The background to this story (I know Alex well), was he wanted to try out a new Stern game (he's a classic Gottlieb guy normally - excellent taste), and had an afternoon to kill. He found the LOTR and set about his first ever game on it.
28 Hours later and still on ball one (admittedly there were several extra balls awarded during the first ball, so he had in fact drained quite a few), his wife turned up having tracked him on his phone GPS (he had not answered any calls obviously), took him by the ear and dragged him out. I missed the actual exit as I was having a snooze on one of the park benches (I find LOTR pretty boring, and 28 hours of it mind-numbing). It was pretty funny apparently, the guy's like six foot four and his wife was on her tippy toes to grab the top of his ear.
Yep, those Stern long ball times can have unexpected consequences. ;)
I heard he was having such a great game that he couldn't stop for a toilet break incase the loitering kids took his spot.
Another drama were the, approximately, 50, dollar coins stacked across the lockdown bar for dibs on the next game. This almost had Alex come unstuck several times as he could hardly see the flippers by the time he had finished.
