I've been bowling since I was a kid. Saturdays I would work until noon, then clean up and go bowling. I really liked it, but never bowled a league.

  Then, in 1982, my wife and I were looking for something to do and went bowling. We had fun and were asked to join a league, so we did. That first year, I used an old  "Fred Flintstone" type houseball and averaged a whopping 102, but loved it and wanted to get better. When our income tax return came back, I asked for a new ball and got one, my first one, a Columbia Yellow Dot.

  I spent lots of time and money learning to bowl. There's no telling how many games I bowled or how many hours I spent, practicing my release, practicing my targeting, taping and watching the best in the world, the players of the P.B.A., in hopes that someday I might be good enough to bowl with them on their own level. Just as I got there, the game evolved and the equipment revolution began.

  I continued to chase my dreams and the evolving game play.  Rubber to plastic, plastic to urethane, and finally urethane to reactive resin.  Three piece technology evolved into two piece, then into symmetric and asymmetric weightblocks. Bowling had changed forever.

 26 years I spent trying to be the best, and once, I was very good. I feared nobody and would bowl anyone, anytime.  I had a sponsor lined up once, but he lost some money on his other bowlers and decided to get out of it just as he picked me up. And I never quite was able to fully change my style enough to fully incorporate reactive resin. I still have my good times, but they are further and further apart and I struggle more and more while I have to watch the "young guns" with lots of ball speed fire missiles at the pocket that annihilate the pins. many night, I don't stand a chance. The powerful release I developed that once made others dread me has now become a millstone around my neck and is all but useless because modern balls don't need nearly that much release strength.

 I still average over 210-215, but am just as likely to shoot 500 as 700, and I never know what ball to take or what line to play. Last week, I shot 680 with a urethane hammer, this week it wouldn't hook 1/2 as much or finish hardly at all, while my reactives would hook past the headpin from outside and not even turn over from inside.

  After much frustration, I have now listed nearly all my stuff for sale. I picked up a used 14lb Hammer RAZYR from a friend and am going to use it I suppose. It is reactive, but the old style pancake will help me control the reaction, and the weight will help me generate enough speed, hopefully.

 Not that anyone would care, but I'm about ready to quit. I've loved the game, supported it as much as possible, recruited as many converts to the sport as I could, and always tried to help and encourage others, but I'm afraid the game has passed me by.
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Norm Duke was right

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