Friday - May 24, 2013
Yay For NY Legislature
Here I go again, being a contrarian.
While other VRWC blogs see this story as some overweening abuse and waste of time by the nanny-state, I see it as a rare example of government doing what it ought to be doing.
ALBANY, N.Y.—With all the corruption in Albany, one of your representatives is instead focusing efforts on something many of you like to do, bowl.
New York State Senator Patrick Gallivan (R-59th District) New York State Assemblyman Robin Schimminger (D-140th District) are sponsoring a bill that would cover bowling shoes. The bill in the assembly is co-sponsored by Assembly members Brian Kolb, Crystal Peoples-Stokes and Jane Corwin.
It would require alley owners to post signs, warning keglers not to wear bowling shoes outside, lest they become wet and increase the likelihood that a bowler could slip and fall when they come inside
Bowling shoes, designed to slip on the lanes, can become extremely slippery when wet.
“Some things that might seem small to others, might be of significance to another group,” Gallivan told WGRZ-TV, while acknowledging that on the surface, such a law might seem silly.
In this case, the group most concerned bowling alley owners, who Gallivan says approached him seeking help to stem the tide of rising insurance costs.
Alley owners saw lawsuits by patrons who have increased, in the decade since the state made smoking in a bowling alleys illegal, tempting many of bowlers who smoke, to sneak out or a few puffs between frames, perhaps when it’s raining or snowing....who then come in, slip, and then sue.
Hey, protectionist laws are what it’s all about. Bowling alleys pay their taxes just like every other business, so they have the right to have bills considered that cover their specific needs. Remember a few years ago when all the Nanny-State mayors were suing all the gun manufacturers because people were being shot with guns that they had built? And then some federal law got passed, called the Protection of Lawful Commerce Act that said such lawsuits were wrong, and are now illegal? And we all said “Woo hoo, this is a great thing!!”? This bill isn’t that much different.
But the article does have one central fact wrong, albeit an understandable error. It isn’t that the slippery soles become too slippery when wet, it’s that they become unslippery when they shouldn’t be. And that CAN get you injured.
Bowling shoes are designed to be slippery. Well, one of them is at any rate. The other is designed to give maximum traction on bare wood which is what the approach area is made of. The footwork of bowling is such that as you throw the ball, you step forward into a slight lunge with your opposite foot, and it slides along the floor for a short distance. The underside of the sliding foot shoe has special surfaces designed to slide. Top end shoes even allow you to change those surfaces depending on conditions. Slide soles are made from leather, suede, felt, or smooth plastic. As you finish your lunge and your heel turns inward, the heel of the sliding foot begins to carry your weight, and at that point the special braking surface under the heel stops your slide. There are many different kinds of brake heels too, from sawtooth hard rubber down to rough suede, depending on how fast or slow you want to come to a stop.
If the leather or felt sole of your sliding shoe gets wet it will stick like sandpaper to the raw wood floor that is the approach area to the lanes. So when you go to slide, your foot jams up just as hard and fast as Captain Ahab finding an open knothole on the deck of the Pequod. And you go flying. In the worst cases, you’ll put your back or your hip out and do a header right onto the lanes, getting yourself all covered up with yucky bowling lane oil. Worse, you’ll pull the shot and foul, getting no score for that throw at all.
But bowlers already know this. That’s why we all have at least one pair of “shoe-phylactics” in our bags. Dry Dogs, No Wets, all different brands; slip on covers for the bowling shoes, just in case. And we use them, all the time.
Because there’s more than just moisture to worry about, either from stepping outside or from using the bathroom. Gum in the carpet will screw you up too. So will the grease from some kid’s spilled fries. Dust and dirt because the alley staff didn’t have time to vacuum before your league started. It’s a risk we all know about, and we all know how to deal with it. Because we’ve all gone flying from this, at least once. Damp approaches are the scourge of the sport, and the worst is when you’ve been super careful but you jam up from some other fool’s damp spot.
