Last night I pulled a choke in the last frame of a bowling match that was unthinkable. I’m talking 99%. Vegas would have won billions by all the people who would have been looking to make easy money. Before I tell the tale, I want to preface it with a post idea I was going to write about the evening before I bowled.

On Monday night I rolled a 580 series which was the high of my life. The lanes at South Bowl are consistent and I actually started to feel like I was becoming a better bowler. This in tune with some of the other events of my life had me thinking that I was really starting to excel in various areas not only dedicated to sports. I felt like when I was performing virtually any task, even one as simple as an interaction with another person, better than “normal” because my experience in general life was making me better at it. This had me thinking that I was going to write a post about how the older you get, the better you get. What happened last night happened for a reason. A humbling reason.

It was the 10th frame and our team was down by 20 or so pins and I was coming off a mark so it was even less. It was me against the Big Cheeese and he elected to go first. He threw a ball that left 2 pins in the center of the lane and I threw a ball that missed the pocket to leave the 3 pins which I think were the 3,5,8. Big Cheese missed his shot and it was up to me. I rolled a nice ball that midway down the lane I could tell was going to pick it up. It did. That brought the team score to 627 to 628. I needed 2 pins to win. I probably wouldn’t be writing this post if the outcome was different but the reality was I picked up 1 single pin to tie and we lost in the tiebreaker. To give some thought into how it happened I will do with pleasure.

I’ve been the anchor for months now and have had mixed results. Last week I needed 7 in the 10th and rolled a strike. I’ve lost to some better bowlers but have pretty much held my own. I’d give my win loss in the 10th at 65/35. There were definitely times where pressure got to me and I rolled a shitty shot. However, in recent times after going through that feeling on multiple occasions, I was getting better at just rolling a good ball. I take us back to last night where all I had to do was hit 1 pin and realized where I went wrong. My first thought was that I couldn’t possibly lose unless I threw the ball in the gutter which was only possible on the right side. This was a mistake because it’s a type of shot that I virtually never throw on my first ball. I had full confidence and didn’t think about the shot much because there was no way to fuck it up. I stayed so far out of the right hand side that the ball hit the little oil in the middle of the lane and started curling immediately where the lane had no oil to the left. I watched in horror as it dinked the 7 pin.

I learned a few ideas last night though that will make me better for it. As a metaphor for life, you can’t think something is a guarantee. It promotes a cocky mindset and when you roll a 1 in the 10th, you know there is room for improvement. As much embarrassment as there is when 40 (39+Steve) people watch you roll a 1, it makes you a better bowler and hungrier to improve. This is another learning experience and after getting through not feeling pressure to roll in the 10th, I learned that although you can’t overthink shots, you also can’t under think shots.

This title is much less aggressive than what I was going to name it which only Sam and Rock would know. Be thankful I didn’t but know it was a good title although slightly racist and inappropriate. Ask me in person and I’ll tell you.

I’ve been to Chicago a few times but never to only get drunk and watch college basketball. Sam and I got there around 5 and immediately went to Timothy O’Tooles to watch the basketball games. Little Rock overcoming Purdue in the high altitude got us started off on the right foot but we ended up on the left. Sam buying a Magners, “the beer” in a different type of can, was humorous as I knew he was going to do it when he asked me if I saw the other type of beer in the tub.

After that we ate some local food, played some pool, and met up with the Rock who is the 3rd member of our group. It was his birthday and neither Sam or I knew which I realized the day after. Whoopsie. We called Thursday an early night with Sam seemingly falling asleep at the bar.

Friday we woke up relatively early and ate breakfast before a rapper on the street called Sam a “handsome mutherfucker”. He said to pay him what his rhymes were worth and I gave him a dollar. We visited the Bean and the Pier before going to Joe’s to watch the 11:15am games. Joes was ho-hum and we went to Wrigleyville after to bar hop. After some hopping we went up to the 96th floor of the Hancock tower to have an expensive drink and watch the clouds. We ate dinner at Melnicks where conversation headed into the downfall of society. The night proceeded into the Hubbard Inn where Sam had a U of Cincinnati girl flip him off for dissing her squard. Sam and I went to Howl at the Moon which was worse than the one in Philly to cap off our night.

The next day Norman? started us heading to the Flagship which I’d rate as my highlight. The bartenders were friendly and the atmosphere was great to watch a game. DJ on point too. Sam and I were aggressively drinking as I an-hero’d about 6 beers and 3 shots. We left while it was still light out but I have no idea the time. The nutjob Uber driver gave us some good tips while I tindered my way into embarrassment. We went to Gibson’s for a drink and then the Dinosaur. At this point my day starts getting a little black….

…..and then I woke up. Sunday we didn’t have a flight until 5pm which Sam and I barely made. All in all it was a great trip that involved betting on about 20 basketball games and drinking about 50 beers. No one got mad at each other and it was friendly and fun the entire time. Til next time.

