Bowling for fun
Last Tuesday our office social club decided to do something for a change, so a bunch of us went 10 pin bowling at "The Lanes" which relatively recently opened on Wakefield St in town. The place is set up as a Bar & Bowl with 12 lanes on the ground floor and a separate upstairs lounge with 4 more lanes, which can be hired out for a couple of hours with food and a private bar & steward.
It was my first visit to the place, and I must say I was underwhelmed.
Way back in my wild and woolly youth I used to pin set at the Parkside Bowl in Adelaide (a converted picture theatre) for beer and petrol money while I was at the Uni of Adelaide. Parkside was a semi-automatic Brunswick equipped bowl in some sort of opposition to the CrossRoad Bowl which was a fully automatic AMF equipped place. My job consisted of picking up the pins after each ball and placing them in the setting frame which I then triggered to set the pins after each frame was complete, and dodge the balls sent down by over enthusiastic amateurs as well as the flying pins launched by the league bowlers. All good clean fun in retrospect. Consequently I know a little bit about 10 pin bowling although I could never afford to play it seriously. My usual scores are in the 100-120 range although breaking the hundred can be a struggle sometimes.
Back to Tuesday... We played 3 games each, and my scores were 114, 147, & 117. 147 is a personal best.
Of the other 12 players, only one did better than me with a top score of 155 (which included 3 straight strikes on the last frame, despite the machine getting it's strings in a knot after the second strike and we had to wait 5 minutes for the staff to untangle the mess). No one else did better than 2 strikes in a row, the top scorer would have been much better if he had put up the 3 in a row before the last frame where the second two strikes only count 10 points each.
As far as the equipment went, I felt the lanes were far too heavily waxed, and there were no facilities for keeping ones fingers or the ball's finger holes dry. When combining the wax off the lanes and sweat on the palms, holding the ball got progressively harder as the evening went on. The only plus was that my usually chronic left hook didn't bother me all evening, so either I've nailed it or the lanes were so well waxed that the ball never got rolling properly.
The only after effects were a sore right thumb which has only faded today, and my knee muscles being a bit sore yesterday - not Wednesday, note, which is when one would have expected it.
Overall an enjoyable evening with a hint of pride at the high score.
It was my first visit to the place, and I must say I was underwhelmed.
Way back in my wild and woolly youth I used to pin set at the Parkside Bowl in Adelaide (a converted picture theatre) for beer and petrol money while I was at the Uni of Adelaide. Parkside was a semi-automatic Brunswick equipped bowl in some sort of opposition to the CrossRoad Bowl which was a fully automatic AMF equipped place. My job consisted of picking up the pins after each ball and placing them in the setting frame which I then triggered to set the pins after each frame was complete, and dodge the balls sent down by over enthusiastic amateurs as well as the flying pins launched by the league bowlers. All good clean fun in retrospect. Consequently I know a little bit about 10 pin bowling although I could never afford to play it seriously. My usual scores are in the 100-120 range although breaking the hundred can be a struggle sometimes.
Back to Tuesday... We played 3 games each, and my scores were 114, 147, & 117. 147 is a personal best.
Of the other 12 players, only one did better than me with a top score of 155 (which included 3 straight strikes on the last frame, despite the machine getting it's strings in a knot after the second strike and we had to wait 5 minutes for the staff to untangle the mess). No one else did better than 2 strikes in a row, the top scorer would have been much better if he had put up the 3 in a row before the last frame where the second two strikes only count 10 points each.
As far as the equipment went, I felt the lanes were far too heavily waxed, and there were no facilities for keeping ones fingers or the ball's finger holes dry. When combining the wax off the lanes and sweat on the palms, holding the ball got progressively harder as the evening went on. The only plus was that my usually chronic left hook didn't bother me all evening, so either I've nailed it or the lanes were so well waxed that the ball never got rolling properly.
The only after effects were a sore right thumb which has only faded today, and my knee muscles being a bit sore yesterday - not Wednesday, note, which is when one would have expected it.
Overall an enjoyable evening with a hint of pride at the high score.