Miller Shines, but Canada Wins Gold

What a shame for Ryan Miller to have ended his brilliant Olympic run with a goal he should have stopped. A poor-angle shot by Sidney Crosby seemed to have caught him by surprise, and he committed what I always thought was the Cardinal sin of leaving your stick off the ice when in position, leaving the five-hole particularly vulnerable.

(I could be 100% wrong about that goal, but it looked to me like a stick on the ice would have stopped it. I will correct this if I later discover I am wrong.)

When I played goalie, almost to a fault I made sure the stick was on the ice if at all possible. Perhaps I didn't control rebounds as well as I should have. But I very rarely got beat in the five hole on the ice.

I was also pretty good on breakaways, although I'm sure that was in large part because I was too slow to fall for any dekes.

Regardless, Miller rightfully won the MVP of the Olympic hockey tournament. Hockey gets it right. It's happened in the NHL playoffs, too. There's no reason the MVP of a series or tournament has to come from the winning team. It helps, but shouldn't be a requirement.

So the USA was the best team throughout the Olympics, and even beat Canada in six full periods of hockey. But timing is crucial, and Canada got the most important goal. Congratulations to our friends in the Great White North, eh.

Another Mom & Pop Closing

In a sad case of serendipity, I took my family bowling last Saturday night to Airport Bowl in Richfield for the first time ever, and then found out this week they are closing this summer. I have driven by the 12-lane house probably a couple hundred times at least, and finally tried it out for the first time ever.

The owners are literally Mom & Pop (but not mine), having run the business for 25 years. Their son reports that they haven't drawn a salary in two years, and because of the declining nature of the business of bowling (at least in small houses not tricked up with lasers and black lights), plus rising real estate costs, selling isn't even an option. They will simply vacate when the lease is up.

The good news is the couple will get some much-deserved rest and relaxation, and they are not hurting financially for their retirement years. My wife, who is horrified to think of how I am getting my four-and-two-year-olds hooked on the game, even mentioned when we were there, "We should buy a bowling alley like this."

"That would be a dream," I thought, although now I'm re-thinking that with this news. I do love small houses like the Airport Bowl. You don't see too many more in the Twin Cities. Saint Bernards', Country Club, and Ran-Ham come to mind. Falcon Bowl closed a few years ago to development, as did the Stahl House, just to name a couple.

Sadly, at least to a reborn bowling geek like me, this is less a statement of big corporations taking over the Mom & Pops than it is a sorry statement of the state of bowling. There are a lot of ideas out there, but I honestly don't know what can be done to grow the sport back to at least a semblance of what it was 20-30 years ago.

I'm glad I at least got to contribute some $60+ to the couple's retirement the other night (there were eight of us including a friend, plus we had drinks). I'll be stopping by at least one more time before it closes to pay my last respects, and hopefully help make the couple's golden years a little better, if ever so slightly.

Pushing the Envelope

I thought I had learned the origin of an old adage today, but instead I am only more confused. I learned where "Pushing the Envelope" came from, or so I thought, while reading the book We Got Fired!...And It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us by, appropriately enough, Harvey Mackay, founder of the Mackay Envelope Company. (Don't you hate when people say "Ironically" in situations like this? No, "appropriately" is the appropriate word.)

On page 98, Mackay explains the origin thusly:

Meaning: to fly the plane so fast and hard the outer skin (envelope) verged on exploding.

Out of curiosity, I googled the phrase, and came up with this from http://www.phrases.org.uk/:

In aviation and aeronautics the term 'flight envelope' had been in use since WWII, as here from the Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, 1944:

"The best known of the envelope cases is the 'flight envelope', which is in general use in this country and in the United States... The ‘flight envelope’ covers all probable conditions of symmetrical maneuvering flight."

That envelope is the description of the upper and lower limits of the various factors that it is safe to fly at, i.e. speed, engine power, manoeuvrability, wind speed, altitude etc. By 'pushing the envelope', i.e. testing those limits, test pilots were able to determine just how far it was safe to go. By 1978 the phrase was in use in print.

