Step 1 - spare, strike, strike, spare
Step 2 - gutter ball, gutter ball
Step 3 - spare, strike, spare, strike, spare, strike
As any of my team members can attest, I’m known for rolling at least one gutter ball on any given night. But I don’t remember having rolled two of them in a roll in recent memory. This is definitely one to remember.
Last night was the first night of our summer league at Club 300. For some reason they did not have a record of my average from last year, so they gave me a default handicap of 32, which is probably 10+ points less than what it should be.
I didn’t play particularly well at the beginning, but a string of strikes gave me a first game score of 199. Between two gutter balls, a 7-8 conversion, a couple of pin 7 spares, and a streak of strikes (some ugly, some lucky), I ended up with a total score of 611!
If this continues I don’t think I’ll ever go back to World Bowl 
There’s a reason why I haven’t blogged about my league play since my last entry more than one month ago when I had my lifetime high - I’ve been playing terribly since then. Right after that career high, I dropped to a season-low of 122 the following week. I’d been climbing back up, very slowly, but then dropped back to a 140 tonight.
At the same time, I’d been asked to play as a sub for another team @ Club 300. Since I had no history at that league, I was given a default handicap of 32, which was way too low. Interestingly, I’d been able to keep up that high average. It must be above 160 by now, after last Monday night when I scored a 170 average.
Anyway, I’ll be away for the next 3 weeks. Hopefully I can forget about my current slump and start anew when I come back. Or I can play like a beginner from lack of practice like after my last vacation
You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged much about my bowling league for quite a while. That’s probably because my results have been rather mediocre lately, ever since I came back from vacations last fall. My average dropped from ~160 to ~155 after my vacations. Nowadays I’d be happy to average above 150 on any given night.
This morning I jokingly told DF that I’d celebrate my B-day with a 200+ game tonight. Well I kept my word. I scored a career high game of 237 in the second game. However I cannot be completely happy with that result, as I obviously choked big time at the end of the game, as you can see from the scoreboard. I should’ve had a clean game, as the last frame was an easy spare, which would’ve given me a 250+ scratch game, or 300+ with handicap! Oh well, one cannot be too greedy. I actually didn’t feel like I was playing well. I’d say that it was more luck than anything, if I didn’t do so well in the other 2 games. But I did - my final average was 193!
Last weekend I went auto-crossing for the second time, again with AL and AN. I’m not sure if the
novelty is wearing off, but it didn’t feel as much fun this time. One big reason must be the length of the course, which was only about half of the one from last time.
I brought my camera this time and asked MK to come check us out as well as to take some photos for us. Check them out here - I think they’re pretty good, especially since we didn’t even use a long lens. It was a good opportunity for us to practice doing panning shots, where the camera follows a moving subject with a slow shutter speed, creating a blurred background while keeping the subject in focus.
The Miata that was behind me in the lineup was driven by Jeff, who also happened to have logged the fastest time that day. He came up to me and asked if I worked in Mississauga, a curiously accurate question from a stranger that could only mean one thing - he’s spotted my car many times on the road. Everyday he chugs along the 401 @ 105km/h in his Echo and many a time saw my Miata zooming by (he even recognized the year of my car!). I told him I’d keep an eye out for his Echo, and he told me that he’d flash his headlights if he ever saw me again. Well, just this morning I was flashed by an Echo as I passed it. I slowed down and of course, it was Jeff.
Here’re some dizzying video clips of our runs for you to enjoy:
Miata run 4, 5, 6
RSX run 4, 5, 6
Mini run 5
A new season of bowling started last Wednesday. I didn’t start so well with a dismal game of 114. Luckily I recovered quickly and ended up with an average of 158. DF finished even better with an average of 168. Since MJ, who was our anchor last season, didn’t do so well, it was now a fight for anchor position between DF and me.
Individual scores aside, we didn’t fare well against our opponents last week, and ended up only with 4 points, placing us only at 27 out of 32. Last night our opposing team was a no-show, so it was a good chance for us the clean up all 20 points by scoring better than 90% of our averages. 90%? How about 120%! After a poor start with 3 open frames, something clicked and I was on fire, getting as many as 5 strikes in a row! Even my worst game of the night (162) was higher than my average. We ended up winning 19 points for the night. That should move us up to a more respectable position next week, when I will be the anchor for the first time!
Wow, I can’t believe that it’s actually been more than a month since I last blogged about our bowling league. Tonight marked the end of the league. For me it was a rather embarrassing end to the season, as I scored a 3-game average of 136. The last time I scored that low was in week 5, about 3 months ago. We won $35 before going into the playoff, placing last in the middle division. We actually moved up to middle of our division after the first playoff night last week, but we probably did not improve that ranking with our mediocre performances tonight.
