I had made a plan to go bowling while I was visiting Thailand at some of the bowling alleys in that country but it just didn't happen for me. There were a lot of things that I didn't do that I planned to do mostly because my time there seemed to evolve around partying with old friends and well, my buddy needing emergency surgery eliminated basically everything that I had planned for that particular leg of the trip.
While I was gone the organization that I founded called DUMBO in Da Nang, Vietnam carried on without me, but with a bit less participation in my absence. I'm not saying that nobody wants to do it if I am not there, but the amount of people turning up was a bit less while I was gone.
When I returned to the lanes this past week I expected to do poorly but actually ended up getting one of the highest scores out of everyone in the mix. My first game wasn't great but I did avoid rolling any gutterballs the entire time. I got a 113 in game one, which a lot of our members would be quite proud of but to me, it is a BS score not worthy of mention. My second game is where I truly shined.
We had a decent crowd of people and it was a lot of fun as usual. What else are you going to do for 2.5 hours that only costs $4 on a Thursday?
While I didn't take a picture of my scores a couple of things happened in my second game that made me quite happy. Even though I only got 2 strikes in the entire game I did something that I absolutely crucial and has been missing from my game for months: I picked up a ton of spares - 5 in a row actually. One would think that this would get me near the 200 mark but I've learned over the years that the only way you are getting past 200 is if you get multiple strikes in a row and don't leave any frames open. I had mentioned in the past that even if you get a spare/9/spare/9/spare/9 all the way through the game, the max score you can possible get is 199, so without strikes, the top scores are definitely not going to happen.
So far this year the highest score than anyone has gotten is 213 and that was extremely impressive to all of us. In order to achieve this, or only Norwegian, Peter, got 5 strikes in a row in the 8-10th frame. Had he gotten those 5 strikes in a row earlier in the game, his score would have been even higher.
The reason why my game, which had 7 frames of either a strike or a spare only ended up being around 150, was because of the fact that something that absolutely kills your score is leaving "open" frames. What that means is that you didn't get a strike or a spare at all. This offers no bonus, and it kills a game. After my 2 strikes in a row I had an open frame, and that kills the streak. I had a total of 3 open frames and had I closed those, my score would have been closer to 200 but probably still not above it unless it was 3 strikes or more in a row.
I came close to getting a Turkey (3 strikes in a row) but fell short on the 3rd one. There were two people in our group that got Turkeys, but one of them didn't count because it was in a championship round. It was determined years ago that any accomplishments in the 3rd game (everyone else only gets to play 2) do not count towards any higher awards.
The way DUMBO functions now is that there is a Premiere League, which consists normally of the top 6 players. Each week whoever has the lowest score of the day gets relegated to the 2nd division. If you miss 2 weeks in a row by non-attendance you are automatically relegated to 2nd division. One person per week is promoted to the Premiere league and this is decided by having the people from 2nd division with the 2 highest scores from the previous week having a playoff the next week. The winner gets promoted. We did this for two reasons: The previously existing women's division didn't have enough participants for it to be interesting, and a couple of the women were actually better than most of the men. It was a group decision to merge everyone into the same category.
By luck I am bowling for promotion next week in order to get back into the Premiere League. Because I was away in Thailand for 2 weeks I was automatically relegated. It was because of my relatively stellar 2nd game and a little bit of luck that I am bowling for promotion next week. My opponent is a 70 year old woman who is a great friend of mine. Neither one of us have any illusion that this is going to be terribly competitive haha.
I've said in the past that the Lotte Mart Super Bowl Lanes are very accommodating to us when we take over the lanes on Thursday mornings and this week something funny happened. There were 2 Vietnamese people that joined us and when they went up to the counter to get shoes the staff told them that they could not bowl. This was because the lanes reserve the entire facility just for us and the staff were unaware that the Vietnamese duo were actually there to bowl with us. It was humorous that local Vietnamese people would be denied access to their own lanes because the white people have taken over!
They let them bowl once we told them that they were there with us. As unfair as this might sound to the locals, we have been brining 20-30 people to the lanes every single week for 3+ years so you could say that we kind of deserve this sort of special treatment.
I am really enjoying being back in Vietnam and done with vacation. I'm happy to be back to bowling and back to hanging out with my dog. I'm pretty sure that she feels the same way even though she is not allowed to come to the lanes with us.
It would be delightful if she could come with us but even though Vietnam is very accommodating as far as letting people bring their dogs with them almost anywhere, it is completely understandable that they can't have a bunch of dogs running around a bowling alley. That's ok, little buddy! I always come back and get you afterwards!