Lot’s of events in my last few days that I’m not sure how to tackle all the info. I’m going to break it up into segments.

Saturday Bar Crawl

I started at 11am and went too hard, too early and was stumbling home at 5pm. 2 Fat Tires before breakfast, a Sazerac at breakfast, a hard cider and Flying Fish IPA at the Firehouse, Union Jack IPA at Rembrandts, Racer 5 at Urban Saloon, 1 more beer I can’t recollect and then 2 shots of whiskey is where I stopped remembering. I never stood a chance with the setup. What I should have done was ate an early breakfast and then ate lunch at 12 instead of brunch at 11. Doomed to fail from the start and I’m happy I safely completed the day.

Sunday Bowling and Poker

Weens showed up to bowling practice in bad shape. It was him and I and we lost to Evan and Sam in a 2v2. I pounded a pitcher by myself while everyone else was re-hydrating. I was off of 16 hours of sleep so I felt ok. After bowling Evan and I went to play some poker. I played 1-2 and had a few notable hands.

I called a raise with Q 10 and the flop came JK2. I checked, Irish bro checks, a bro bet 15, I called, Irish popped to 30, call, call. Brilliant Ace on the turn. I masterfully check, Irish goes all in for 100+ and I call and get it in having my opponent drawing dead.

I was dealt KK and called 15 not to lead on that I had a huge hand. A new player in seat 4 makes it 55, 2 guys call, and so do I. In hindsight I probably should have raised AI PF but I had 600 in front of me and didn’t want to run flat into AA. The flop comes Q72. Great flop for KK in my mind. The first player makes it 75 and has about 65 behind. My gut told me he had QQ, and the guy behind me had AA. With 200+ in the pot I couldn’t fold to the 75 bet even knowing that the guy behind me was going to push if he had me beat. I called (once again should have pushed) and shockingly the guy next to me CALLS the 75 too and I thought I was toast at this point and was ready to lose the money. The turn wasn’t a scare card and player 1 bets his last 65 which I begrudgingly call and the other guy folds saying he had JJ. I scooped the pot having no clue what the other guy had but didn’t really care. I played a little while longer hitting everything under the sun but wasn’t getting paid off because I had a 900 in front of me. I walked away with a nice $600 profit and decided to play a tournament.

Sunday Sugarhouse Tournament

I joined an $85 tournament in the first level because I think it’s easy to get chips against horrible players rather than join late and push fold. I played incredibly tight to start and watched maniac after maniac push with bottom pair and flush draws. I knew my time would come. At the 50/100 level (starting stack is 12k) I made it 250 from the button with A8 suited. The flop came 679. I think it checked around and the turn was a 5. I bet 2,500 and a guy pushed 8k into me which I gladly called and beat his pair of 6’s to double up which was crucial.

The next few levels went by with little action from me before we got to push fold mode. With a mere 1 double up I got to the final table (started with 30 players). Blinds probably got to around 500/1000 and I was down to 12k. I pushed A6 suited and doubled up against 55 which was a huge boost. Next level I pushed AK and got called by 88 and doubled up to about 40k. This got me down to about 5 players and I started getting short again. I was stealing very infrequently (I also wasn’t picking up hands) so I was getting respect and not getting called light. With 4 left, I made a call on a maniac trying to steal my button with KQ and had him dominated against KT. I won and then called the 3rd place guy with A9 when he had 83 and was down to heads up. I had about 40-50k and the other guy had 260k and I declined any deal. We played heads up and I won a nice hand with A8 vs his K8 and then finished him off with KJ vs his A high for a $1,044 dollar win.

The Work Day From Hell

The tournament ended at around 1am on Sunday night and I had been drinking beer throughout. I woke up on Monday feeling like death. I went to work to find that my dad had inadvertently upgraded to Windows 10. This messed with some of the security features and the accounting software and prevented me from printing on networked computer. This had me on support calls for most of the day trying to figure the problem out. In the meantime I was getting phone calls from the worst kind of customers to go along with my body feeling like a turd. I was here until the last possible minute with people looking for me to next day air them shipments and the like. It was seriously one of the worst days of my existence.

Snakes on a Lane vs Strike You

I’m going to add some further info to Sam’s post about our bowling match last night. Our record is 16-12 in 6th place and Strike You is 17-11 in 3rd place. Their team 4player team avg is 783 to our 643. With the people who rolled, we were getting 92 pins. Sam recapped the games fine but I have a few more points to add. They definitely dominated the warm up time. Trevor also shot the 10 pin on his first ball and then threw a strike ball during warm up. They will hit some splits but they rarely missed a single pin which is where we still struggle. I had at least 1 blown 10 pin and 2, maybe 3, 7 pin misses. I also think their experience in late games helps as their anchor was big at the end of games, specifically rolling strikes into the 10th. Either way I think it was a big confidence booster to our team that we can hang with the best bowlers in the league.