I awoke to an absolutely perfect day. I used the treadmill in my room to run 3.5 miles before getting cleaned up for Mat to take me to church at Our Lady of Mt Carmel.
It was packed today due to visitors attending spring training for the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team. Another truly uplifting service before Mat and Dave came back to collect me to return to Casa del O’Donnell y Langlois.
Mat prepared a homemade breakfast of taiyaki which is a Japanese fish shaped pancake stuffed with a sweet sauce (chocolate and vanilla custard in this case) and thick cut bacon which I used to make a sourdough bacon sandwich.
After breakfast (or brunch, depending on one’s point of view), the four of us played Tetris 99 which is a competition Tetris game where you play against 99 other online players to be the last person standing. After a few rounds of this, we met on the battlefield of Super Mario Party once more. Once again, I fell one star short as I lost to Carolyn, but at least having the satisfaction of topping Mat and making certain that Dave, as the accursed Yoshi, stayed in the basement of the rankings.
StarFighters Arcade
At 3pm, Carolyn left for a concert while Mat, Dave, and I went back in time to the 80s and visited StarFighters Arcade, a vintage arcade.
I’ve visited several vintage arcades, but this has to be the top of the heap, so far. For starters, it has the lowest price for an all day pass at only $11. It also has a very varied selection of classic games and pinball machines with some serious old school stuff in here. It also feels like a traditional arcade with 80s music being piped in and the place is so noisy, you have to practically shout to be heard. 80s movies also play on a couple of screens in the arcade.
I got to play some games that I hadn’t played in years such as Haunted House, a three tiered pinball game and Baby Pac-Man, a hybrid video and pinball game with the catch being that there are no power pellets, but you can escape to the pinball section of the game. I also played a surprisingly fun Popeye pinball machine, battled Mat around the world in Karate Champ where he edged me out in duels, bested Golden Axe with Dave as he’s the best partner who’s ever worked against me, and even played original Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace games. I had a pretty good run on Dragon’s Lair and may have been able to best it if I had focused my entire time on it.
We left the arcade machine shortly before closing time and stopped at a traditional Chinese restaurant called Shaanxi Garden for dinner.
Shaanxi Garden
Shaanxi Garden is known for its homemade noodles and huge servings. Each entree is truly family style, so I highly recommend sharing one entree among your group. Mat ordered some cheese wontons as an appetizer and I enjoyed a few small servings of Stir Fry Pao Mo which is a braised, spicy lamb stew.
From the restaurant, we made our way to the Desert Botanical Garden to visit its Electric Desert light show. This was also where Mat and Carolyn held their wedding reception and I was shocked to see just how small a space the venue had actually been.
It was a peaceful evening as we watched cacti light up like pinball machines, a mountain replicate the experience of a desert storm, and watched psychedelic colors dance over plants and rocks.
The night seemed over too soon before it was back to Mat’s and bed for tomorrow would be road tripping time.
Chris' Corner 