Last night I went to Strike with F1 & Ross, at F1’s suggestion and only after some amount of bitch-slapping Ross to fend off his depressing lack of motivation. In the end I think it was enjoyed by all though.
It was funny going in – they have bouncers out the front, as they have a full bar & pseudo-restaurant, of course, and upon our arrival there appeared to be a solid queue. Some twenty people. As it turns out, they were just hanging around smoking weed or somesuch, and after a few embarrassing moments of queuing in this non-existent queue, we went inside.
And there waited slightly over an hour to get a lane. Which we only got so quickly as it happened because the guy from the front desk randomly noticed we were still hanging around all that time later, in the bar bit. Apparently the plastic flashy-light reservation dongle they provide is merely for shits and giggles.
But that wasn’t really a big deal, because it was good time to chat, snarf mega spring rolls, and – in the case of F1 & Ross – get slightly tipsy. It was also a good amount of time for me to subtly and silently gloat about the fact that the place was packed, all 32 lanes plus bar plus pool tables, and largely with people within a decade of our own age. So this is where that entire demographic hides out in Cupertino. Ross had been solidly sceptical about my assertions aforehand that this would be the case.
The bowling itself went well… we rocked up, casually setup our console widget VCR tuner – what the heck kind of bowling alley still has you manually configure the lane?!? – and then each bowled either a strike or a 9/1 spare straight off. This greatly impressed the random group opposite us, a line of admiration brutally murdered when we managed to bowl collectively around two whole pins on the next frame. Yay!
At first I thought F1 had never significantly bowled before, judging by his lack of even vaguely proper technique, yet disturbingly in the second game he someone managed to turn this strange technique into a functional one, and proceeded to spank Ross & myself. In the third game he fell apart a bit, though, and I was able to eek back in another win. Thus, two out of three, whatever it is he might have scored at any point is irrelevant, as he utterly lost. :P
Ross spent half the time trying to play spin shots, as a learning experience, which largely ended as gutter balls, so he won honourable mention for most complete, consecutive misses. ;)
It was midnight or so by the time we wrapped up – we hadn’t gotten there ’till 9:30 – and so we all headed straight home. And I got to spend a little while trying to figure out why NSRunLoop hates me and has been slipping arsenic into my vegetables.
The tone of this entry makes a lot more sense if you’ve just watched the entire set, to date, of Yahtzee’s No Punctuation game reviews.
