St-t-t-trike!

Party- and bowling centre "De Kegel" in Amstelveen.
This is where we had to bowl today.

Hello everybody,
I've had a fine couple of days. Last school week was a rather busy and boring one, so I didn't really want to bother myself and you guys by writing a blog article about it. The only school thing that perhaps was worth mentioning was the Thursday Leerpraktijk class. During this class, I had a small presentation about Dalton (which went well, thank you very much) and the rest of the time in class I was messing about with one of my classmates, kind of pissing off the teacher (I had fun doing it though, it was a challenge to see how far I could go).
Furthermore, I managed to upload the new Jisezistic jargon, now containing more than 100 words and more explanation about telling time and another couple of things. You can find the updated jargon here. I've also been playing plenty of Halo 3 lately, and yesterday I heard Pikapan Voeby's voice for the first time in my life! He talks just like he types on WLM, brilliant! All of my current Halo 3 in-game video clips can be found here.

Anyway, what I mainly wanted to discuss was bowling today. Today we had NJTL, it's the same principle as previous year, but there was one slight difference: we have been put in one poule higher. After 4 hours of sleep I went out of bed at 8 o' clock in the morning and started eating breakfast and dressing. At exactly half past eight I was in front of my carpool when my driver and co-bowler (Koenn) showed up. Very tired I sat in the car, trying to relax and prepare for the worst, 'cause I honestly didn't feel very confident about us winning.
We arrived at just past 9 o' clock at the Amstelveen bowling centre and started checking out the bowling alley and everything around it. We dumped our stuff and noticed the bowling alley had a telly with Phineas and Ferb being broadcasted. Me, being still rather childish, started watching it, quickly followed by the co-bowler I just shared the carpool with. It was the episode in which Candace let them make some fancy fair ride in order to understand how the things they build keep disappearing. It was called 'don't even blink' and it was an episode I hadn't seen before. While watching the second Phineas and Ferb episode my other team mate joined us and we completed watching the second one together (partly anyway).
After some time it was time to prepare for bowling. I gave the money to our coach to pay for the league (10,50 Euros... the shizzle?!?), quickly completed watching the second episode, took off my orange sweater and headed for our lane. When we got the sign to start throwing, we did.

There was something new about the bowling alley though since the last time we saw it (previous year). Apparently the pins now had strings attached to them, for whatever reason. How little did we know this would change the entire experience of bowling today!

During the first real game you could feel there was lots of excitement going on between the teams. During the entire game it was a close call between us and the opposing team. Because of the strings holding the pins and the system working with it being in BETA mode, the whining mothers were always ready to complain when something that they thought wasn't fair happened.
In the middle of the game the lane of the opposing was acting a bit weird: instead of going to the first throw in the new turn, it skipped it and immediately went to the second throw. They had been warned for it (it happened to our lane a couple of minutes earlier), but weren't paying attention and had to re-throw that particular turn. During her re-throw, instead of the 9 she threw before, she threw 5 pins. The mothers started yelling they didn't agree on what was going on, while in fact, it was her own fault for not paying attention AND for failing taking advantage of the chance to improve her 9 by a strike. The mother disagreed so badly with the way things went, they just had to get the league organisor to express their feelings toward the situation. It started becoming a crowded and I started falsely crying to express how totally retarded I found the entire situation, and apparently while in the process of doing so, insulted one of our opponents when I said that the mothers were whining. I kind of apologized but still she didn't like me any more. At the end the 5 stayed there as the first throw, but when she only threw 3 her second throw in that turn, they changed it to 4, making it a total of 9 pins instead of the 8 she actually had. I didn't like it but was told not to care any more.
However, the excitement during the first match wasn't over just yet: the question who would win the match couldn't be answered until the very last throw by my team mate Steven. We were losing by 6 points in the last throw in the last frame. If he threw less than 6, we would've lost the points (scoring 399), if he threw 6 it would've been a tie at 400 and if he managed to throw 7 or more we would've had fun and win the points. Our entire team (that means including coaches and family that accompanied us) almost couldn't bare the fierce tension when Steven was preparing his throw. When the ball hit the lane I noticed it fell in the dead MIDDLE of the lane... and, because of that, I thought the ball would OVERSHOOT/SPIN the first AND second pin and score less than 6. The seconds between the ball hitting the lane and hitting the pins, probably were the slowest couple of seconds of the entire day. The ball kept rolling and rolling as we waited for the ball to overspin... and waited some more... and some more... until fractions before the ball hit the pins when we realised the ball had no spin whatsoever. The ball hit the second pin and Steven threw 7 points. We won the game by 1 point. The feeling we that rushed through all of us is probably something I'm not going to experience for quite some time again. Now it was time for some relaxing because it was our turn to go on a break.

