Maximum turnout at the lanes and I return to form

I am one of the founders of the DUMBO bowling group here in Da Nang. We started with just 3 dudes who went bowling every Thursday and it grew and grew to the point where we now have the entire bowling alley reserved for us every Thursday at 11am. The staff there wont even let anyone bowl starting at about 10:30 and once they see our group trickling in they will inform anyone that is bowling that they cannot have another game if we need the lanes that they are on.

I feel a little bit bad about kicking people off the lanes when they are there already but to be fair this is a wonderful business arrangement for the alley itself since we have likely given them tens of thousands of dollars over the years by our continued attendance.

We have gotten popular to the point where I had to make an announcement that there is a maximum amount of people that will be allowed to participate each week and while we do not want to turn anyone away, that if all the lanes are actually functioning - which is sadly, quite rare - that we can only accommodate 34 people for the day. I refuse to put more than 3 people on a lane because it just takes too long otherwise.

This past week, with 2 of the 12 lanes not functioning, we could only accommodate 28 and just by luck, that was exactly how many people turned up.

It was a jolly occasion for all involved and people were in high spirits. This group has a tendency to make all of us happy and it also serves the purpose of helping people to socialize with others that they might not have had a chance to meet otherwise. It can prove quite difficult to meet people as an expat because there are so few of us and strangely, expats here in Da Nang tend to be quite "stand offish" towards new people. Having a group like this kind of forces people to get to know everyone and I make this even more mandatory by making lane assignments randomized outside of the ones where the two championship bouts are taking place. Outside of very specific situations, I will never accommodate anyone's request to bowl on the same lane as their friend(s).

The idea here is to get to know other people, not necessarily to bowl.

I also use this time as a method to teach people how to bowl a bit and not necessarily by technique. Instead I teach them something called "lane courtesy" that in other parts of the world would get you warned by the management and even kicked out if you violate them. Mostly this consists of if someone is already in a ready position and is betting ready to bowl, that you give them right of way and wait until they are finished before you go up and bowl. For people like me and many others who take the game somewhat seriously, getting into my peripheral vision once I am in a ready position, can seriously throw them off their game and it is irritating.

In the above picture you can see the woman in the flowered dress is in the ready position and the people on both lanes to the side of her are politely waiting for her to finish before they go up for their roll. This is just a worldwide courtesy that really should be observed especially if you are somewhere like USA or Japan where bowling is taken very seriously.

Out of our group of around 30 people, there are only about 8 bowlers that anyone would consider to be even remotely good, but that isn't the point. There is a certain process that goes along with this sport and it should be learned and observed.

Now on to what really made me happy about this day: I have been bowling rather sub-par for I would say about a year. Try as I may and the fact that I go bowling at least once a week for the past 3 years, my scores were pretty piss poor. While some people out there would be just fine with a 120 average, this is garbage in my book and I am normally disappointed with any score below 150. In the past year or so, I have only cracked 150 a couple of times and this was getting really frustrating to me.

My score is the one in the middle and as you can see I started out decently and then really exploded as the game concluded. Only 2 of my frames were "open" meaning that you don't get a strike or a spare and at the end I bowled 3 strikes in a row, which is called a "turkey" and results in you receiving one of the most sought after prizes that we have in our organization. It is one of those rubber noise-making chickens and it can change hands at any time. It has been a VERY long time since that award was in my cupboard, so to speak.

I finished the game with a 192, which is the highest score I have had since around 2 years ago when I bowled a 203. If I had managed to close out frames 5 or 8, I would have gone well over 200.

In the time that we have been doing this, which is over 3 years now, there have only been 4 people that have broken 200. By getting the 192 I was also awarded the highest score of the month medal, which is something that we used to reset annually, but recently voted to reset it every month. Most of the time this score ends up being something substantially lower, like a 165 or something, but for it to be this high in the very first week means that it is kind of likely that I will retain this medal for the remainder of November.

Now before we get too excited about my return to form you need to know that we bowl 2 games in the singles competition part of the day, and my second game was a 138. So we can safely say that I haven't totally returned to form and that I am probably more likely in the "peaks and troughs" portion of my ability. I HOPE I can continue to bowl at a higher level but in all likelihood I am going to be returning to 140's and the like in the future. I may actually go and do a practice run earlier in the week before the official day, just to see if I can work on what it is that I was doing in game one that made things work so well.

Bowling, although it is a blue-collar sport by comparison, is a lot like golf in that most of the time you simply cannot nail down why you are excellent one day, and shite the next despite feeling like you are using the exact same process every time.

I was on a high the rest of the day and this actually made my day more productive overall even to the point where I gave Nadi my dog a bath when I returned home. She was less than thrilled about this, but it is a necessary part of living in my condo!

Till next time!