Bowling is easy. It requires what all other activities do when you are trying to improve and that’s doing it often. I’ve participated in many different sports over my life and they are based off of how skilled I am, at whatever age I am.

• From elementary school through middle school, I enjoyed basketball. I went to all the camps and was a pretty damn good little kid (proof here). Then I got cut from the 7th grade basketball team because I hadn’t hit puberty yet and that was the end of my career.
• From middle school to high school I played a lot of baseball. I was still small for my age and had no power but we practiced a ton and I was a decent 2nd baseman.
• In high school I realized the only sport I could successfully play was Cross Country and Track and Field. I had varsity letters in 10 of the 12 seasons. Being good at running only requires doing it all the time. Ian McGrath was a good runner…

Once you get past high school you do whatever the hell you want. I’ve been golfing since the age of 12 and at various points of my life I’ve tried to develop my skills. I’ve had a few seasons where I’ve been mid 80’s consistently but have never broke through. Now I’ve pretty much reasoned that as long as I have a job, I won’t have enough time to practice golf to be a scratch golfer.  Which brings me to bowling.

Bowling Career

The “sport” that allows you to drink beer and compete. The sport that has no variation aside from the amount of oil on the lane. The sport that once you’ve done it enough, it becomes more of a mind game than a game of physicality. A sport that is easy to get better at with practice.

This is a screenshot of our team in our league (we are Snakes Strike Back):

I started competitive bowling in Jan of ’16 averaging 165-170 pins through my first 5 weeks. I’ve risen my average by 20+ pins after 8 months of bowling “seriously”. This past week I rolled the highest series of my life, 861, which is a 225+ average. I got lucky multiple times and wouldn’t expect consistent performance like this but it shows that I’ve struck a pretty high ceiling. Our team stats below:

From Gutter to Glory

I’d estimate that I’ve bowled at least once a week for the past 30 weeks. Now raising an average from 190 to 220 may take another year, who knows. Adjusting in bowling, and not just adjusting but knowing when and how to do it quickly, is a major skill. Throwing the ball down the lane only requires muscle memory. There is some luck involved in hitting the pins but less can go wrong when compared to other games. Watching your ball, where it strikes, and then doing it better is all you need. Once you play for 8 months straight, you start getting better at it.

Would I be making this post if I didn’t just roll a 681 series? No. Obviously you can’t claim to be good at a certain game by doing well for 1 week. However, I’ve talked with people who are good bowlers and they claim that breaking through in bowling is mainly about believing that you can break through.

So this year’s game is bowling and I’ve been enjoying it. Socializing with other bowlers, although not the most athletic or motivated crew, is fun for all. The pressure in the last frames is also a feeling you don’t get from other sports. For my early 30’s, I found a “sport” I like. It’s an old man sport.

No real point to this post other than I’ll hopefully post again when I hit a 700 series which I’m hoping won’t be a year from now.

• I Haven’t Felt Like It – If you don’t have any reasonably good ideas, it’s not fun to blog. It could be argued that most of my ideas aren’t fantastic, but producing shit is bad for all parties.
• It’s Been Busy At Work – I’m sure people out there think I don’t do much, and there are times when I blog at work, but lately it’s been frantic and I haven’t been able to squeeze in blogging.
• The Weekend Knocked Me Down – Nothing out of the ordinary but I rolled a ton of games on Saturday and played an early round of golf on Sunday and I was pretty much zapped of all energy. Obviously I was drinking through it which can’t be blamed on the activities.
• Vita-Coco Cleanse – Yesterday I drank 2 of the Vita-Coco’s which are a laxative if you consume to much. Much to my surprise, I urinated out of my butt for 10 minutes straight. This was a blog worthy topic but is only getting a bullet.
• Football is Almost Here – You’ll start getting my fantasy football blogs in the next few days. I intend to spend this next weekend preparing for the drafts and I’m sure I’ll sprinkle my knowledge on my readers. I’d guess I devote 5 hours a week to research which cuts into blogging time.
• Highest Series of My Life – Last night in bowling I rolled a 680+ series. This has nothing to do with my not blogging but since it’s my blog, I get to brag. Sam was over 600, Jordan was close, and Evan had more 9 spares than I could count.