These days bowling alleys have more customers than just league bowlers. To survive in the modern world they have had to reinvent themselves into Family Fun Centers. It’s Mommy And Me time every day at 1:30pm; bring the little tykes! Birthday Bowling parties! Singles Date Night through match.com! My point is, they get a lot of people in who aren’t really bowlers, so they just don’t grok how things work. Their sticky little sprogs run all over the place, dropping food and spilling drinks. Mommy runs out to the minivan five times to get junior a toy, or his special stuffed animal, or his behavioral meds. And they never stop to put on their street shoes.
Smokers are a big part of it too. For some reason, probably because it doesn’t take much ability to breathe, smokers are a huge part of the bowling fraternity. Or they were. Bowling alleys were the very last places to go smoke free, and when they did, many alleys lost half their customers forever. Period. The smokers who stayed learned to go outside for a puff. But outside is where the weather is, and I haven’t heard of a single alley building a covered outdoor smoking area. They could. Double doors, vent fans, screened upper casement windows, a covered ramada to the outside door, doormats, a strip of indoor outdoor carpet on the walkway, etc. So what if it costs $25,000? A dozen regular league bowlers who smoke bring in that much revenue per year. And the smoking ban cost the alleys hundreds of customers. It would be worth it. It would be worth it to build such areas even with seats, A/C, heat, and lights.
The alleys all put up signs. They’re everywhere. “Don’t go outside in your bowling shoes! We have shoe covers, just ask!” “No street shoes beyond this point!” But expecting people to read things right in front of them is too much. And expecting them to have a basic understanding of physics, or at least the variable friction effects of wet surface interactions, is also too much. So the alleys get sued because people hurt themselves a little. It’s not like they die. It’s not like they become paralyzed. But I’m sure an unexpected fall could break bones, and I know it can injure your back ... the nebulous kind of injury certain types of lawyers just love. For the most part it’s just embarrassing; I bet I’ve seen 100 people take a dive and not one of them ever needed an ambulance.
So these businesses seek some protection from government. Good for them. Sorry folks, life is a risk. Out on the lanes it’s caveat iaculātor sphearae
And it doesn’t really matter if the government has bigger, better things to do, or if they are generally corrupt and/or incompetent. Passing laws to protect their people is what they are for. Maybe the alleys are going to have to have everyone sign a release form, and the shoes will all have permanently affixed warning tags, like the one on the cord of your hair dryer that tells you not to use their product underwater. Duh.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/24/2013 at 02:41 PM
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Permalink • Friday - May 17, 2013
high revs: fingers say OW
Ouch, my hand is pretty sore today. I’m trying to learn a new release for bowling, to get a stronger reaction from the ball. I picked up one of those “robo-brace” style wrist supports, a hinged metal gizmo appropriately named a ... gizmo. They let you get under the ball more easily, and they also allow you to turn your wrist to the inside or the outside. I matched that device with a high RPM release, which is very different than what I’m used to, because you lead with your ring finger with the index finger really splayed, and the wrist turned in enough so that the index finger is pointed to 6 o’clock throughout most of the swing. What makes it really work though is that you have to load up your middle and ring fingers in the ball so that they really snap up when you do the release. The brace is very supportive of the fingers, so they can’t flop backwards, but you still have to try to curl them as much as you can. This is a new thing for me; I’ve used a soft finger release for years.
