailer ramp but since the left side didn’t have wheels, the metal frame kept getting stuck in the grate on the ramp. At one point I bent down and tried to lift it up a bit, (which was really stupid and I know better but with everything going on I wasn’t thinking clearly), I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. From that moment on, I could barely bend over. Argh!
So after that, since there was no way we could push it up the ramp, we moved the trailer to the low part of his neighbor’s yard and I backed it up right to where the edge of his driveway was. This made the ramp level with the driveway. After that, we were able to push the game into the trailer a little bit at a time. After that I strapped it in with a ratchet strap, tho it probably didn’t need it since it was so damn heavy and going nowhere. Since I’ve had a bad experience with a cab flying out the back of a truck before, I thought it best to be safe than sorry. In all, it took us an hour just to get the damn thing loaded into the trailer.
Just after we get back on the road to headhome, it starts to rain. I’m coming up to a busy intersection and I’m pretty close to the light and it starts to turn yellow. So I apply the brake and I just sliding straight ahead. I knew there was no way I was going to stop so I just started laying on the horn and gunned it. Thank God nobody pulled out in front of me. I thought I was going to get a ticket since there was a cop about 100 feet from the light that had someone pulled over but he must have missed the whole thing.
We get on the highway and it starts raining really hard. Of course I didn’t have the game covered tho I wasn’t too worried about that since the game is mostly enclosed anyway. If anything it was gonna get a much needed bath. I was a little nervous since I just slid thru a busy intersection so I was keeping my distance from people and going about 50mph. At one point it was raining so hard we stopped under an overpass to get out of the rain. After sitting there for about 5 minutes and having cars and semi’s drive by us really fast - scaring the crap out of Marie, we took off again after the rain let up a bit. It started raining hard again but I just said screw it and continued to drive. Shortly before reaching Michigan, it stopped raining and it was clear the rest of the way home.
So we get home about 4 hours later (didn’t go faster than 60mpg the whole time since it was such a heavy load) and my back isn’t killing me but I’m feeling uncomfortable. We already had plans that night to get together with some friends at a bar since our friend Marc was proposing to his girlfriend that night. So I parked the trailer and my Jeep in the street and called it a night with that beast. We went out and I had 4 New Castle’s on draft and I think those really helped me from feeling the pain in my lower back!
The next day we were going up to the cottage where Marie’s parents were. Before heading up their, I bought 4 new 3″ caster wheels with locks from Lowe’s to use on this Afterburner. So we head up to the cottage and I’m telling Steve about my dilemma and we came up with some ideas on how to get it out of the trailer and in my garage. We stopped at his house and picked up his car jack and a rectangular metal box with wheels in each of the 4 corners. We jacked up the game in the trailer, put the box with wheels under the side that didn’t have wheels and slowly pulled it out of the trailer. It was a little scary coming down the ramp and it was leaning towards one side but in the end we got it out of the trailer with no problems. After that, we pushed it into the garage and jacked up each side and put bricks under it so I could work on putting the new wheels on it. Steve always seems to have the tools I need to get the job done and saves the day once again. If only I had those tools when we picked up the darn thing!
Thankfully my back is feeling much better now. I probably just pulled a muscle or two. I also ended up with some really bad bruises on my left arm and leg. I’m not even really sure what I did when I was moving the game to cause that. After mountng the new wheels I picked up, I borrowed Steve’s jack again to get it off from the bricks. I powered it up for the first time and got nothing on the screen, tho I did have neck glow. I saw the game board’s LED was on which more than likely meant it was getting +5vdc. I check this with my DMM and it was showing close to +5.8vdc, which was quite a bit higher than it should be. I adjusted it back down to around +5.10vdc but as I thought, this didn’t make any difference, This game is a rats nest of wires and the game board is mounted in a metal box, which has an interface board on the top that the wiring connects to. Inside the metal box, the underside of the interface board has another set of cables that plug into the various connections on the game board. This means it’s going to be near impossible to work on this board inside the game.
Now the real fun begins…