The last few days have been borderline miserable with regards to performance for me. I can’t blame the shakes or the spins because I felt perfectly fine. I’d even say I felt good. Let’s recap:

Golf

• Starting with hole #5 at Raven’s Claw, I put a drive OB and then when I prepared a lob shot (which I hit flawlessly about 6 times my previous round), sent one flying over the green. I muffed a chip, muffed a chip, muffed a putt, muffed a putt, and finished with a 10.
• Hole #11 continued the terror as I hit a hooking 4 iron that improbably hit a cart path and bounced 75 yards into the opposing hole’s fairway. As I stood in the fairway rushing my shot as the people in front of us were looking to tee-off, I duffed one into the cabbage. After a drop in a horrible position, I cranked one out to the right in another awful spot. I then managed a blind shot to off the green, muffed a chip, and patented 3 putt for a 9.
• I used my putter 3 times on 12 holes. That’s 36 strokes with my putter PLUS 2 more on the other 5 holes and 1 one putt. That’s 47 strokes using my putter.

Bowling

• In Game 6 of a tie-break game with Sam, I came up lame bowling a 170 to his 212 to lose. This shouldn’t happen.
• In Game 1 of a league match all I had to do was hit the 10 pin to virtually win the game as our anchor bowler. I missed it by what was literally 2 mm and cost us the first game.
• I finished the series with a score that barely broke 500 which is a goddamn embarrassment. It was the right lane. Unless you string together strikes in bowling you don’t score. In the first game I had 5 strikes on the left lane and 3 spares and 2 opens on the right. It continued the remainder of the time as I didn’t have 2 strikes in a row all night. What the fucking fuck.

There are no excuses. On Saturday Bud was saying how he lost every competition he played whether it be 3 pointers, can jam, or bags. I tried to cajole him by saying “there, there” but when it happens to you it makes you wonder what the fuck is going on. Combine this with the phone at our business hasn’t rung in 2 days and the world is turned upside down. I’m still hanging in there but none too pleased.

To quote Hozier, I had a weekend like (I imagine) real people do.

Jeff and I went golfing after work on Friday and I managed to not have a single beer on the course. We had a splendid time golfing with Louis and I went home getting ready for a race the next day.

I woke up at 7am and picked up Laura to go home to meet Samuel. Sam and I went to the race together and met up with Chad and Nikki. I did the 8k while Sam did the 5k and we both ended up winning our races. NBD. We both won by 2 minutes.

After that our family held a BBQ where we can jammed, corn holed, 3 point shot out, and had a genuinely all around good time. I managed to drink a mere 5 beers during the 8 or so hours and felt great going to sleep at midnight.

The group managed a -1 for the hole.

I woke up at 5:30 and drove to play golf with Bud, Adam, and Watkins. We had no 90’s in the group and I manged a 102 to give you an idea of what an outlier looks like. I actually thought I played OK aside from some short game woes and blow up holes. Watkins 81 from the blues at Raven’s Claw won but Adam had a 2 footer away from an ace and Bud was all around good. Fun time.

That leaves me here at 12:40 when I sometimes am waking up for a Sunday. I feel good and am going to eat some food, go for a run, and maybe bowling later. Good times.

I have about 10 ideas for posts and they are all shitty so they don’t warrant their own post. This leaves me with a lot of ideas that I’m going to use bullet points because people love bullets.

• I enjoy John Oliver and dislike Bill Simmons. Oliver is a spark plug and Simmons is a glass of water. I look forward to John Oliver’s recap of relevant topics and I only watched the Ben Aflac interview and Aaron Rodger’s and I fell asleep half way through. Oliver makes boring topics interesting and vice versa for Simmons. What the fuck was Simmons wearing?
• I’ve been listening to the top 45 on Sirius the past 2 weekends and hate to admit that I enjoy some pop. Charlie Puth and Selenies with “We Don’t Talk Anymore” and Timeflies “Once in a While” have made my playlist.  I like these songs but the catch is too…catchy, which makes them last about a week or two. I also envision Selena singing those hot lyrics to me as I let her know “we don’t talk anymore.”
• Our bowling squad had the best night of the season tonight and only managed a 2-2. Evan rolled some 226 heat with his high game of the year and Sam followed with a 244 which helped but wasn’t enough to offset some clunkers. We are middle of the pack after the 0-4 last week but we’re making head way. It sucks when the averages go up and you don’t win many games. I rolled a nice 600+ series and even left some easy pins on the table so I’m pleased.
• I’ve been enjoying golf even though I’m not exactly scoring. Same issue with not practicing enough to elevate my game. The pars are coming but I’m having far too many blow up holes. I had 7 pars on Saturday but instead of combining that with bogey’s, I’m tossing in many doubles and triples. It’s only July so I’m expecting to post some better rounds in August now that I’m warmed up and feeling good.
• 

  Rounders Knish and The Big Lebowski’s Jesus

  The Night Of is a worthwhile TV show. Boggs is coming off as the most watchable character with Turtorro not far behind. The portrayal of the criminal justice system seems quite lifelike. Danny McBride in Vice Principals is entertaining but the Walter Goggins as Russell steals the show. It’s not a good show but I’ll laugh through it.