I've always enjoyed Mackay's books, although I can't say my way to the top has been expedited because of them, unless I was on the 100-year plan without them. I often wonder how much his stories are embellished for dramatic effect.

But they are good reads, and in the case of this book, it's not only for people who get fired (I haven't been...yet, knock wood), but for anyone who could use a different perspective from that of following the straight and narrow as a path to career fulfillment. Sometimes, as exemplified in some of the stories from the book, the best thing you can do is fire yourself.

Valentine's Day

I am not a big "Holidays guy," and that is especially true with Valentine's day. I think the best thing my wife and I can do for each other is to not waste money on greeting cards, chocolates, flowers, etc., especially while her job prospecting continues.

We are, however, going to finally see Avatar today. It's a movie we would see anyway, but because it is Valentine's Day, my mother-in-law will be watching the little guys for us. Call me hypocritical, but I guess it's kind of nice that at least someone believes in "Hallmark holidays."

Bowling Revolutions

One thing I am trying to accomplish in improving as a bowler, despite being only a part-time bowler for now, is to educate myself in the game more than I did when I was younger. So I am paying attention to the finer things in PBA tour telecasts, league bowlers, and my own game.

Rev rate, expressed in revolutions per minute (RPM), is one area in which I'm paying more attention to lately. Not only am I seeking my own ideal rev rate, but I am also paying attention to what rev rates are required to succeed at the highest level. Ball speed is another area I'm paying attention to.

Some sample PBA players and their ball speeds and rev rates, from the Winter 2009-10 issue of USBowler:

Rhino Page - 17/18 MPH, 310 RPM
Tom Smallwood - 15 MPH, 350 RPM
Bill O'Neill - 17/18 MPH, 450 RPM
Wes Malott - 18/19 MPH (but looks like he's hardly trying; he's one strong dude), 400+ RPM

These were general estimated averages, which is about all I can come up with for myself without some high tech equipment. In a meeting at work this week, I scribbled out some estimates. (Don't worry; it was a meeting I was required to be in, but in which different groups reported on their status. My part lasted five minutes.) It's a good thing I remembered my algebra. I guess my teachers were right when they said some day I might use this stuff at work.

To figure out my RPM I need to use what little info there was available to me. The bowling center has a feature in which your ball speed is calculated. My shots averaged 15.5 to 17.5 MPH. Part of the wide range is because of my own inconsistency, but much of it is also in experimenting with the lanes and shot as I try to find the optimal way to the 1-3 pocket. My average and ideal speed did indeed seem to be right about in the middle at about 16.5 MPH.

So as with my golf game, my ball speed is not among the big boys, but somewhere in the mix of the elite. That's encouraging.

Back to RPM. My best guess as to how many revolutions my ball performs before hitting the pins is 12-13. With that knowledge, and my ball speed, I can figure out rev rate.

Thus rev rate = revolutions per minute
= revolutions per mile x speed in miles per hour / 60 (to convert hours to minutes)
= 5280(feet in a mile)/60(feet in lane length) x 13 revs x 16.5 / 60
= 314.6 RPM

Plugging in different numbers to cover the range of ball speed (15.5 to 17.5) and revs (12 to 13) give me a possible range of 272.8 to 333.7.

This has PBA potential, but it probably wouldn't hurt to up the rev rate another 25 or so RPM. Typically, the only lower-rev players who've made it big on tour are lefties, like Rhino Page. (Why that is the case for lefties can mushroom into sometimes heated discussions.)

The most successful PBA player in history is the right-handed Walter Ray Williams, Jr., whose rev rate is around 300 RPM (my best guess). But Walter is the exception that proves the rule. They call him "Dead Eye" on tour, because of how ridiculously accurate he is. Nelson Burton, Jr. used to always say direction is 95% of the game, and Walter's success seems to back that up.

How accurate is he? Consider this: Williams is a six-time world horseshoe pitching champion.