Turkey! Baby, gets a new pair of shoes!

Today was the bowling tournament (Nor Cal BC State Finals - Super Summer Jubilee) in Palo Alto that our team won a berth for by taking 4th place. The top 10 teams got to go. We played the last set of games on Sunday. About half of the Albany teams were there. We thought there were going to be maybe 120 teams playing that weekend, there were 237! Only the top 59 teams win cash prizes. The top team gets $1000, but even team 59 gets $110. We were just glad to be here. This was Coach's 3rd time here, he said three's a charm.

We played a team from Clayton Valley up in Concord. Some nice guys, who averaged 200. One of them had this extended release where he was completely balanced on his left foot while everything was extended making his body almost horizontal. The dad, Ron, even gave T some tips for her game. Of course, everyone was fascinated by Coach's bowling technique, as they usually are. It's even more amusing when they watch him bowl strikes. Oh, and then we tell them, that he's the anchor.

There were teams from all over. I saw one team from Salinas. All from these local owned bowling alleys. Palo Alto Bowl still had the 70s colored velour along the side walls. Paint pallettes of varying shades of brown. The scoring system didn't have funny cartoon graphics and kept visuals to a minimum, changing colors to indicate a new game. The pins seemed farther away than in Albany, and I'm sure that's just an illusion because the lanes are the same length regardless. Everyone talked about this one local alley bowler who had 15 different bowling balls. The guy had this stacked bowling bag cart that held 6 balls, then was rolling this shelf rack with 9 more. He rents 8 lockers in the facility to store some of the stuff and claimed to have hit 300 a few times there. I saw another woman with a shirt that read, "I belong to a drinking team that has a bowling problem".

The hubby and Coach bowled really consistently. Coach is back to form with his 155 average and the hubby wasn't too far behind with a 151, including a 5 bagger (5 strikes in a row) to close out the last game. T was a bit off but managed to get to her average in the 3rd game. I did decent the first game, dropped to a 99 the second game and roared back with a 195 in the 3rd game! My highest score during a game ever! If I had known that I was going to get 195 I would have looked for 5 more pins somewhere. But I'll have to save that for another day. Must have been our new stylish bowling shirts that we got embroidered with various nicknames.

And, and, and, I got my first ever Turkey (3 strikes in a row)! OK that's not a big deal compared to the hubby's 5 bagger, but I had given myself a goal that when I get my first Turkey in game play I could go and get a new pair of shoes. My current pair is awfully cute and they glow in the dark, but now I'm looking for a pair with a bit more support and still offer a level of cute shoe style.

The tournament plays with a handicap and of course ours was huge since many of the teams had 200 averages. They had put up the scores from yesterday. We were the last ones out so we practically had the whole floor to ourselves (We bowl at a slightly slower pace, plus the lane kept breaking). We added up our scores and compared it to the Saturday round. With handicap, our score would put us in 8th place! And actually, it might be even higher because they miscalculated the Coach's handicap average, so could it be, we could move up even higher? So if teams bowled on Sunday the way teams bowled on Saturday, then I figure we made the top 20! Top 20! We won't know for sure til they send the checks.

Of course there are always "side" games in bowling. So for $10 the hubby and I joined in on their side game where you can win extra money. In this one, you get to count 2 out of your 3 games and includes the handicap. I think we bowled so well that we might actually win in that one too. There's a 1 in 10 chance of winning that one. But with handicap minus our sucky game, we averaged 243. Don't know how much you can win, but it's exciting to think that we have a good chance at winning! Hell, we should have signed the entire team up for it, because we probably had a good chance of winning multiple times on it. Oh well.

We celebrated afterwards with dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant.

Suffice it to say it was a wonderfully endorphin filled day!