Anyway, I threw half a dozen games and got used to it, with my scores steadily climbing from a paltry 131 to the low 200s. Elbow in, fingers through the ball at about 10 o’clock, thumb finishing at 1 o’clock on a full follow through, feeling the burn on my fingertips. That’s about what it should be, and I’m keeping my head down and forward and laying the ball right on the second arrow with just about every throw. I really can’t say if I was able to get a significant increase in my revs, but with a few adjustments to the brace I was able to get my axis angle to quite a bit more than 45° and my axis tilt to just a bit more than horizontal. In other words, I figured out how to throw the ball so that a very large part of it’s inertia was available for hooking the ball. It ought to have broken left like a shot when it hit the dry, but the best I seemed to manage was a bit better carry through the pins. Maybe the lanes were cooked; daytime conditions with tons of carrydown. Maybe I’m standing too far left; my usual position is with the point of my left shoe on the 32 board, and with this brace I was moving to the 36. So I may not be getting the reaction I want because I’m not getting the ball deep far enough into the dry, not far enough to actually find the breakpoint box, and instead staying too far inside. OTOH, maybe I don’t have the revs yet; more practice and some strength training is required. And I already know that this particular ball is drilled timidly. Instead of the abrupt “skid flip” I’m looking for, this one goes “continuous arc” down the whole lane, but worse, it does that almost entirely by flair, not by turning. It doesn’t go “out and back”. I’ve got a new ball waiting for me at the pro shop, but the guys there want to work with me to train me up for the right release before drilling the ball that way.
I might go throw 3 or 4 games this afternoon, but right now my fingers are rather sore. I’ll try standing more to the right so I can get the ball out beyond the 15 board at 45 feet. But I put the ball through that zone any number of times yesterday, and instead of a wild break I got nothing but 6 pins. The ball did nothing.
All I really want is a throw with a good strong entry angle that not only carries, but creates two opposing messengers AND has enough action so that I still can hit high pocket if my throw is off 2 or 3 boards either side at the arrows. Gee, that’s not asking too much, is it? 
Posted by Drew458
on 05/17/2013 at 08:57 AM
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Permalink • Wednesday - April 17, 2013
Hard pressed
It’s 4am here and I can’t resist the pun. Yeah, we got taken to the cleaners last night on Greed League, and had the starch knocked out of us. Ironed flat. Steamrolled.
Pretty sure this was the last week of regular play, and we were up against the first place team. We all showed up, and bowled fairly well. They all showed up, got drunk, and kicked our butts up and down the highway. All night long. I kind of forget how good these kids are. Well, not exactly forget, because I know they’re a bunch of sandbagging ringers ... but I only get to see them really bowl two or three times a year at the end of the season. The rest of the time they’re just chugging along, hardly in 2nd gear.
We got a bit over 100 pins net handicap. They beat us by 321 pins in Game 2. We did our best and put plenty of marks up on the score board. They did their best and put up almost nothing but strikes. Their 5 man team scored more than 1200 points per game. Sometimes a lot more. “AJ”, their anchor, threw an 852 series; game 1 and 2 in the 275+ range, and a 300 in Game 3. A 275 game is one spare shy of a perfect 300 game. So in other words he was 2 spares away from a perfect 900 series. Holy cow. You go, AJ.
Yup, so we’re pretty much locked into dead last again this year. I like my team, but I need to bring my game up two levels, maybe 3, to be able to be anywhere close to the other guys on this league. Out of my league.
I’m going back to bed.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/17/2013 at 03:04 AM
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Permalink • Thursday - April 11, 2013
Season Highs
We had a very good night in Cheap League. We won all 7, handily. That puts us just over 50% after 30 of 34 weeks; the upper part of the middle of the pack. Not too bad, considering the problems we’ve had.
I bowled my best series of the season (so far), rolling a 675. I was super focused and quite lucky in Game 1, pulling a 267, which ties the best game I’ve thrown this season on either league. I did a couple of dumb things and left a few opens in Game 2 for a “poor” 174, 10 under my average. I got back in the groove for Game 3 and rolled a 234. So I was 123 over for the night. Nice. Maybe nice enough to win me the Strike Ball for next week, but not nice enough to get one of those 140 Over awards from USBC.