After having recovered from the stress caused by the last couple of frames in the first game, we had to start with our second game. Honestly, I wasn't really confident that we would win. I mean, winning by 1 point is pure luck and looking at the how our opponents were throwing, we wouldn't have that kind of luck again. I can't remember a lot from the second game, except for the fact we didn't win - like I expected -, making the overall score 2/4 points. Now my confidence was a complete loss.

The third game started. The first thing that was funny about this game was in fact the first frames of both teams. The opposite team started throwing. The first of them threw a strike. It was my turn to throw, and guess what? I threw a strike too! They said something about copying them and their second girl walked up the approach. She threw a nine. It was now Koenn's turn to throw, and he threw a nine as well! This was getting a bit awkward now... Their second girl finished her turn and hit the only pin left and had a spare. Now guess what? So did Koenn! The crowd was starting to get a bit giggly now and their third girl stepped up and had a go. She had a bit of a slow start and threw an eight. Now I know you think you know what is going to happen now, and you're right: Steven threw an eight as well, and not just that, the exact SAME pins were left behind on both the lanes. The opposing team's third girl finished it off and so did Steven. The entire first frame was exactly the same on both lanes! Gosh if that is what is in stores for us this is going to be yet another close game... am I in the mood for that much tension?

Not done talking about that game yet, though! During the seventh frame or so, the scores were almost even when the opposing team missed a spare. I threw a VERY UNLUCKY 4,7,9,10-split (more difficult in real life than it looks in that picture!) on my first throw in the seventh frame. The entire audience noticed it and opinions were soon divided in two: my audience was like 'ah... bummer, can't be helped', while the audience of the opposing team was like 'that's fortunate for us...'. I, myself, was rather bummed when I saw the nasty split popping up. However, because we needed every point we could get to catch up with the opposing team (who had won the other two of its games) I wanted to get the most out of my 4,7,9,10-split. On my second throw I aimed for the 4 and 7 pins so I would at least get 2 pins out of 4.
I threw the ball... but when it hit the lane I noticed my aim was off and that my ball wouldn't even hit the 4-pin... I was sobbing a bit and kept looking at what happened. Indeed, the ball span past the 4-pin and barely hit the 7 pin, just like I expected. The 7 pin went flying behind the other pins from all the way from the left to the right. I had thrown one pin out of four, right? Or did I? Now normally if a pin flies through the cage, it doesn't mean anything special: the pin gets send flying and is collected in the cage, and you score only one point... but didn't I tell you about the strings the pins were attached to? Because these pins were wired, OUT OF NOWHERE we all saw the 9-pin fall. Apparently the wires got mangled up, making the pin fall out of the blue. At that point it was a bit of a "whatever"-moment, nothing real special since it happened before random pins fell because of the wires, until again, out of nowhere I saw both the 4 AND 10-pin fall as well! ALL the strings got tangled up with each other, making them all fall like in a magic trick! I had converted the 4,7,9,10-split! At the point of realization I turned around and yelled out of joy with my hands in front of my mouth out of disbelieve. I just couldn't believe it!
Apparently the entire audience was focused at my lane because suddenly everybody started clapping and yelling... I was the center of attention for a whole minute or so! I threw a once-in-a-lifetime spare (well not necessarily once in a lifetime, but once in a lifetime THAT WAY). It was a good tension breaker, but we still had some catching up to do.
Continuing with the game: Even this one was exciting until the very last frame. Both Koen and me did a good job: I threw 163 and Koen 167. Once again it was up to Steven to secure our win and finish the job. He had to throw at least a spare and something to secure our victory. During the last couple of shots it was dead-quiet in the audience. Even I held a moment of silence to make sure Steven could concentrate well! His first throw wasn't a strike, but at least pins remained that were doable to spare. He concentrated again for the second shot... and threw the spare! He had a total of 160 now. His final throw was another 7, so he ended up with 167 as well. We had a total of 497 (barely not touching the 500 border - which would add extra bragging rights) and won by about 12 points from our third opponents! This was going great!

Our last game was up against another team that hadn't lost that day before. They already collected a total of 6 points, while we only had 4. Because we looked at their scores in the games before they were our opponents, we weren't going to be surprised if we lost from them too... then again... we just won from another strong team, so perhaps we still had a chance?
During this game nothing really spectacular happened except for some "string"-only spares (the opposing team had more of them) and the fact I threw badly... however, I can tell you we WON that game as well, partly because Steven threw an amazing 191 game! We broke their winning spree! Hail us!

This was probably one of the most thrilling days of bowling I will have in quite some time and I'm NEVER going to forget about that 4,7,9,10-split and the way I converted it. I can tell you we were all really satisfied about the results of bowling today and are looking for the next time of NJTL.

Tomorrow we have another tournament going on with bowling, this however is local - meaning it's in our own bowling centre in my home town Seandamn. Can't wait to win!

Cheers and until next time,