Where it all began

My wife and I got married in the spring of 2019 and decided to take an Alaskan cruise for our honeymoon. I wasn’t thrilled about the mode of transportation (thalassophobia doesn’t really thrive in that type of environment), but we do crazy things for love. Sparing you the nightmarish details of getting to Seattle for our cruise, we eventually made it and disembarked on 7 wonderful days at sea.

The 2nd to last day was a day in Victoria Canada and this is where our story begins. Instead of paying for an overpriced excursion at a garden or high tea, we decided to just wing it and see what downtown Victoria had to offer. We found a nice local spot for lunch and a game store close by, but we had hours to kill before we needed to be back on the ship. That’s when my freshly wedded bride suggested “how about an arcade?” She grew up with an old pinball machine in her home, and I grew up playing pinball at my local skating rink and I had not been able to play for decades.

After a quick search, we found a (literal) underground arcade in Victoria called “Quazar’s Arcade.” They had a fantastic selection of classic pins from the 90’s: Indiana Jones, Terminator 2, Jackbot, the list goes on and on. We had a great time playing and got to talking to one of the waitresses there and she asked us where we were from and we told her Texas. She inquired where in Texas and told her it was from towns she’d probably never heard of “Kilgore/Longview” area. She told us to wait right there and got one of her managers. He came out from the back dripping with southern hospitality and informed us that he was from Tyler and it was great to meet people from his home area. We spent probably another hour or so there playing more games and talking but had to leave to make it back to our ship. After walking out of the place Rebekah (my wife) and I were quiet and then what felt simultaneous we both looked at each other and said

“…..why don’t we do something like that? Why don’t we start an arcade?”