Tonight was the teams night for the in-house tournament at Fugate’s. I didn’t actually have a team organized for the night, but I had to be over there anyway, seeing as I’m the lane guy at the moment. So, I hauled my ass over there and got 16 lanes ready. I figured we’d probably need about 6 to 8 lanes for the tournament. Boy, was I wrong! We had three teams, total! Including the make up team I was in with a couple of guys that showed up to see if anyone needed a team!
Pathetic! You would think the league bowlers would get out and support the house a little more, wouldn’t you? I had heard talk of people flat out refusing to bowl the tournament because they stood no chance of winning. When you’re talking about a $15 entry fee, per attempt, per event, that’s not a lot of money, if you only bowl once per event – or even just once! So disappointing, I have to say.
Anyway, I didn’t bowl worth a dime tonight. I think I bowled about a 520 series. BOOOO! I was hoping to at least post a late 500 or an early 600, but no. We ended up bowling a team per pair. With three to a team, that means we have NO chance of breaking the lanes down to where I would have liked for them to be. I still enjoyed bowling. We stood NO chance of winning anything as one of our guys had a busted hand, but it fun to just bowl a few games.
I actually decided to set up a single pair in the house with an out of bounds from the 5 board out on the right lane and about 2/3 the volume of oil on the right lane. I had to put oil down manually on outside of the 5 because our lane machine has a cut wick and is incapable of putting oil down outside of 5. I threw a couple of games before the tournament arrived. I oiled the right lane before the left lane and unfortunately, the oil that the lane machine picked up on the right lane outside of 5 got transferred to the left lane. I was wanting to see if the shot played any different with less oil on the lane.
The right lane played exactly the way I thought it would. You get out to 5 and you can kiss the ball good bye. It will hit the 6 pin if you’re lucky, but usually it was gutter bound. The left didn’t play the way I expected it to at all. I was expecting it to be quite strong through the mid lane and fairly strong on the backend. Well, because of the oil from the previous lane, it played a lot like it normally would. So that experiment was a flop. I’ll have to try again, when the wick and transfer roller are completely dried out.
All in all, it was an okay night. I didn’t bowl very well, but I enjoyed the company and had fun playing around with the lane conditions a little. I ordered a new wick for the machine, so hopefully we can start to play around with the shot a little and try to find a shot that has similar characteristics to the one we currently use, only legal.
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