B-day bowling and ticket theiving

For G's b-day lil K invited us to join them at Big Al's in Beaverton. I offered to drive A and R and we picked L up on the way. I used my phones nifty navigation feature to get directions and started our journey. It was seriously a journey. I lived in Tigard once upon a time. I still had absolutely no idea where we were when we finally got there, even though it was only a few miles from the street I lived off of.
It was a fun almost hour long drive. Filled with critique of my driving, in car dance parties, reminiscing about sunburns, and wondering if we were really ever going to make it. The place was humongous, and tries to blind you on your way in with lights that shine straight up from the ground right in front of the gigantic door.
We tried to find G and lil K but had no luck even though we walked all the way to the end lanes. We ran into G on our way back to the front and he is really excited to see us. He says something about how his license expired the day before, so they won't serve him alcohol and now he has to get drunk in the car. Clearly, it's working, based on his sideways smirk, slightly slurred words and massive amounts of drunk love. Then he tells us to get some shoes so we can join the bowling fun and runs off to find the bathroom before his bladder goes on strike.
Click through to read the rest!


While we put on our shoes, G sets up the score screen with all of our names. He uses A's nickname for R but refuses to use Muscles for me. It's my name damn it! A and I look for a ball to use but realize we don't need to find our own because our lane has about 14 bowling balls all ready for us to use.
I remember in high school, when our PE class would meander down the block to the bowling alley for bowling week. I remember that I have always been bad at bowling. However I clearly remember scores in the triple digits. Judging by my gutter ball warm up, I wasn't going to see a score like that this time.
Luckily, it seemed like everyone was going to have the same kind of game. Even the birthday boy, who always had to be told it was his turn, was throwing some gutter balls. I got one spare the whole game, and everyone cheered. Nothing like a good group of friends to make you feel good about being a terrible bowler.
After the game was over (almost everyone had a score under 100, making me feel like slightly less of a loser) we planned on heading upstairs and playing some arcade games. First, the smokers needed to go outside for a smoke break and birthday boy needed some more car drinks. A, R, L and I headed to get some food while we waited for everyone to make it back inside. We ordered some food and stood off to the side to patiently wait. G came back inside and demanded (with a big grin) we go upstairs to play games. That drunk slur was still totally in effect. He ran upstairs and we continued waiting.
It seemed to take forever for our food to actually come out of the kitchen. L got her food first, and went to sit at a nearby table to eat while the rest of us waited. A decided to go keep her company, which turned into them sharing the pretzel. Then R went to join them and I stubbornly waited at the counter for my fries. I watched a girl come out of the kitchen with a couple baskets of fries and thought "finally!" but instead of handing my basket to me she walked out from behind the counter. Hmm, must not be for me. Then she walked to the table where L, R and A were sitting and set my fries down before walking off to deliver the second basket. Why did she hand everyone else their food at the counter but when my food came out she suddenly thought "There's no way that girl is standing by the counter waiting for these fries she ordered with her friends. I'll just take this over to their table."
At least the fries were good. Burn the tip of your tongue and the entire roof of your mouth off hot, but really good.
Now that we were all fed, we headed upstairs to the arcade. A and R tried to figure out how to get some tokens to play games while L and I headed off to find the rest of the group. There were tons of games up there. Arcade type games, racing games, ski ball of course, and is that a virtual roller coaster over there? We found G doing some virtual boxing. One hand in a boxing glove, and the other holding an empty basket of fries. We talked to lil K for a minute while we all watched G get so into the boxing that he was actually hitting the screen, and then headed off to explore. We found R and A near the ski ball games and I saw some tickets sticking out of one of the games. I grabbed them and showed off my hard earned bounty. L and I decided to find out what we could get for 6 tickets.
We head into the prize buying area and start to look around. Of course, most things cost hundreds of tickets, but I figured that like Wonderland, they would have some small things for 5 tickets. I was right. There was candy, and little tiny toys. I found a bin with tons of those rubber poppers and decided one of those would be a good free prize. They're entertaining and easily sharable, unlike the candy we could afford.
In case you don't know what I'm talking about here's a random picture of the kind of toy I'm talking about:

