Sunday, May 8, 2011

USBC Open in Reno

I meant to blog during my trip to Reno, but the time I ended up spending on line was mostly spent cleaning up work e-mails. I'm sitting at the gate awaiting my flight to Salt Lake City en route to Minneapolis/St. Paul.

So I'll keep it short. My bowling sucked mostly, save for a decent stretch in the team event from frame 4 in the first game to frame 8 in the third game. I shot a respectable (for me) 581, after starting with 32 after the third, and then finishing the 9th and 10th in game 3 with back-to-back 4-10 splits. Ruined a possible 600-620 series with those dang splits.

The bright spot was our team rolled 2919, which will probably get us about $100 back. The dark spots were plentiful. My final tally: 581, 482 in doubles(my first 400 in ages, but my partner only shot 500, so I don't feel too guilty), and 512 in singles. I totalled 1575 for the nine games, for a 175 average.

Something to improve upon for next year, I guess.

No excuses. Carry could have been better today, but that's not what did me in. I didn't make shots, and was poor on some easy spares. So I will go on record as saying I absolutely must commit myself to three things:

1) Spare shooting
2) Consistency in my strike ball
3) Committing to the shot

There was a decent enough shot on the lanes, but the mistake I made over and over again throughout the weekend was being afraid of getting the ball out too far and thus having it not come back. So I went through the nose time and again. When I didn't leave splits, my spare shooting was poor as well.

So that's the trip report in short. I'm more upset at myself than humbled. I KNEW I was only a house bowler going into this, but I performed very poorly even taking that in consideration.

Good thing I get 100 free games of bowling for joining my sport shot summer league. I hope I take the time to use them, and use them wisely.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Bin Laden Dead

I just updated my Facebook page status with the below story, trimmed to the maximum 420 characters. Here's what I originally tried to post:

Just a few short days ago, in a motel in Tomah, WI, my young boys saw some military men, probably visiting from nearby Fort McCoy.

"Who are they?" one asked.

"They keep us free from the bad guys," I said.

"Like the police?"

"Yeah, sort of."

"But who are the bad guys?" he followed with a look of concern.

They still won't quite understand, but tonight's news has allowed me to explain just a little bit more what those men (and women) do for us, and perhaps help my boys sleep a little easier tonight.