And I might have team, or at least 3/4 of one, for summer league. Which is always funner.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/11/2013 at 09:59 PM
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Permalink • Wednesday - April 10, 2013
A Minor Miracle
Two weeks in a row our team took all 7 points in Greed League. Yeah, it was a position round last night, and with us firmly in control of last place, we had the Bye. There are 9 teams on this league apparently, so you can’t make 5 pairings. In a position round, 1st plays 2nd, 3rd plays 4th, etc, ... and 9th plays the empty slot. I found it interesting that this league, which uses the Individual Average handicap method based on a 230 average and an 80% handicap, and also uses a 10% absentee penalty (which I have come to favor more than the flat “10 pins off your average” method), uses an 85% average to Win The Points when bowling a blind. Every league is different, and USBC allows each leach to establish their own rules for handicaps and absentee scores.
I threw a 568 series, just under a 190 average. That’s about 10 over average for me, although it wasn’t even across the boards. I somehow managed a 234 in the first game, which won it for us because the other guys weren’t warmed up yet and bowled poorly. Then I was a bit under average the next two games.
I’ve pretty much decided I’m not going to bowl in this league next year. [redacted the nasty bits]
Posted by Drew458
on 04/10/2013 at 08:10 AM
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Permalink • Wednesday - April 03, 2013
Put Your Viking Helmet On!
Can you tell that my team won all 3 games and all 7 points last night at Greed League? And that we did it against another team of real people, not just the empty lane of a Bye Week?
They bowled well, but we bowled weller. Nothing super fantastic, just solid. And for once the stars and planets were aligned so that a) our whole team was there, and b) none of us were sick, injured, stressed out, or otherwise having a bad night.
This just might elevate us out of last place, which would be a nice thing even if it only lasts a week or two. Sweet. So did we kick some ass? Not excessively. But we did at least stomp their weasels.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/03/2013 at 06:55 AM
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Permalink • Wednesday - March 27, 2013
Hard Fought Loss
We went 2-5 against Frank’s team on Greed League last night. They took us by more than 100 the first game, we won the second game by about 30, and then battle was joined for real in the third game. We haven’t won a single game against his team in more than 2 years. They’re good. Oh, they’re better than good. They’re great ... and they’re experts at “management”. But not in game 3 last night.
We bowled our socks off, and they really had to respond. And the result was the best high scoring bowling match I’ve been involved in in a long time. The lead changed back and forth with every bowler, nearly every frame. It was that close. Us. Them. Ahead. Behind. Ahead. Behind. And there were some major scores being rolled ... 224, 268, 243, 238, 257, ... and at the end, their anchor guy Matt, had to, had to roll a perfect 300 game to win it for them. 12 strikes in a row. If he’d gone 10 in a row and then a spare, we would have won and thus split the night 3-4. But he came through and they got the victory. The last bowler, in the last frame. It was that close. So no shame on us at all. I was 5 under average that game. Oh well. Even if I’d gone 20 over it wouldn’t have mattered; XXX in the 10th on a double from the 8th and 9th is worth 60 pins, and they won by 46. But Matt throws the big hook, going way out to the very edge and coming back hard; be just a hair off that kind of throw and it can dump into the gutter in the blink of an eye. So kudos to him. Outstanding. Not that a 300 gets you any kind of accolades in that 10 team league. They happen all the time, nearly one or two a week. Hard core bowling.
But dayum, what a nail-biter of a game. That’s the best.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/27/2013 at 07:53 AM
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Permalink • Friday - March 08, 2013
Morning Stomp
Odd thought I had on waking - unless you’re Jack Black, it would be pretty tough to politely hum this little ditty in the office elevator. Pretty tough. Easy for Jack because he wouldn’t even try to contain himself. And that’s what this one is all about.
No, it’s ‘put on your big boots and go stomping around’ music. Good and loud, with extra vim and vigor.
I got the Strike Ball last night at Cheap League. Put $15 in my pocket, so that covered the cost of bowling. I didn’t feel up to playing the brackets, so I let that slide. Smart me; Arnie rolled out a 267 and Duke finished up with a 258, so I never would have stood a chance. On the other hand, I rocked in a smaller way last night, coming in 13 over average with a very steady 579 series; I was only +/- a half dozen points between all three games. I like that. It means I may have found a new plateau.