Over the course of the league my 3-game average improved by about 20 points, from ~130 to ~150. However I am still rather inconsistent. Since my last bowling blog I scored a personal high of 179, versus tonight’s low of 136.
A new league will be starting next week. To break away from my 150ish average I’ll probably need to do something different. I guess the first thing I can do is to bring my ball in for a good cleaning, by baking all the oil out. I’d be very happy if I can improve my average to 160ish by the end of next league.
Last Thursday, my sister and I went to watch an evening match at the Rogers Cup. Her boss got a couple of amazing "box" seats, 3rd row from court side, but couldn’t attend. This wasn’t the closest that I’ve seen a match. AF got us media credentials last year and we were taking photographs at many matches court-side, and even attended a post-match interview with the players. But besides the few heads that were obstructing my lens now and then, last week’s platinum seats weren’t so bad. They were definitely close enough as I didn’t have to use the longest end of my borrowed 80-200mm lens all the time.
We were very lucky as world #1 Roger Federer was playing that evening. This was also the first time the tournament put the new electronic line calling system in place, where a player is allowed to challenge calls from the umpire/linesmen, up to 2 incorrect challenges per set. If a player believes that a call is wrong, a challenge maybe requested and the call will be confirmed by video replay. Naturally the players have to be discouraged from indiscriminantly challenging calls, hence the 2 wrong calls limit. This is probably the biggest change to the rules of tennis since tiebreakers, and adds much excitement for the fans.
Unfortunately whenever I go to photograph a match instead of watching it, I miss out on much of the excitement. The whole match becomes simply a series of unrelated shots viewed through the viewfinder. But I am very happy with this year’s results. In the past only a very small percentage of my photographs would come out in focus, with the ball in the frame, and players in good-looking postures. But this time around, I was able to time many of the shots successfully. Check out my album and see if you agree.
Looking at my cumulative averages of the past 5 weeks (hovering between 147 and 149), I may seem to be bowling pretty consistently. In fact, I’ve gone through a pretty rough slump recently. Week 9 was rather uneventful, but very good in retrospect. It was my last good consistent night of league play, which was 2 weeks ago! I felt ambivalent about the 158 average of that week, but that is the kind of average I would die for now!
Week 10 was the beginning of my big slump. That week’s average of 143 was the lowest 
that I’ve got in more than a month (since week 5). The following Sunday I went to practice with DF and MJ, something that we haven’t done in a while because of our busy summer schedules. The first game I scored my life time 3rd highest score of 203. Naturally, I agreed to play the following games for money with them and deservedly lost both games with amateurish scores of 123 and 118. How I never learn!
That same night, after a birthday dinner with 8 of CL’s friends, we all went to WB where I really showed them how it’s done, with a score of 115, barely beating CL’s 100! That was last Sunday, and tonight I wondered when my slump would end. Well, it would take one more game, as it turned out. After a rather good practice session, I was extremely frustrated when I scored only 113 in my first game! But I was not the only cursed one, as DF scored one point lower than me!
During the second game, DF started to chat with one member of our opposing team, who nicely offered him some advice. I listened in and made one adjustment, keeping my elbow tucked in, and amazingly scored a 171, one point lower than DF. Oh, CL also bought me a bottle of water in this game, so I’ll give her credit for turning my game around too :) We kept our games going consistently to both score a 173 in the last game, ending up with an average of 152 for the night.
Despite the last two good games, I never felt that I was playing well. Maybe I was mentally bothered by the disastrous first game. In any case, I hope that first game was the end of my slump. And somebody please remind me to never bet when I’m playing well
Currently at 9th last place in our league, last night was our chance to move up as our
opposing team was absent! All we had to do was play better than 90% of our averages to win all 20 points. But it was not to be. Only our sub NY was able to play above his average, and well above it too! MJ struggled throughout all 3 games, getting only 3 strikes in 3 games! The scores of my first 2 games were deceptively high at 156 and 168, but I was just lucky. My balls were rolling all over the lane. And it would eventually catch up with me in the last game, where I only had 1 spare! I barely scored over 100 in that game 
At the end we were still able to score 14 points for our team, thanks largely to NY’s awesome play and my 2 lucky games. If there was something to blame, I’d have to say that I was a bit rushed. Only 3 of us (instead of the usual 6) were playing 2 lanes. We were incredibly busy bowling from one lane to the other with not much rest in between.
I will have no practice before our game next week as I will be out of town this weekend. Let’s hope that my game will come back in time.