haha, actually I hit the right ramp, I just didn't have enough speed.  I got caught going down the foxhole of wasting a ton of powerups trying to find a good "Fire" (I hate the 4-way fire) and never powered up my speed.  I think it actually helped having a slower speed when I was on the iceberg level, I miraculously only died once on that stage.  But by the time I got to the third race to the finish I couldn't jump far enough after hitting the ramp so I died on dry land.  

On the Save the People board (especially the last one, where the flying saucers have 3 missles each and you'll likely lose your life from that before losing all the people), you can just spin in donuts the whole time around the people while shooting.  You'll probably lose a few kids, but at least you'll likely pass the board without getting killed.

Also, avoid going directly straight through the "box" where you deposit the mines on those boards.  The effing mine sometimes will blow you up (this just happened to me on my game above, it's total b.s.).  I always try to somehow swing around to deposit the mine.

One time on the jump the waterfall board my finger barely slipped off the gas for a split second (right after the first jump), somehow that lined up the jumps perfectly and I just cruised full-gas straight over all the waterfalls without dying once.  I haven't been able to do that again, but I keep trying.

I must have had a good run for upgrade acquisition, since by the time I died (Level 14) I had:

Turbo + Fire Lvl 6 + Speed Maxed + Missiles Maxed

I managed to snag all of the bonus-level upgrades, pretty consistently, though, and I am super-aggressive about grabbing them in the race levels.

I usually only go to Fire level 2 (or 3, can't remember - whichever one is the best single bullet), then I get max speed (max missles is always first on the first collect the pods board).  

But I screwed up and probably went to Fire level 10 trying to find a good one, at the expense of speed.  But like I said, it seemed to help on the iceberg board.  It was like it wasn't as hard and they weren't popping up so fast since I wasn't going as fast.  But obviously I didn't get enough speed in time for that one jump.

If you're going to upgrade fire you need to do it all in one bonus level so you don't have to fight anything with a bad version.

Basically it was level 5 starts the spread gun, and level 6 is a super-spread gun.
Get that and leave it, basically.  (but I didn't even get that until pretty late in the game -- sometime after the 2nd boss)

But doesn't the spreadfire "disappear" when you shoot again?  ie, when you shoot, the bullets only go across the screen as far until you press fire again?  So when you're shooting really fast that means the bullets don't even go as far as you need them to sometimes.  That's why I usually just stick to the single bullet (level 3 I guess).

Didn't seem that way to me, though I could be mistaken.

Dang.

Forgot to post a score this week.

When do the tounaments start?

"The winter tournament will begin on December 28, 2014 and run through January 18, 2015."

So once you deliver presents to all the good little girls and boys,you can kick your feet up and play in the tourney!

I'm still trying to beat this goddamn game... I made it to the big shark with a continue and still couldn't put that fucker away!