We played a team full of beginners, so we had to give them a tremendous handicap. 175 pins, which is like an entire extra bowler on their side. My whole team was there, the Text Kids too, and she was actually fairly pleasant when I was all supportive and observational in her direction. He still barely acknowledges my existence. And I outbowled him all over the place. So, sod him. We took games 1 and 2 by a bit more than 100 pins each; my whole team was rolling pretty well. Game 3 Text Girl had to go home early so we had to use her 10 under absentee score, Text Boy threw a 25 under, and my wife was 30 or so under too. I pulled out all the stops and threw the deuce, but just barely with a 203. So with a total of 265 pins heading their way, the newbies beat us by about 68 pins that last game. So we went 5-2, which is still Ok. Had a decent time talking with their team, so it was a good night.
And we took 5 and I threw a 196 average all night and I won $15 in the strike ball. Good enough. Put on your big boots and go stomping around. It’s happy time.
I was just a skinny lad
Never knew no good from bad
But I knew life before I left my nursery
Left alone with big fat Fanny
She was such a naughty nanny
Heap big woman you made a fat boy out of me
I’ve been singing with my band
Across the wire across the land
I seen ev’ry blue eyed floozy on the way
But their beauty and their style
Went kind of smooth after a while
Take me to them dirty ladies every time
Oh won’t you take me home tonight?
Oh down beside your red firelight
Oh and you give it all you got
Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin’ world go round
Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin’ world go round
Posted by Drew458
on 03/08/2013 at 07:38 AM
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Permalink • Friday - March 01, 2013
Oops I did it again
Another week, and another no-show from our wonderful teammates on Cheap League. So another week of being behind the 8 ball, 20 pins down. So we fought back, and won it all anyway. I threw 96 over for a 643 series, which also won me $22 in the weekly brackets. I thought my wife was bowling great too, although she says it was nothing special. But she did get the strikeball from last week, and hit that for a big X, so she won $11 that way. And there’s a good chance my +96 series will give me the men’s strikeball for next week, so chances are I’ll get at least another $9 from that. Hey, if I could do this every week, I’d start making money bowling instead of spending it! I haven’t played the brackets the past 3 weeks because I haven’t felt so good, but when I played it 4 weeks ago I won it then too. At this point I’m in the black.
Last week’s 7-0 win brought us up 3 places. This week’s big win ought to bring us up at least 1 more, if not 2. With just 10 weeks left in the season we’re down in 6th place. While I’d like to win it, I’ll be satisfied finishing in the top 3. So we’ll fight our way back up every step of the way. Fun!
Posted by Drew458
on 03/01/2013 at 07:39 AM
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Permalink • Friday - January 25, 2013
Dealing With Liberals
Well, we lost all 7 at Cheap League last night. We played a team of two couples where both the husbands are superb bowlers who can throw whatever scores they want at any time, and use this league to practice their sandbagging. So no matter how we bowled, they managed to beat us by the smallest handful of points each game. 2. 7. 19. On the other hand, we didn’t always bowl our best, and two of our members bowled well below average 5 games out of 6. Rats. That’s how it goes sometimes.
But here’s the odd thing. The other couple on our team, a young couple recently married and nearly half our age, was giving us the silent treatment. Seriously. They completely ignored us the entire night, and wouldn’t even make eye contact. WTH??
I’m sure it’s all my fault. Yeah right. I am a competitive person. I like to win, and I like the challenge of going all out, doing my very best, to get there. I cheer on my teammates when they do well, and commiserate with them when they don’t. I know that this is just “fun league”, so I try to keep my emotional involvement as limited as possible, but it is still a competitive situation. I pay attention to the flow of the score, I watch the lanes to see how the oil conditions change, I watch my teammates bowl and I have ideas about how they can adapt (league bowling is a matter of constant adaptation), but I keep those ideas to myself almost all the time unless asked, because it can be really annoying having someone telling what to do all the time. Sure, all the time, I’ll grant you that. But if you throw 5 frames in a row and leave the 6 and 10 pins every time, I’ll probably tell you at that point that you might want to move a couple boards right on your setup, or maybe half a foot further back. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results; I’m an attentive member of my team watching everyone bowl, and discussing the lane conditions and how to adapt to them is part of the normal league interaction. Duh. Go to bowling league, talk about bowling. See how things are, and talk about how to overcome them. It’s part of being on a team. One comment gently offered once in five frames isn’t meddling or being bossy or having unrealistic expectations or putting undue pressure on others demanding that they perform.