So that’s all I got. I’ll try to run some posts together but I’ve been struggling with good content. Til next time.

I’ll mention every time I write that I don’t like recapping weekends. I get the feeling though that the people who are with me on these destinations enjoy the write ups so I’ll once again concede to giving the people what they want.

Shee and I drove up to Cape May on Thursday morning to play a round of golf. We met up with CK4 and arrived 10 minutes before our tee time. We were paired up with a degenerate named Ron for our round. I’m not going to go in great detail about the round but my par on 2 made Shee chug his beer and seeing a red belly turtle on 17 was memorable. No one played particularly well but a good time was had.

After the round we drank some Gatorade and Tito’s on the beach as the sun set. I was pretty buzzed at this point and this night sort of blurred by for me. We went to a bar called Elaine’s and some talking happened. I remember slamming some street signs, Adam DeMamp style, to end the night.

The next day started with a brunch at Harry’s and some beach. 2 highlights of the afternoon were, “how’s the project going” and Jordan’s hat getting knocked off at sea. The Baker wedding took place in the afternoon and I’ll spare the details except that it was a wedding.

The reception followed shortly after and the Southern Mansion was a good host. We ate, drank, and danced into the night and ended up at the Boiler Room in Congress Hall. I mistakenly gave Baker a RB&V instead of a water so he wasn’t completely dry all weekend. I think everyone had a good time.

The next day brought about the mini-golf competition which was won by CK4. Adam Van De Velde put up a 4 on 18 to lose the whole she-bang. This day was going to get as crazier, if not crazier, than past days as we went to Carney’s immediately following golf for some Fireball shots. Beach time followed after and then there was a nice dinner hosted by the Baker / Gemgnani family.

The dinner followed with a trip back to Carney’s where a live band played to a drunk crowd. Everyone survived the weekend (cousin Tim lost his phone and uncle Tim stole the show) so I would consider the weekend in Cape May a great success. Congrats to Matt and Leah for a long and prosperous future.

I haven’t blogged for 5 days and that’s not what I’m about. Every single time you check rnningfool.com, I’d like there to be an update. Now that isn’t possible if you check every hour like I’m sure some of you cube monkeys do. I know my audience and you will only plug in my website when you’re really bored and need a dose of separation from the real world. This is why I know there is a disappointment when you visit and see the same amazing post you already read. Fortunately there is a reason for this.

The main reason is that everyone cares mostly about themselves. This is not an opinion, it’s fact. Your world is I. Everyone’s world is I and it’s important not to forget that. This is why I don’t write recaps of my life for the last 5 days while I haven’t been blogging. I’ve learned that YOU don’t care about ME. So unless what I’m doing involves YOU, there’s no point of blogging about it. Since I’m trying to grow a base of people who like to read what I write, I don’t write about ME.

Haven’t seen the J-Train in 5 years.

Notice my post about my 33 size pants got 7 comments. Why? Because everyone wears pants. Not everyone goes with me to casino’s and golfing. That’s why I’m not going to write about my 2 golf shots on par 3’s in the past 2 days where one was 12 inches and the other was 6 inches from a hole in one. I just won’t do it. I’m certainly not going to write about the 1k I won from Valley Forge Casino gambling from midnight to 4 in the morning. Sure it’s remarkable but who doesn’t win every time they go to the casino? I also didn’t video tape my brother running a 4:37 mile at the tender age of 24 to show how our family never quits making efforts at improving. I also didn’t see the J-train on the Spirit of Philadelphia to take this pic.

At this point you get my drift of how I secretly disguised this post to not write about myself and then did so at every point possible. I’m tricky like that. Even still, the lack of blogging will continue as I’ll be away on Thursday and then gone for most of the weekend at a wedding. I’ll try to squeeze in a few posts in the meantime so the well doesn’t run dry.