For those of you just joining us, DUMBO is our 10-pin bowling league in Da Nang, Vietnam. What DUMBO actually stands for is a topic of some debate but I know the "D" stands for DaNang and the "BO" stands for Bowling Organization. Different people have different ideas of what the "UM" stands for. It doesn't really matter.
We have had a drop off in attendance lately because of people leaving the country due to visa issues or a multitude of other reasons. A year or two ago it was so popular that we started to have to restrict the amount of people that were allowed to attend because there isn't enough lanes at our bowling alley. So having 20 people attend yesterday was a nice change of pace and it felt good. There were 4 newcomers and a couple of returnees so it was a great day out.
One of the most sought after awards is there in the foreground and it is known as the "gobbler." Anyone at any time is eligible for this award and the only thing you have to do is get a paltry 3 strikes in a row. This is much easier said than done though and in the past 2 weeks we have not had ANYONE get 3 in a row. This was after the two weeks prior to that the gobbler changed hands 4 times during each event.
Early in the first game out of two yours truly managed to break the curse and I got 3 strikes in a row.
A mere one minute later the person that I had just taken the award from nearly took it right back from me and this has happened in the past. It's pretty funny when it does happen because we have had multiple gobbler champions that needed to be very fast in taking a photo with the gobbler in hand because minutes later they would lose it to someone else.
I did not end the day with the gobbler award because later in the same 1st game another person got a turkey and took it off of me. Nobody ever gets upset about this happening and it is just a normal part of our celebrating of anyone who does well. That's just the way that we are.
The person who took it from me appeared as though he was going to keep it for the week but in the very last 4 frames of game two, a newcomer who has never been bowling with us got a turkey at the last minute. It's always quite exciting when this happens and it is especially nice when it is from a person who has never been bowling with us before. He is NOT a great bowler either, lightning just strikes every now and again.
Out of the 20 people attending there was a total of 46 strikes in the group which might be a record for us but we aren't sure about that because we only recently started tracking this data. There were also 7 people who bowled double strikes, but failed on the 3rd roll for the gobbler.
It was a fantastic day and the after-party was wonderful as well because we went to a new place that did a free BBQ for us and also gave us 100,000 VND vouchers as awards that we could give out as we saw fit. We decided to have a massive wheel spun in an app that randomly decides a winner for one of the vouchers and anyone who got a strike at all during the entire day (which was most of the people) was in that wheel. There was only one winner though.
The other award went to whoever got the lowest score of the day and this was just because we are a silly bunch. The lowest score was a mere 54 points. So let that be evidence of what I have said many times before. If you are in the area and aren't coming to these events because you think everyone is going to be really good, know that they aren't. I think that most people could probably bowl better than 54 if they were blindfolded and for the woman that got the 54, we have suggested that she try exactly that.
Here's a cute picture of Nadi to wrap things up.
