Boomer's Winter Season

[boomer]

Much better last night. Back still has a few twinges - might be the ceramics loading and unloading to art shows. LOL

Anyway - muscle relaxers and ibuprofen an hour before bowling. Autobots, ROLL OUT!

Bowling REALLY nice guys, two of which are very high average (one is THE high average in the league) and very consistent, one is high average and consistent, and their fourth is really sweet (wife of one of the guys) but neither high nor consistent. We got 93 pins.

Game 1 - using Mr. Teal, I had a great look. Maybe a couple boards worth of room so I was comfortable, except for 6th frame with 3-4-6-7-10. Bah. Finished 230. Good solid game and we won by about 150. Yes!
Game 2 - stayed with Mr. Teal and still had a great look. Mistake in the 3rd (3-9) but picked it up and left a 7 and a 10. Clean (except for the fill which doesn't count) - we lost by 11 but still have over 130 pins for total. Uh-oh - Bill (high average) has found his line. . . not a good sign.
Game 3 - Strike, then 3 opens. Two were splits. Mr. Teal just lost his reaction so move to Zen Master which was bang on. 4 in a row, convert 3-10 and stone 9 to salvage 190 for the game. Problem was - my wife was absent (she usually helps carry things when the S hits the F) with a foot injury and I felt like I had to carry the whole load. I was down 15 pins from my average, but still . . . we got beat by a TON and were verging on losing total until Bill (who was KILLING IT) rolled a big-four in the 10th (and were still not out of the woods - I had to mark and count to get total - only marks in the frame.)

Oh well - 645 and back was comfortable.

Tons of fun bowling with that team. Really nice guys and sweet lady. Great evening of bowling - plus I won the low hand in poker the first game (almost won high as well, but some JERK pulled his fourth 5 on his LAST CARD. . . LOL)

[Aslan]

There's always 1 or 2 teams in the league that make bowling night a little better...just because they have a certain demeanor that 'clicks'.

[Timmyb]

There's always 1 or 2 teams in the league that make bowling night a little better...just because they have a certain demeanor that 'clicks'.

Most of the teams in our league are that way. There's always a healthy banter, but always kept friendly.

[boomer]

well, we had to do a make-up since we were out of town on Monday. Last time we did a make-up, we swore we'd never do it again since the lanes were TRASH. We thought, this time, that since it was on a league night and our secretary set it up to reserve the lanes (right next to another league) that it would be just fine.

Nope.

No matter where, about 20-25' down the lane, the ball would take a drastic jump left. Cross 5th arrow - jump left 10' further down the lane. Cross 4th - same. Cross 3rd - same. Straight down 10? same. Only one of us not affected was my wife who throws backup - she did fine. The other three of us - we were fighting early read no matter where we were.

Try to loft a bit to have the ball not read the fronts - still jumped at 20-25'.

I shot 158-142-156.

I actually had better luck with the White-Dot, as in more strikes and single-pin spares, but still had several splits and actually a lower score.

Team next to us who were also making up? Same thing - their first game, I counted FOURTEEN splits among the three of them. I've NEVER seen so many red circles before.


IF we do this again, I was told to specifically request 39-40 which they DO oil and hold as reserve for the league. If we don't get those, I ain't doin this again. It SUCKED. That was -46, -52, -48.

only ball I didn't get out to try was my Nova which would have been funny . . .

[Aslan]

That's what I've often complained about. As ball technology as evolved, bowling has become more and more dependent on lane oil conditions. So, if you want to practice for leagues or to see how your ball might react on league night...there's no point to just going to open bowling and practicing. The lanes are so beat up and screwed up from open bowlers pushing oil to the breakpoint with polyester balls...you can't really gauge ANYTHING! I usually just resort to playing low ball and working on my abysmal spare game.

I know some folks get in good enough with their center that they can convince them to oil the lanes for practice...sometimes even for free...sometimes with a little $$ incentive...but I've never been bold enough to ask.

[boatman37]

Step-son is pretty new to bowling (started in May) and only has a spare ball and my old Radical Squatch. He went down today to pre-bowl and said it was awful. His average is about 152 I think but he rolled 143, 128 and 140. Granted he doesn't have the experience or ball selection to combat that but I told him ahead of time that it might be completely different than he is used to

[boomer]

What a difference lane prep makes.

So - exhausted, tired, sore but . . . let's DO this. (yeah, my own fault. We went to see Nightmare Before Christmas being performed by Danny Elfman and the original (mostly) cast at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday then an art show on Sunday so we're . . . wiped! LOL)

Here we GOOOO! We give 13 pins per game.

Game 1 - during practice, Mr. Teal seemed fine but he was whining just a bit. 7-pin on the left lane, strike, then 4-pin . . . ok, let's try the Zen Master. Oh yeah, much more power delivery. a 2-10 but good otherwise - 205. We took the first point GOING AWAY.
Game 2 - good except for two 3-4-6-7-9-10's (whaaa? ) where the Zen just jumped. Weird. But hey - my own fault, had to be. 181. We still took the point by about 100 pins.
Game 3 - again, pretty decent. Left one split (2-4-10) and whiffed a 10-pin in the 10th but otherwise was in the pocket. 202 - and we took both 3rd game and total pins points.

Good evening.

[Aslan]

Well, if you're gonna do artsy fartsy nonsense...it may negatively impact important activities (i.e. Bowling).

Gosh...how long did it take to drive from Riverside to the Hollywood Bowl on a weekend?? A perfect example (one of many) why I would never live in California again...unless it was a short stint to write a TV show or something. I bet that 1.5 hours trip took closer to 3 hours. I remember heading up to Paso Robles once...the 45 minutes it SHOULD have taken to get through L.A. (on a weekend) took about 3 hours.

[boomer]

Ugh - was actually FINE driving until we got to downtown LA where we literally stopped - exited, drove 5 blocks, got back on and then went 5mph until we got to our exit. Driving back was just as bad - at 11:00pm - until we got out of LA proper and then could cruise back home. 2 hours each direction. :/

[J Anderson]

Ugh - was actually FINE driving until we got to downtown LA where we literally stopped - exited, drove 5 blocks, got back on and then went 5mph until we got to our exit. Driving back was just as bad - at 11:00pm - until we got out of LA proper and then could cruise back home. 2 hours each direction. :/

East coast is no better. Left the bowling alley in Fairfield at 10:30pm, got on I95 north and the extreme left lane was already closed and traffic was crawling. Eventually all three lanes were funneled onto the 8/25 connector exit ramp and the the shoulder. Infuriating because there were no workmen or machines on the surface of the closed lanes. Can’t imagine what they were doing underneath the road that would merit the lane closures.