The bad news is we got kicked out of Commack and we now bowl in Smithtown.  That is bad for a few reasons:

1. We lost a few teams who didn’t want to move so now we are a smaller league
2. Smithtown is an older house and the scoring computers are ancient compared to Commack
3. It turned a 30 minute drive into a 40 minute drive for me

The good news is I seem to bowl pretty well on the oil pattern they use – last week was the pre season meeting.  They gave us two hours free after the meeting to bowl.  I bowled two games without practice and still had a series of 460+.  Last night was week one of the season and I did even better.  Below is the three games I bowled:

Here are some firsts for me that happened last night:

1. First Andy Varipapa 300.  An Andy Varipapa 300 is 12 strikes in a row over two games.  The 11 strikes to end game 2 followed by 1 more to start game 3 was the first time I ever strung 12 strikes in a row period.  I didn’t throw a strike in the last ball of practice before my 298 and after my other 290 I started the next game with a spare.
2. First clean series.  A clean game is when you only throw strikes or spares, not counting fill shots – the 7 count to end game one was a fill shot.  A clean series is when all the games in the series are clean games.
3. New high series.  I threw a 772 Series.  My previous high series was a 727.
4. First Negative handicap.  This league has us establish our average after bowling 1 week.  So instead of using my 204 book average and the 12 pins of handicap that go along with it next week I’ll have a 257 average and the -29 pins of handicap that go along with it.