We lost 5 out of 7 last week. What made it really bad is that we only played half a team; one of theirs was absent, so we used his absentee score (average minus ten pins). Another one had prebowled, and had done poorly, and progressively worse every game. And the two that were there were rolling on average or barely above. So we should have had a 60 pin advantage, and my wife and I were bowling really well. Pretty sure I was throwing 25-40 pins over average each game. And we lost anyway.
The couple we were paired up with to form this team aren’t very social. They spend most of the night texting on their phones. Every week the wife whines how she’s so tired, how she doesn’t want to be there, how she wishes it was over so she could go home - and this by the halfway point of the first game. Then they go through their own peculiar mating ritual it seems ... she’ll get all uppity over some perceived slight, and pretend to be mad at him. He’ll make some wise remark to get her steamed even further, but after she pouts around for ten or fifteen minutes he’ll get back in her good graces by buying her a candy bar or ice cream or other junk to eat. Then they’ll be all cuddly for a bit, and playfully smack each other on their ample bottoms in passing (I’m overweight at 52, but the two of them are just as large or larger than I am, and in their early mid 20s. When I was 24 I was a young god. Well, I like to think so.). Whatever. People are strange, and every couple has it’s own unique ways.
But - bad Drew!! When we lost the 2nd game last week by a mile, one that ought to have been an easy win, and we lost it when I’d bowled 40 over and my wife had bowled 30 over, I made a face. A face!! And I was annoyed and downcast for about ... 7 seconds. Then I got over it and tried to get everyone amped up for the 3rd game. “ok, they got this one. Let’s rally and get game 3” kind of thing. That must have been insane crazy talk that frightened everyone. Or made them “uncomfortable”. Or I was putting far too much pressure on people. Beats me, but I’ve gone over it a bunch of times in my head, and analyzed how these two have been increasingly less social week after week - when the wife was out sick a few weeks ago, the husband just sat there like a lump. He never initiated a single sentence our way, and when we asked after her health or said other things to him his responses were barely more than grunts, just one or two words. So now we’re getting the silent treatment. With extra snotty. Like they’re 3 years old.
I want to fight. I want to confront them in public and call them pussy titty babies, and tell them to put on their triple XL big girl panties and come to us if they have a problem with us. I’ll chew them up and spit them out and grind them to bloody dust under my heels and laugh the whole damn time at their bathos. They want to throw around passive aggressive behavior in my direction, I’ll throw straight up aggressive behavior back. And I’ll take it as far as it goes. On the other hand, if they can discuss what their issue is, and listen to ours that we find their asocial texting, argumentative flirtation, and her constant bad attitude annoying, them maybe we can resolve our differences.
My wife says it’s not worth it. She thinks we’d be better off just breaking the team in two and trying to find another couple, or just going it alone for the rest of the season. She’s spotted the disdain coming our way, and figures there’s no way to overcome that.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/25/2013 at 08:52 AM
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Permalink • Wednesday - January 23, 2013
bouncing off the bottom
I haven’t done much bowling blogging this season. Nobody cares, and my leagues are pretty weird. In Greed League we bowl superbly, but get outbowled nearly every week so we’re at the bottom of the pyramid. On Cheap League, my team really sucks, couldn’t care less about the game or about being competitive, yet somehow we manage to hover around first or second place. Go figure.