I think they're awesome. You flip them inside out and the pop and fly into the air. L helped me pick one out by testing a few out until one flew off. We knew that was the one we wanted. So we took our new toy and headed to the checkout counter, tickets in hand. The 2 clerks behind the counter were chatting so I just slid the tickets towards them on the counter and told them I'd like to buy this toy. One guy turned to talk to us and the other walked off. He smiled and told me we needed to put the tickets on our card in order to use them to buy anything.
What card?
He showed me a Big Al's card and asked if I had one. Of course I don't, I've never even heard of this place until today.
"Well then how'd you get the tickets?" He asked me, laughing.
I found them...Why do I need a card to win tickets? I'm so confused. He comments about me at least being honest about it and says he can give me a card so we can put the tickets on them to buy our toy. He activates a card and hands it to me and then tells us we have to go to the ticket machine right outside and put the tickets on the card.
This is ridiculous. I put the popper on the counter and tell him we'll be right back. We walk to the machine and take way too long to figure out how to work it. The tickets went in fine. I just couldn't get the card to read. Fourteen thousand swipes later (that might be a slight exaggeration) and we now had a card worth 6 tickets. We walk back into the prize center and of course, now there is a line at the counter. As we walk to the end of line I take a peek at the counter to make sure my popper is still there, and sure enough, it's waiting for us. We finally make it to the register and I proudly hand over my card. He laughs as he swipes it and tells us we have one ticket left as he hands the card back. Sheesh! That was a lot of work for just one little popper toy.
L and I head back into the arcade to find our friends and show off our prize. A gives us her ticket card with some tickets on it to fuel our excitement. We're very excited and everyone rolls their eyes at us while laughing at our story. Except birthday boy, who drunkenly starts to pull tickets out of his pocket and handing them over. I start to protest as he places a strand of tickets in my hand and he dismisses me saying he doesn't care about the tickets while digging for some more from other pockets. I look at L and her eyes are big with excitement. G and lil K are getting ready to leave so we hug them goodbye and wish G a happy birthday one more time before finishing our adventure.
With a fist full of tickets we run back to the ticket machine giggling like little school girls. I hand L some tickets so she can feed them onto her card and I load the rest onto my card. When we're all done, we've got about 80 tickets and a couple of six packs from all the laughing we were doing. We walk back into the prize center, giggling of course, and start to look around for what we can buy. If we break it down, we've got 40 tickets each. Or we can go for something really big to share. We marvel at a giant lollipop and slinky, but they're certainly not within our ticket budget, so we head to the back wall, where the cheaper things are. As we contemplate which candies we might want, R and A join us. Naturally, we extend our free ticket candy shopping spree to them. Now we've each got 20 tickets to spend however we like. L quickly picks out the candy she wants. I pick a couple of pieces and try to think of the perfect last choice. A begs R for candy ticket donation so she can get a sucker. He agrees to donate some of his tickets to her and she grabs her selection. I realize we're all waiting on me so I grab a pack of smarties and we're ready to check out.
We walk to the counter, L and I giggling, A and R trying to distance themselves enough from us to not be associated but stay close enough to still get the free candy. We grin at the clerk as we hand over our cards, expecting some comment about mugging children for tickets or something, but he's apparently done with our shananigating because he just tells us we have one ticket left, again, and goes back to working.
We walk out of the prize place, eating some candy, and through the arcade to make our way back to the car. In the parking lot we find G and lil K, as they almost hit us (not really) with their car. They honk and we all laugh. I run up to G's window and offer him the popper as a birthday present. He tests it out and I see it fly to the bottom of the car when it pops. I take that as my cue to leave and yell out goodbye as I run to my car.