Yesss....it was a great day for the EADS (European Arcade Distribution System).
On friday evening PolderArcade was so kind to bring something I had to forward further South. The case was, he had found a lost penguin which was heading up north for some strange reason.
We all know penguins need to live on the south pole so we decided that it had to move further south so Bart brought it from the Amsterdam surroundings to my place. The trip had to go way further south though, so I would do the 2nd part of the trip....
If you want to become a member of EADS system, you have to obey some pretty strict rules !
First of all you must make a survival package. This of course depends on the destination and duration of the trip. In this case the trip wasn't that long so we could keep it simple....
Second, you must be able to transport delicate goods safely. In this case we scored a 9,5 and not a 10 regretfully, but I will come back on that later...
Anyway, we carefully convinced the penguin to enter my car...
Yes, another cab enters the trusty Skoda. This will be one of the last cabs I will transport in this car. There is over 180.000 km on this one and a new one is already ordered and will be delivered half june...
The penguin is pretty big but it still fits easily:
A professional EADS member does not forget to warn upcoming traffic (if there is any that is....) for the delicate cargo:
Also he managed to still load MORE stuff on board....
Weather & road conditions report check: bright blue sunny sky, excellent temps for the time of year, this is going to be a relaxed road-trip !
The planned trip. Of course we will shave off some time to make it a round 1.45 hrs...even without speeding today....no need, relax man !
Destination is somewhere between Brussels and Charleroi.
As so many trips before, we head south and cross the water from the provence of Zuid-Holland to the provence Noord-Brabant.
and we enter Belgium, of course first we enter Flanders
Ahhh, if only the roads were always like this:
I loudly sing along to Borderline from Madonna on my favorite radio station
www.nostalgie.euYes I made a video. No I won't torture you with it
Luckily, this time we do not head to Gand from Antwerp but instead aim for Brussels so it's a different trip from there....
Passing Brussels on the east side, nice woods and very old-fashioned hi-way:
We reach some pretty historical grounds:
I mean EVERYONE knows this Abba song:
http://youtu.be/Sj_9CiNkkn4We're making good progress......
Paris ? Wow, didn't know I was going so fast and far
Finally we reach the destination, Chris's mansion:
...oops no, that's not it, it's still a bit further down the road...
But there we reach destination: The EASD Warehouse (TM) !
Something familiar is already waiting with the warehouse manager...
Next we unload the penguin and I think it was the hot weather but it seemed to have melted...
Anyway...nothing to do about that, so let's get out that empty, soul-less shell.
Please don't be to harsh on it. It had a great youth, when it was young it proudly played one of the best and most popular arcade games every made.
But later, when it got a bit older, and the vector monitor got defective, some cruel op transformed it into a raster game !!
In shame, it spent it's last years in operation. Luckily, this transformation did make the cabinet survive much longer than expected.
Surgeon Chris had kindly removed all the wrong parts from it so that it is ready for its second life in glory, becoming a Lunar Lander !
Yes it had some corner damage, some minor nicks, but the cab is structurally sound and will be great in the end !
In the mean time another EADS colleague had arrived for another parts pick-up:
Close inspection of the goods:
There were some small worries if the Asteroids would fit the car but I should have given it some more trust after having moved so many cabs with it....:
Fits perfectly, I love how the designers of the car made the back door so "bulgy", it makes fitting cabs a breeze:
I did have to move the front chair a bit further forwards compared to the penguin....
After that there was a little explanation to do about how to operate an ESR meter (where even I learned something
) for the colleagues.
After all the hard work there is time for a short break, and of course the professional EADS driver never drinks alcohol before driving, but only the Officially Allowed EADS Soda:
There is also time for a nice lunch, kindly offered by the EADS warehouse manager, Etienne and I feel like being on holiday in France !
Next, for me, it was time to head back home. I wanted to see what was on the other side of that famous tunnel and I got lost a little bit, a nice way to see a bit of the surroundings:
And so, we head back home. The trip was relaxed ann uneventful....of course no road-trip pic is complete without:
This is always the sign for me I'm almost in The Netherlands again as these are just still on the Belgian border.
I gave RobinHolland a ring to let him know my ETA and we store the future LL in it's temporary place, he managed to arrange just one single spot left (thanks buddy !!!):
Of course I also picked up some other LL parts at Chris's place. F.I. my precious. My most expensive PCB EVER !:
Yes, a (supposedly) working Lunar Lander PCB. REALLY happy to have it here now !
Not so happy with this though !:
It is the famous edge connector burning that so many Atari games suffer....
So....this isn't exactly plug-n-play.....this will need to be fixed, but it's possible in different ways...it will be OK.
Now about the penguin. Even though it was totally wrapped, during unloading the game from Bart's car a small part of the plastic got torn. We later noticed that a small part of the side art got damaged by something. We have no clue what as we had card-board and blankets on the edge of the car but it happened. You can blame me for it Ully, I'm really sorry and I'm sick of it but I can't undo it.
Knowing your magic I am sure you will find a way to make it almost invisible....sorry dude !!!
While I was at Robin's storage we made some pics of the inside of the Sega Bomber. See the Bomber thread for those pics !