On Greed League we have a sub nearly every week because Bob is never there. He runs a pet food import business, so he’s always down in Texas bringing dead critters and spoiled seafood across in bulk from Mexico. So we get a substitute. Sometimes the sub is a hero. This week he wasn’t. Our guy Jason has been getting better and better, and this week rolled his 3rd 300 game in his whole life. He’s been a bowler since he was 7. His kids are in junior high now. 3 perfect games. Me? I had a decent week too, rolling a 660 series. That’s about 120 over my average series; not award winning, but still pretty good. No spectacular game either, just solid bowling, each game well over 200 for a 220 series average. 42 over my paper average. Maybe I can do it again on Cheap League, maybe do it better, and finally get myself a 700. Never had one, not ever. Sure would be nice.
On the other hand, my bowling is suddenly quite better, 13-15 weeks into the season. This has let me win the brackets in Cheap League 2 weeks in a row now, so I’m actually up $6 now, for the season, based on the weekly $2 ante. If I can win 1 more week I’ll be in the black for the entire season.
Whatever.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/23/2013 at 07:28 PM
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Permalink • Saturday - December 15, 2012
20 Minute Bowling League
Neato.
Hey, I didn’t even know there was an old speed bowling record, did you? 
If you ever feel overconfident when you go to the bowling alley, think of Chad McLean.
The Gainesville native and bowler extraordinaire owns the Guinness World Record for most strikes bowled in a minute.
In a video uploaded this week to YouTube, McLean takes down nine sets of pins in about 60 seconds. McLean managed 15 attempts in the minute.
Pretty awesome if you ask me.
But let’s make it more awesome. Leave it to Drew to figure out how to crank it up several more notches.
15 throws is a game and a half [assuming a perfect game], and bowling league is typically 3 games. So in theory this guy - and maybe you too, with practice - could do a whole night’s bowling league in 2 minutes. Granted, you probably won’t throw 9 strikes from 15 throws like Chad did, so we’ll more than double the time. Call it 5 minutes. And with 4 people on a team, that could means 20 minutes for your whole team to bowl, but the next bowler really doesn’t need to wait until the previous guy is completely done. Let him get about 2 lanes ahead for courtesy, and to allow the pin setter to bring up new pins. So a team of 4 could get the whole job done ... in about 10 minutes. Your opponents come along behind you, and the pin setting machines need a little bit of time to reset each frame ... so let’s call it 20 minutes. Beats the heck out of the typical 2 and half to 3 hours that league usually runs. And you could schedule it tight, too. Team 1 and 2 start off at 7, teams 3 and 4 start off at 7:05, teams 5 and 6 at 7:10, etc. And there’d be a steady procession of people bowling across the whole alley, going from lane 1 to lane 2 to lane 3 and so on until they’re done.
An alley could probably run 10 leagues a night, instead of the more typical 4. All those folks who say “Oh, I don’t have time for bowling league” would lose that as an excuse. The alleys would rake in the money, but beer sales would be down considerably. No time for a brewski!
On the other hand, each bowler would need to own about 30 bowling balls and bring them all on league night. Which would not only be mighty expensive, but awfully heavy.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/15/2012 at 11:45 AM
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Permalink • Friday - November 16, 2012
Another Day’s Effort
Man am I going to need a chiropractic adjustment when this is all over. Family coming down to visit today and bringing a truck. So I can maybe move a few more pieces of furniture, but mostly stuff. It takes a million trips, I swear. Guess I’d better get another coat of paint on the coat closet before they arrive.
We won 5-2 in Cheap League last night. That keeps us in first place for another week. I went 138 over average last week, so I got the strike ball this week and I made it. Prize was $15, so that paid for bowling. Or for some gas; now that the hurricane crisis is over, the rapacious bastidges who run the gas stations have lowered their prices back to where they were before the storm. Rat finks jacked the price up 28¢ per gallon.
Ok, so here’s a very pretty girl who is not a redhead. It happens. You know the drill: clicky.
