Bowling and more...

Monday was daddy/daughter spring break outing day.  We went to Bryant Lake Bowl for breakfast/lunch with Grandpa and the Great Uncle (Eryn's, not mine) and then stayed to bowl two lanes.

We had them all to ourselves for most our time there.  Not a lot of people bringing their kids to bowl at noon, although a mom and her two kids did show up about mid way through our second game.



Eryn was very consistent.  38 both games.  She was a little perturbed that she guttered the last few frames of the second game after tying her score from the first game. But not perturbed enough for a third game.


We did not loft the ball.  It was nothing like the night Kyle and I were there and the hipsters were running wild.


See?  Smooth release.


I scored something like a 125 and a 175.  Not bad - that second score is above my average when I was a league bowler.  I like the Bryant-Lake lanes.  They always seem fairly flat to me - lot a not of deviation ball to ball.  Of course, maybe it's all sorts of deviant and just perfectly offsets my own crappy throws.


Here's at least a little bit of a loft.  I was trying to catch her at it so I could report her to the waitress.


Eryn learned to score, although as you can see, she feels she needs to show her work.


After bowling, we went to Particle Fever.  I took us to the Lagoon instead of the Edina, which wasn't a good plan.  But fortunately, we were 45 minutes early, so we had lots of time to get to Edina.  The movie was excellent - lots of first person interviews with folks who had worked (work) on the Large Hadron Collider and their search for the Higgs Boson and hope that when they found it the boson would be light enough to allow them to pursue super-symmetry rather than a multiverse, as a multiverse can preclude additional particles.  I liked the quote, and I paraphrase, "Moving from failure to failure without a diminishment in enthusiasm is one definition of success."  Our co-watchers were all retired guys catching an afternoon movie.  The pair of them behind us were discussing their own physics work back in the day.

Eryn was impressed with the escalator at the Edina Theater.  I'd forgotten it's so big for what seems like a small (four screen) theater.  It goes up two floors without a break and looks like it's been misplaced from the London Tube.

Here's a big head Eryn wouldn't let me take her picture with from the Lagoon, which isn't where we went.  So nothing at all to do with the events on Monday other than to show we were lost and it cost us $1.50 to be lost in the parking lot.  One good thing is that I saw Origami has a store right there behind the Lagoon.  I'm going to have to figure out hours.


We finished off our popcorn and chocolate with a visit to The Edina Creamery.  So we had sports, fine dining, and brain activities all in the same day.  A good Spring Break day, even if it wasn't traveling someplace warm.

Bowling

On day two of single parenthood I felt it was time to teach Eryn how to be a man - I took her bowling. Yeah, yeah...lots of women bowl, I know. But they only do it to meet men in sleeveless, stained t-shirts with pitchers of Bud, a beer belly, and one oversized arm. It's the sex appeal and the sixteen-pound balls.

Eryn and I were just there to have fun, although I explained to her how I used to bowl league in my high school and college days and was overly competitive in my time. I didn't tell her about the lucky crystal doorknob I hauled to all my bowling matches that I got from backstage in the props department while working one and three act plays. No sense in burdening her with my early superstitious nature. She's a better trooper than I am. Two games of bowling and she wasn't complaining or slowing down. Me, on the other arm... Exactly. My arm hurt. Figures. Did you know that in a little more than a year I won't be able to donate sperm any more because of my age? It's all downhill from here on out.

Here's Eryn wondering why there are so many pins left up. And what's with the red pin...that's distracting, even if you can win a case of Mountain Dew for knocking down a set with the red pin in the front. I think that's a bit of a con. If you can get a strike, and then drink a case of Mountain Dew, you're going to be riding the high into another five or six games of bowling. That's going to cost you, even on $1 lane nights.


6 pounds? No problem. Sometimes she threw the 9 pound ball. Sometimes the 6 pound ball got stuck part way down the lane and she wanted to throw the 9 pound ball at it. I drew the line at ball knocking. People get hurt that way. Eryn was impressed when the teenager next to us threw his ball, hit the sweeper, and bounced it back halfway down the aisle. She wondered if that was part of the game.


Eryn's first bowling score. She figured out splits while we were there and how they were marked and that you couldn't really get all the pins if there was a split unless you knew some trick. I explained that with the bumpers up, there were additional tricks you could employ if you were willing to risk the ire of the bowling lane owner.


If pictures aren't enough, there's video, with some kickin' 80's background music, just like there should be while bowling. None of that lameoid techno, glow-in-the-dark crap for us - old school all the way. But that's because I didn't tell her the techno, glow-in-the-dark thing existed on Sundays, or I'm sure I'd be back immediately. I think this gave us a chance to focus on her basic skills - spin, loft, whether the bowling ball with the skull in it really improves your game. Speaking of which, Eryn noticed the silhouette of the lady bowling that showed her doing the classic bowling pose, one leg slicing out behind the other for balance. So she tried to mimic it, which involved putting one leg in front of the other in much the same way, but backwards, and then lobbing the ball about three feet straight up and out. It didn't go very far after that, but it was funny as hell when it was obvious she wasn't going to end up with a concussion.