Last night, I had one of those nights last night where
nothing went right. I should have just packed my stuff up and gone home because I was just wasting my time trying to bowl.
As soon as I put on my bowling shoes, I walked over to the table and immediately stepped in a big puddle of nearly dry Coke. It was reduced to that sugary syrup texture, and needless to say made an absolute mess of my shoe. I could not get it cleaned off with a wire brush even. I had to just throw away that slide sole and go to the pro shop and buy a new one. But of course, brand new slide sole meant I had to break it in. So, all through practice I could barely slide and nearly killed myself several times sticking at the foul line. Throughout the night, I would randomly stick about once every three or four frames.
I also quickly realized my thumb was swollen up very badly for some reason, and I just could NOT throw my equipment that used the switchgrip thumb insert until I took out tape. Unfortunately, I had black tape in there, and that stuff is almost impossible to get out if you leave it in your thumbhole for a few days or even weeks. It took me five frames to get all the tape and residue out of my thumbhole. I had to just fire my spare ball at the headpin during that time. When I finally got the tape out, I never could get my grip to feel right again. It alternated between too tight and too loose no matter what I did with my tape.
And after all of this, I'm fighting a TERRIBLE ball reaction. The Cheetah pattern is playing nothing like it did last year. No matter what ball or release I use, I have a huge out-of-bounds from 4 to 6. The ball just sails on forever if I try to have my breakpoint anywhere between 4 and 6. Pretty much a guaranteed 1-2-4-10 washout. If I go outside to the 1-2-3 board area, the ball will
not recover soon enough, and I'm going to leave the 2-10. Inside of 6? Guaranteed split or 6-10 since the ball hooks too early. I occasionally could find a decent line pointing the ball from the gutter to about 4 at the breakpoint, but if I missed just a hair either direction, I was leaving a difficult spare.
I missed the 2-10 by sending the 2 in front of the 10 pin. Two frames later, I left the 3-7 and missed it by sending the 3 in front of the 7. And I left the 2-10 again the very next frame. Yep, just that kind of a night.
Oh, and to cap it off, my drink was leaking out of the bottom of the cup and getting all over the table.
I seriously would have been better off just throwing my spareball hard and straight at the headpin all night... I shot 162-123-180-167 I believe. Worst series I can ever remember bowling. Thank God we're done with the Cheetah and moving on to the Viper pattern next week.
