In most weeks the day of the week that I look forward to the most are Thursdays because that is the day that the bowling league that I founded, named DUMBO here in Da Nang, Vietnam, meets up.
Ever since my bicycle accident that resulted in 4 broken bones I have been strongly advised by doctors to not engage in any physical activity that isn't absolutely necessary and even though I am stubborn, I have never faced a situation like this in my life and decided to take the doctors' orders seriously.
Therefore this is week number two where at our bowling outings I was just an observer and cheerleader and guess what? I still had a great time.
We did have one of the weakest turnouts in a while this past week though as our numbers have diminished from nearly 30 people down to 10. There are a lot of reasons why this has happened and only one of them is because of bicycle injury.
As an observer and photographer this time around I did start to notice the very wide variety of bowling releases that we have in our group and people who saw these in our group found them quite amusing.
This is our current champion and honestly, he really deserves it. You can see by his form that he genuinely knows what he is doing and according to him, he worked in a bowling alley in his youth and that's where he learned to bowl like this. He's very good but also beatable and that is why we let him stick around.
This guy is also one of our better bowlers but you will never see any professionals release like this. He says that he gets down close to the ground just before his release so that he can eyeball where the ball is going to go. As one of our more accurate bowlers, I think he is on to something although we are still waiting for the one day that he mistimes his release and then face-plants into the oil.
The Vietnamese girl on the end there has a similar bowling style and as luck would have it (or skill) she is also one of our more accurate bowlers. In situations involving just one pin standing, she is likely the most accurate out of all of us. Unfortunately for her she lacks the power necessary to cause much collision with the pins, so she doesn't get a lot of strikes. The guy in the foreground is our oldest bower and he has a spin on the ball that he claims is completely unintentional. Whatever works!
One of our few left-handed bowlers, this guy suffers from lack of consistency and will go from bowling 2 strikes in a row to throwing the next 3 in the gutter. He has the leg kick and the form I guess, but honestly, I have one of the strangest bowling techniques out of anyone in our group so I am not going to tell anyone that they are incorrect in how they are doing things.
This woman was recently promoted to the top-tier league in the past week and every single time she throws we are worried about her center of gravity. She is the boss of her own domain though, so we don't tell her to change it.
Almost everyone kicks their ball side leg up and back and there is a good reason why that is the case. For most people if you are trying to get a straight line on the ball, the only way you can do that is to get your own damn leg out of the way when you release. Go ahead and stand up and see what I am talking about. I do it too, but I do not leave my leg up and according to videos I have watched online my technique is wrong. But again, if it works, it cannot be wrong now, can it?
While it was an exciting round of bowling this past week, the two top championships that are pictured above stayed in the hands that they started in, with a guy we have named the "Norwegian silly-ninny" hanging on to the overall championship as well as the "gobbler" which is for getting 3 strikes in a row.
I hope to return to bowling next week but I am going to really take it easy. I haven't been spending all this time lying down over the past 20 days only to reverse it all by doing something stupid an unnecessary like playing a sport before my body is ready for it.
It's strange to think that bowling requires you to be in shape and honestly, it doesn't really and that is why professional bowlers often look like they just arrived from an all-you-can-eat buffet before the tournament. It does however, require your bones to be in order for the most part and while I do intend to try to play this upcoming Thursday, the moment I feel any pain I am going to stop.