May 31, 2009 by shrimptriscuit
I find it really sad that there is very little to do where I live in terms of bowling. When I was down in South Florida for college, there were several bowling alleys and one I remember was in this Mills mall (a mall chain) that had not occurred to me that I have been to until I looked at it from an angle (I went there on a whim and it was spooky in how empty it is on the morning). That alley is the only alley I will not set foot in again for it reeks of club and the fees per game are atrocious! Hell, you HAD TO PAY A COVER CHARGE TO GET IN A BOWLING ALLEY! As far as I know where I am, there are only two bowling alleys in the county and one of them is inside a naval base. The other I can walk to (if I wanted to) but good luck getting in if it ever does since it is open for league bowling only. The closest two bowling alleys I am aware of outside of those mentioned are in other counties where both are roughly an equidistant drive away.
I always loved to bowl no matter where I was. The shoes, the smell of the lane oil, the soft hum of the hand dryer, they all make me happy. I especially love the sound of a perfect strike where you hit the pins in such a way that the sound of all the pins come together in one harmonious explosion. It does help me when I can curve the ball almost like the professionals do but the pros like to have a true near-parabolic-like curve where I have something resembling a rising curve that you see on graphs sometimes. If I fail to deliver on the strike then I can do a pro curve and pick up for the spare but I always get robbed.
Sometimes the strikes I get have some awesome pin action. For instance, I would bowl the strike and one of the pins comes flying over and dynamically entries the farthest pin over. Pin action always gets better response from friends than a simple strike though when you have a little talk then go into the throw while talking, it gets better. One time I was bowling at the bowling lane on the local naval base while I was in high school and a friend of mine was bowling there too though she was bowling the way I did before I went to camp. She asked me if I can bowl a strike for her and I agreed; throwing the ball as hard as you can with bowling balls and slapping a spin on it, I had the perfect strike sound and laughed hard as I just went from agreement to delivery in a fluid motion.
I remember getting into the Youth Bowling League known as YABA when I was in grade school and the best memory from there was the one time the team I was in bowled alone (what happens when the other team shows up I could not remember). A good friend of mine was this guy that can hurl the ball down the lane and the one time he threw the ball, it got caught by the gutter but something was in the gutter at the time to make the ball jump up at nearly a right angle and shatter the lane light. THAT is even BETTER than a strike! Of course we changed lanes afterwards but that was the talk of the year.
Find a bowling alley and bowl a couple of games if you can. If anyone from South Florida is reading this and knows of the place I am talking about, stay the hell away from it. If you want to go clubbing, get on the damn beach or something.
/It was rainy as hell too when my friends and I went there
//Big ol’ fat SoFlo rain