Magic happens and I return to form for victory at the bowling alley

I have been complaining a bit lately about how no matter what I do I seem to be slipping in the bowling arena and can't seem to get it together no matter what I do. Practice or don't practice, my skills remained very poor and I was missing a ton of shots and just doing terribly.

So i decided to take my own advice and not practice this week and instead of overthinking every single move I would just get out there and bowl. Not think to much.... just roll with it.

and I ended up doing pretty well as a consequence.

I was bowling in the 2nd division which I really don't feel I belong in but the only way out is for you to be selected at random from the top 4 score holders in the league and then win in a head to head. As you can tell from my first round score above, I was doing substantially better than my oppenent at the end of game 1. Two more points and I would have doubled her score. She had a sense of humor about it and was not upset with me, but she was upset that things weren't going her way. It was "one of those days" where she actually WAS hitting the pocket but the pins just weren't falling. She isn't good at picking up spares on single pins so when she gets 9 off the 1st ball, a spare is very unlikely for her. I wish I had snapped the picture a bit before I did because it was a pretty impressive first game for me with me leaving very few frames open, hence the pretty decent score.

In game 3 (there are 3 games in all head-to-head matchups) I started the round screaming. It looked like I very well could be headed for the high score of the month but as is the norm for me, once I am doing a little bit too good, karma steps in to shut me down. 3 good frames followed by 4 frames of nuttin! I ended up getting a 139 in the final game which is around what my average used to be for every game. I will admit that around the time that I was 4 open frames in, I wasn't really fussed about missing anymore. I was already 200 points ahead of the person I was up against so there was no danger. I started screwing around a little bit and experimenting with different throws. This wasn't to rub it in as far as my opponent is concerned, I just didn't feel like gloating because my opponent was getting trounced.

The final score was like this

My opponent 83-77-102 Total: 262
Me 164 - 168 - 139 Total 471

In the history of DUMBO we have only had 2 head to head competitions where one person beat their opponent by more than 200 points. This was one of them. I didn't mention this at the speech afterwards because it is not my objective to be arrogant or to make anyone feel bad.

The scores from other people on the day were impressive as well especially our current champion, a Russian, who successfully defended his belt for the 7th time in a row. His scores were 149-169-197 with a total of 515. His opponent could have beaten him but flubbed it in game one with overall scores of 120-185-161 with a total of 466. The runner up here is the guy who has held the belt longer than anyone else in the history of the league at 22 weeks. But it is important to recognize that the rules were different there and you would bowl each week against a random person, not a person who actually deserved to be bowling for the championship. I'll explain that in greater detail if need be.

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_{unrelated picture of Nadi hiding from the sun on the roof of our building}

So I got promoted back to the Premiere League and I feel like I belong there if I can maintain this form. The top scores in the top division were 190, 185, 164 (me) and the top scores of the 2nd division were 146, 140, and 109.

The person who gets promoted (again, me) is eligible to go into the wheel for a 25% chance at who will bowl for the overall championship the next week. This meant that I was in the wheel for the overall championship for the first time in a while. Honestly, I didn't want to be in the wheel and would have preferred to just be in the top flite rather than going for gold. But since 2 of the people who were in the top 4 didn't make it to the after-party / award ceremony, there was now only 2 names in there. Unfortunately it ended up being me that is going to bowl against the Russian champion next week.

I will admit that even when I am in top form like I was this week, the Russian is better than I am. I'm just hoping that I can bowl like I did this week and not make a fool of myself. Who knows? Maybe some sort of Rocky 4 situation could end up happening and I win the whole thing!!

I'm not getting my hopes up