I have the biggest balls of them all!
Bowling.
I enjoy bowling. It’s fun and it is exercise… not a LOT of it but it’s easy to break a sweat. Especially by the third game (if you’ve had enough beer). Most certainly when I have to use a 16lb ball because it's the only one with big enough finger holes. I tried to use the 15 for the first few frames but my fingers started hurting. ANYwho...
So Monday night was my bowling night. I haven’t been in a bit and was excited to go. We were supposed to go a week ago but various things got in the way.
Oh, the “we” is me and my friend, Cathy. Nice woman, works for FCCJ, has a town home, loves the theatre and can actually hold a conversation. Imagine that.
So we go out with the intention of “loser buys the beer”. Sadly, since we had to buy the beer to get us started, I was apparently already marked as the ‘loser’. I had every intention of letting her win or at least keep the game close and managed to do that VERY well. I was staying either a few pins behind or in front of her thru much of the first game.
Then a strange thing happened. Cathy threw a decent ball and knocked down 8 pins. Only the tow to the left of the lane (bowler’s side) were standing. But the machine said she had knocked down NINE. Now I chalked this up to maybe the pin shifting or just a glitch so I let it slide. We even joked that she just had to figure out which one the machine WAS reading and knock THAT one down. Ha Ha Ha. (If you’re wondering, it was the 7 pin.)
We kept going and I screwed up a tad but still was in striking distance to come back. I kept knocking down the 7 pin and most of the others so I was sparing pretty regularly but not consistent so as not to get TOO far ahead and waste my arm on the first game. But then Cathy knocked them all down EXCEPT the 7 pin… and it said she had a STRIKE!! This helped her tremendously since she lucked out again and managed to build on it. The final score for the first game was 135 to 128. 7 pins BECAUSE of the 7 pin.
The second game I got my butt kicked. But that dang 7 pin kept helping her out and by the time I managed to shift my position enough to get the strikes or at least leave only the 7 pin up, she had another “magic moment” happen. See, if the 7 is left up, it doesn’t register it as there so it’s a strike but since it picks up a pin, it doesn’t bring down the other pins. So we have to reset. This worked fine the first game but when I had to do it after getting a 7 pin strike, instead of just bringing her pins down… it gave her a strike!!! ARGH! Now, granted, she managed a turkey later on and EARNED it but still, by this point she was so far ahead that I got flustered. I don’t mind losing… but not because of faulty equipment!
Score for second game? 188-14? I think it was 146 but not sure. Still flustered and little tipsy by that point.
Third game. I knocked a pin up the gutter so the guy had to come get it and reset the system. This fixed the problem with the 7 pin for some reason. She was getting weak and tipsy herself so it affected her game and the loss of her “friend’ hurt. I was riding good, well on my way to a 190+ game when for some reason, from the point I threw the ball (and I throw it FAST) to when it reached the pins, the machine had come down. So I hit the sweaper arm. HARD! REALLY REALLY HARD. And STILL managed to knock a pin down. {:o) But this was with only 2 ½ frames left and already the 1 pin down messed up my run on a spare so I was pissed. Threw off my game. I still managed about a 160 something (the thing kept turning off due to ANOTHER glitch so I didn’t see my final score but it should’ve been a 168 or so. She was about 115. She played better than she had ever done before so that was cool. For her. I guess.
So OVERALL, we had pretty close averages. But we still need to play again because of that damn Lane 32 at the Bowl America on San Jose!!! Don’t use that lane!!
I enjoy bowling. It’s fun and it is exercise… not a LOT of it but it’s easy to break a sweat. Especially by the third game (if you’ve had enough beer). Most certainly when I have to use a 16lb ball because it's the only one with big enough finger holes. I tried to use the 15 for the first few frames but my fingers started hurting. ANYwho...
So Monday night was my bowling night. I haven’t been in a bit and was excited to go. We were supposed to go a week ago but various things got in the way.
Oh, the “we” is me and my friend, Cathy. Nice woman, works for FCCJ, has a town home, loves the theatre and can actually hold a conversation. Imagine that.
So we go out with the intention of “loser buys the beer”. Sadly, since we had to buy the beer to get us started, I was apparently already marked as the ‘loser’. I had every intention of letting her win or at least keep the game close and managed to do that VERY well. I was staying either a few pins behind or in front of her thru much of the first game.
Then a strange thing happened. Cathy threw a decent ball and knocked down 8 pins. Only the tow to the left of the lane (bowler’s side) were standing. But the machine said she had knocked down NINE. Now I chalked this up to maybe the pin shifting or just a glitch so I let it slide. We even joked that she just had to figure out which one the machine WAS reading and knock THAT one down. Ha Ha Ha. (If you’re wondering, it was the 7 pin.)
We kept going and I screwed up a tad but still was in striking distance to come back. I kept knocking down the 7 pin and most of the others so I was sparing pretty regularly but not consistent so as not to get TOO far ahead and waste my arm on the first game. But then Cathy knocked them all down EXCEPT the 7 pin… and it said she had a STRIKE!! This helped her tremendously since she lucked out again and managed to build on it. The final score for the first game was 135 to 128. 7 pins BECAUSE of the 7 pin.
The second game I got my butt kicked. But that dang 7 pin kept helping her out and by the time I managed to shift my position enough to get the strikes or at least leave only the 7 pin up, she had another “magic moment” happen. See, if the 7 is left up, it doesn’t register it as there so it’s a strike but since it picks up a pin, it doesn’t bring down the other pins. So we have to reset. This worked fine the first game but when I had to do it after getting a 7 pin strike, instead of just bringing her pins down… it gave her a strike!!! ARGH! Now, granted, she managed a turkey later on and EARNED it but still, by this point she was so far ahead that I got flustered. I don’t mind losing… but not because of faulty equipment!
Score for second game? 188-14? I think it was 146 but not sure. Still flustered and little tipsy by that point.
Third game. I knocked a pin up the gutter so the guy had to come get it and reset the system. This fixed the problem with the 7 pin for some reason. She was getting weak and tipsy herself so it affected her game and the loss of her “friend’ hurt. I was riding good, well on my way to a 190+ game when for some reason, from the point I threw the ball (and I throw it FAST) to when it reached the pins, the machine had come down. So I hit the sweaper arm. HARD! REALLY REALLY HARD. And STILL managed to knock a pin down. {:o) But this was with only 2 ½ frames left and already the 1 pin down messed up my run on a spare so I was pissed. Threw off my game. I still managed about a 160 something (the thing kept turning off due to ANOTHER glitch so I didn’t see my final score but it should’ve been a 168 or so. She was about 115. She played better than she had ever done before so that was cool. For her. I guess.
So OVERALL, we had pretty close averages. But we still need to play again because of that damn Lane 32 at the Bowl America on San Jose!!! Don’t use that lane!!
posted by wmjwatson at 2:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home