So a few weeks ago, Amanda and I went with JC and Krishna out to this new little amusement place off of 70 near Briar Creek called Frankie’s Fun Park. They have an arcade, kids rides, a couple mini golf courses, bumper boats, batting cages and some nice go-kart tracks.

So Amanda and I went back there this afternoon to use some credits we had on our little Frankie’s card. We went out, did a round on the Shamrock course, which was a ton of fun. I had a grin on my face the entire time. The track was slick enough, and the karts had enough oomph to make ‘em get a little oversteer going on in corners.

After that, we went in for Amanda to get a drink. While, downing that, we walked around the arcade. There was this little game that had an electronic spinner (kind of like Wheel of Fortune). It had six total levels — 1-5 numbered and the sixth level had “Win.” For a buck, you got three spins on the wheel. The goal was to get a positive sum that would get you to the sixth level, where you could choose one of 6 prizes, all of which in this machine were 4GB iPod Minis!

So we’re watching a few people do it, and there are two Frankie’s employees watching as well. One tells us they just upgraded the chip to make it spin faster and they hadn’t seen anyone win since the upgrade. We tried two or three times without any luck.

Then we headed back out to do a couple rounds of the batting cage, and one more turn around the Shamrock go-kart course. Well, we’re heading back through and realize we have a single buck left on our card, so Amanda suggests we use it on that game one last time. First one, I got +1. The second, I got a -3 I think. On the third and final, I got a freaking 5!

So on our last buck and last spin, we get our choice of iPod Minis! So we chose a silver 4GB and it dropped out of the machine and into our possession. How cool is that? We got a $199 iPod Mini for really a dollar, or $4 if you count the early tries. Pretty sweet!