strike, spare, score?

Went bowling last night with kareila and alierak at crs' birthday bowling bash. And had an absolutely great time. First time I've been bowling since my sister and I used to go bowling when I was ten. (Well, not quite the first time: When I visited my sister in Canada in December, I spotted a bowling alley and we decided to go bowling for old times' sake. We went in, paid, rented shoes, change shoes, and walked to our lane. Only then did I notice that the balls were a lot smaller than I remembered. I then looked down the lane and realized we were in a candlepin bowling alley. Neither of us had ever even watched candlepin bowling, but we had a good time throwing balls down the lanes anyway.)

Anyway, last night was a gas. All the balls were too heavy for Kareila: the phrase "spastic chicken" comes to mind for how she'd flail the ball down the alley, imparting almost no momentum to it in the process. But about half the time the ball would lumber down the middle of the alley and eventually knock over some pins. She won the first of the two games we bowled. Alierak bowled a strike his first turn, and did pretty decently all night. He's never looked so much like he belonged in a ZZ Top video, though, as when he was in the middle of the backswing with a bowling ball. Don't ask me why.

Lara (I don't know if she has an LJ account) was there and bowled with us. She was in a mood to hit something (she'd spent the whole day at work), and I was reminded of the first time I saw her, years ago, with a baseball bat and a shit-eating grin. I hadn't seen her in a couple of years; it was fun to hang out with her. The automatic scoring system was buggy as hell, and she ended up hacking the console to straighten it out.... Somewhere along the line I realized that I have no clue how bowling is scored; maybe I should figure that out before the next time I go. Not that any of us cared about the scores.

Toward the end even I got about half-way decent, getting the ball down the middle of the alley and taking out more than half the pins about half the time my last half-dozen turns. I'm definitely going bowling again soon!