This is the prologue to a story about an idiot.
In the late 2010s, I began taking regular trips to visit arcades around the country. No, on second thought, I don’t believe “trip” is the right word. “Trip” suggests a vacation. In my case, I’d describe them as something more akin to fulfilling a compulsion.
I’d start looking up arcades, find a few that piqued my interest, then decide I absolutely had to see them at all costs. I’d book a bus, pack my bags, and begin my outing. Soon, I was half-dead and finally had my fill of arcades, so I could return home in peace.
In October of 2019, my destination was Denver, Colorado. There were two things I didn’t know at the time: That most of those arcades would be gone in a few months and that it would be my last journey for several years. In 2020, arcades were closed, travel was restricted, and making my way out to any arcade just wasn’t feasible. That’s not to say that I didn’t make a few short voyages to scratch that itch, but by 2023, I was dying for it.
So what happens when someone like me has been deprived of his passion for so long?
When I traveled out to the East Coast, I ended up hitting 44 arcades in one trip. I wasn’t trying to visit that many, but I just couldn’t help myself. But in retrospect, I wish I had gone to just six more. 50 arcades would have been a much better number to end things on, don’t you think?
So I decided this would be the theme of my journey: Passing my previous record of 44 arcades.
This year was a mission of quantity over quality! Any and every arcade was fair game! If it had arcade machines, it was an arcade! This wasn’t the time to have standards! I had three years’ worth of hunger to satisfy. I wouldn’t be content until I never wanted to look at another arcade again!
To commemorate the occasion, I purchased this right before I set out. It was a small, hard-paged book containing nothing. Simply visiting 50 arcades wasn’t enough. I wanted proof that I did. So I had a secondary condition: I’d have each arcade write the name of their location in my book as I visited.
Oh yes, there’s one other big point that I feel I should be upfront about: I made this journey on foot. A Greyhound took me to my starting point, then I spent the next week lugging around a camping backpack. I won’t pretend I didn’t use public transportation at all. It was necessary in order to keep my schedule. Still, you’d be surprised at just how far I ended up having to traverse on my own two feet.
My mission had a deadline: Once winter weather started, I was done. My sleeping bag wasn’t equipped for below freezing temperatures (and my sleeping bag liner fell off my pack about five days into the journey, so I had to be VERY careful about the cold at night).
Did I actually make it to all 50? Well, that’s what these blog posts are for, aren’t they?
As I made the long walk from the bus stop to where I would be starting my journey, I was reminded that it was the season of ghosts and pumpkins. Seeing all of the houses decorated like this made me a bit nostalgic. Walking from door to door, begging for treats. It was then that I decided what to name this adventure of mine:
Token-Crow’s Legendary Arcade Trick-or-Treat Adventure
I’m not as immature as I was back during the “Exciting East Coast Arcade Adventure”, so I’m not going to put that in the title of every blog post. Let’s just call it “Midwest Journey” for the sake of brevity.
I also won’t pretend like I camped out every night I was out. I had days when I had to sleep in a motel. Sometimes it’s because I’d been out in the woods for too long and was pushing the limits of how long I could go without a shower (I did have a gym membership that took care of that most of the time, though). Other times, I was too close to the city and I couldn’t find a good place to camp without being seen. At one point, I had to duck away in a motel in the middle of nowhere for two days to wait out a cold front.
In this case, I had to pull an all-nighter to catch the bus out here. I really didn’t want to mess around with a tent after that. I’ve always loved staying in crappy motels like this. It’s always fun to see what kind of strange layout they’d have. This is the first time I’ve seen one with an eating table in the middle like this.
But before I end this prologue, I realize I still haven’t mentioned exactly where this trip would be taking place yet, have I? My starting point would be a town just north of Cincinatti that happened to catch my attention.
And by “catch my attention”, I mean “I absolutely had to see this place at all costs”.
I’m unrelenting, if nothing else.