Posted by Drew458
on 11/16/2012 at 09:34 AM
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Permalink • Friday - May 04, 2012
In A League Of Their Own
Both Greed League and Cheap League finished this week. I get a whole week to relax before summer league begins. I’m going to spend that time trying to strengthen my release and to work on my corner game with a new lighter spare ball. I’ve got one that’s a full 16lb, and it weighs a ton in my hand. Not necessary; spare shooting is about precision, not power. A 14 or 15lb ball would be easier to throw and easier to control. And I can get one new for something like $50, drilled to fit my hand.
Talk about differences between leagues.
Greed League is all about the money, and everything else goes by the sideboard. We had more than 14 300 games bowled in that league this year. Not a word. Something like $37,000 flowed through their coffers this year, but no accounting statement was put forth. And the treasurer seemed almost offended that anyone would ask what the prize amounts were ... after all, everyone voted on the approximate amounts back in August, at which point the papers with the amounts on them were collected as the votes. So why are you asking now you troublemaker? Hardly a bit of applause for anyone, each team just came up to the counter to collect it’s envelope, split the money up to the team members, and left. Bunch of dead eyed fish. But I did manage to find out that the 1st place winners turned a profit, taking $130 more in prize money than they had paid in all year. Our team finished 3rd, and our payout was nearly half of our dues paid in. Huge money. In a league of 8 teams, last place got a lousy $60 per man, only a 15th of what 1st raked in. Savage. Gosh, and they wonder why it’s so hard for them to keep teams year after year!
Cheap League is all about the fun. And just a tiny bit about the money. The weekly dues are only 65% of Greed League’s, the league officers don’t get paid diddly for their efforts, and most of the prize money gets rolled back in for weekly cash games and semi-annual parties. Last week was the end of the actual competition, so this week it was party time. And it rocked! We had a night of no-tap bowling, the kind little kids and raw beginners do, and it was a blast. They put colored pins into the mix, and if you got a real strike when the headpin was a colored one you won a free game ticket. And if you didn’t strike, you got to pick something from the grab bag. I totally lucked out and had the colored pin about a dozen times, so I now have a fistful of free game cards and a collection of dollar store toys and games. And the folks who work at M&M Mars around the corner brought in gift boxes for each team with about two dozen various snacks and candy bars inside. And homemade white chocolate bowling themed lollipops. And we had a massive catered buffet with slightly open bar, with enough leftover food so that everyone took home dinner for four. Awesomeness! Then we held a proper league meeting to give out the small cash prizes, and the USBC awards, and nice trophies, and even toilet paper to those lucky “111” bowlers ( a 111 is the “outhouse” score, a little razzie that you try not to bowl. But sometimes you have a bad night and do so anyway. None for me this year!) Our secretary gave everyone a printout of all their scores, and our treasurer handed out a printed full financial disclosure that showed every dollar that came in and how it was spent, including what prize money went to each place. That’s how it’s supposed to be, right out of the USBC rulebook. I couldn’t ask for a better ending to a season. Our 4th place cash prize was $35 per person. Who cares? I got mini Chinese Checkers, Laptop Putting Golf, a squeeze ball, and a whole box full of Snack-ums.
I now have an ally against the massively disproportionate payouts in Greed League. Our new team member J is a superb bowler, smart as a whip, and a great big mofo at 6’5” 275lb. He’s been in bowling leagues since he was a kid, and he’s never seen anything like this. So he WILL have his say in the fall and he will be listened too. And then I’ll dip my little oar in the water Rodney King style, let’s all get along, fair is what the majority of us decide on, let’s form a committee, agree on goals, etc. Meanwhile, I’m almost done with a new version of my prize calculator spreadsheet. This one does cash increments between places, and is built so that you can enter your goals (1st place gets $X, 2nd gets $Y, 3rd gets $Z) and then parses out the rest of the money evenly. It adapts to as many prize goals as you want to have, and highlights the lower position payouts if things are imbalanced past a certain level of “fair”. I just have to figure out the base slice algorithm with a calculated cut counter. Right now I’m using the Excel CHOOSE function, which works but is not really elegant. Once a programmer, always a programmer. And I’m full of ideas.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/04/2012 at 02:30 PM
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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