rollin' rollin' rollin'

Thursday evenings has now become bowling night in preparation for the summer league at Albany bowl. Since Albany is almost always packed, and the evening bus system in Pinole is nonexistant, we've settled on practicing at Mel's Bowl in Alameda. It's still takes an hour for coach to get there, but at least we know he'll be able to catch the bus to BART. Don't ask about the ordeal in Pinole where he watched a bus pass him up.

The hubby said last week that if someone bowls a 150 then we get ice cream. Coach score 155, and we settled on McDonald's instead for the treat.

This week the hubby thought about raising the bar to 160 because the score needs to be challenging. My sister and I protested. But by the end of the night, I somehow found my groove and went from 90 in the first game, to 132 in the second, then a whopping 173 in the 3rd game! My highest score ever! I went from a 110 average to a 132.

The first game I spent struggling with my thumb grip in the ball. Since it was warm, the ball would stick a bit and wouldn't release well. In the 2nd game, I figured out a better thumb position and by the end strung a couple of strikes in a row after finding my feet. When I used to shoot 86% freethrows in junior high school basketball, I had a bit of a ritual at the line, a sequence of bounce, spin, bounce, then settling into my legs, then shoot. Finding my feet to cascade the movement to the tips of my fingers. I finally found that in bowling and in the 3rd game strung together spares and strikes with only a few open frames to score 173.

After watching the regular league bowlers with their power strokes and spins on the ball, I had tried to add power in the first game but got a ball that was erratic. By the 3rd game, I was bowling a finesse game letting the ball do the work with not that much power where you have to wait a second or two before all the pins decided to fall.

My sister managed to find a groove and got a turkey in the third game, which is three strikes in a row. Coach and the hubby struggled a bit though. And that's ok. That's the nice part about being part of a team, you could be having a bad day/game but your teammates are having good days and you too get to share in their winning. One of us scores past 150 and we all get ice cream.

Needless to say we got ice cream after the game and not just any ice cream but Alameda's famous Tucker's ice cream. We shared a sundae with macapuno, strawberry, burgundy cherry, and chocolate fantasy with hot fudge. As much as I enjoy Fenton's, the ice cream at Tucker's is way better. The macapuno had large chunks of the delicate young coconut as if someone had scooped it from the husk that morning. yum! Winning is sweet, the reward can be sweeter!

The hubby wants to change the goal for next week, maybe switch it to adding 10 points to your average or something like that. A goal that would force us to be more consistant. We've got two more weeks until league.