Monday February 12th

Monday was a much needed day off at home, made even better by the fact that my daughter Kaitlyn didn’t have school. We were able to spend the entire day together, which was something that we both sorely needed since we hadn’t seen each other in almost seven weeks. I got up Monday morning and took Trey to day care. After that, Kaitlyn and I started off on our day together with breakfast at her favorite “diner” ( my dad takes her to breakfast there all the time ). After that we ran errands all day, including a 1 hour and 40 minute oil change at Wal-Mart that cost me $220.00. You may ask “why so much ??? “. Well you spend almost 2 hours at Wal-Mart with a 9 year old girl and tell me how much did you get out of there spending. My point exactly ! We had lunch at Subway, then headed out to see “Night at the Museum”. She had already seen it, but like it so much that she wanted to see it again with me. She was right, that was a totally awesome movie for kids and adults both. We ran some more errands, spent some time at home and then went to dinner at her favorite Mexican restaurant, Cancun. After dinner I dropped her off at home and then headed back to pack and hit the road towards Council Bluffs. The weather was already getting bad ( sleet and snow mix ), so I decided to pack and load my truck, but wait until early morning to leave. My thinking was that the highway crews would have time to clear the snow that we were supposed to get.

Tuesday February 13th

I woke up Tuesday to the sight of about 8-10 inches of snow. The roads were a mess, so I knew I wouldn’t get to Council Bluffs in time to practice today. So I spent some time on the phone with Cingular getting my Palm phone working again, then hit the road around 11:30 or so. The roads were horrible and there was virtually no visibility. I plodded along doing 40-50 mph at the fastest until I finally hit a clear stretch on I-74 just north of Peoria. Finally when I hit I-80 heading west, the roads were clear and I was on my way to Council Bluffs. I got into town around 7:00 and went straight to the hotel. It ended up taking me an hour and a half longer than normal and it was a pretty hair-raising drive for a while. Kind of makes you wonder what the schedule makers were thinking when they scheduled us in the Midwest in mid-February. I live here and I could’ve told you that the weather pretty much sucks this time of year here. Anyway, I checked into the Days Inn ( Priceline.com ), unloaded my stuff, set up the DVD player and then headed over to Applebee’s for dinner with Couch and Rash. After dinner, I headed back to the hotel and watched “The Marine”. Most of you know that I’m a big WWE fan, so this movie was a no-brainer for me. Of course it was pretty unbelievable in some parts, but the action scenes were pretty good and Kelly Carlson is flat out HOT !!!

Wednesday February 14th

I went in to the bowl early Wednesday to watch the TQR. Scores were much higher than last week and the pattern was playing pretty much like it did last year here ( when I bowled horrible ). I sat and chatted with Liz while she was bowling until we had to leave around noon or so. Schlem, Chief and myself were scheduled to do a pro-shop visit at Tom Kelley’s Pro Shop in Omaha ( www.kelleysproshop.com ). We spent a few hours there doing a “meet and greet” and helping out with some questions for their customers. Their shop is top notch and their staff is as good as any. I want to thank Tom and his crew for inviting us in and making us feel welcome. I always enjoy getting to spend time doing that part of the business. After the visit, it was back to the bowl to prepare for the practice session. We had drilled a couple of balls ( replacements for existing balls ), so I had to work those out and change clothes. During practice I used pretty much everything that I had with me. I played in and I played out. I struck for a while from out, but once I moved in I couldn’t get the dime out to save my life. I bowled for the full hour and a half, finally giving up out of frustration. After practice, Schlem and I headed over to Pizza Hut to grab some dinner and discuss some strategies. My gameplan was to use some more pin-over balls for qualifying, trying to change my angles. This building has always been weird for me. I either strike non-stop, or not at all. There’s never been any in-between for me here. After dinner I headed back to the hotel to watch the UFC fight between Evan Tanner and David Louiseau. It was a pretty good fight, with Louiseau winning after landing several very nasty elbows to Tanner’s face. For some reason, I couldn’t get logged onto the internet with my new laptop top so I was unable to get any work done. With no computer my work has been piling up, e-mails, messages and my website reports. Guess I’ll have to wait until I get home.

Thursday February 15th

Rash and I headed to the bowl this morning in –5 degree temperatures, grabbed a little breakfast and then got ready to bowl. I was crossing with Brian Kretzer, Steve Jaros and Ryan Shafer ( possibly my best cross of the year ). Shafer is a blast to bowl with because you never know what he’s going to say or do. For those of you that don’t like Ryan, you just don’t know him. Yes, he’s opinionated and can come across as an ass….but he really is a great guy with a great sense of humor. I started around the track area, standing at 23 going through around 10 at the arrows with a Spitfire. I didn’t have the greatest look in the world and I was hoping that it would “come to me” eventually.

Thursday, February 15 -- Round of 64 Block 1

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Game 1 (  ) – 3-4-6-7-10 in the 1st, 10-pins in the 2nd, 5th, 6th and 7th, 2-10 in the 8th, 4-9 in the 10th. Carry was a problem for everybody, with 10-pins being left everywhere. The lanes kept getting tighter and I kept moving right. After the 2-10 in the 8th, I moved a little too much leaving a 4-9 in the 10th .
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Game 2 (   ) – 2-8-10 in the 1st, ring 10 in the 2nd, 4-7 in the 8th and another 4-9 in the 11th. After the 2-8-10 in the first, I switched to a shift. Things got better from there.
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Game 3 (   ) – 10-pins in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 7th and 8th, blower 7 in the 5th, 3-10 in the 2nd and a 3-6-7-10 in the 10th. This pair was pretty rough. We kept moving farther and farther left, all of us unable to strike. By the time we were done I was left of 15, after playing 5-6 on the pair before this one. As it turns out, this pair was like this before practice started.
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Game 4 (   ) – None off the right in the 1st, 10-pins in the 3rd and 4th and a 4-7-9 in the 6th. I tried a Special Agent in the first, going 17-18 to the gutter….but it obviously didn’t come off ! I went back to my shift and jumped out to 5-6 again making the spare. After that I was close for the rest of the game.
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Game 5 (   ) – 3-6 in the 1st, 10 pin in the 5th ( which I missed ), 4-pin in the 6th, 10-pin in the 7th, 4-pin in the 8th. Other than the mental lapse on the missed spare, this game and pair were pretty good. Just another case of not getting the ball to go through the pindeck the right way. I finally went to a Thunderstruck for the last 4 shots, and that seemed to help.
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Game 6 (   ) – Blower 7 in the 5th, ring-10 in the 7th and a solid 9 in the 10th. Eugene started on this pair, so I gambled and took a big step left, staying with the Thunderstruck. It was a good guess, since I drilled every shot this game. Too bad it was only for 238 !
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Game 7 (   ) – Ring 10 in the 2nd, 6-10 in the 3rd, ring-10 in the 9th. I stayed with the Thunderstruck, but moved a little farther left after the 6-10 in the 3rd. I would’ve loved to have had the shot in the 9th, but the carry was pretty rough all day so I pretty much expected as much. I finished the round at +133 and in 37th place, but I felt like I bowled much better than I scored. I just can’t seem to make the right ball choices and physical adjustments to strike as much as some of the other guys. It gets pretty frustrating going through rounds like this. My pocket % was very high, but my strike % wasn’t. Not a good combination. While I was bowling Schlem went to the truck and laid me out three balls for the evening round. We drilled a Fired-Up, a T-Road Pearl and another Shift ( all with layouts that we hadn’t used yet ). We were just searching for something to help….hoping to catch lightening in a bottle so to speak. After that we headed across the street to the mall to eat at the food court. Schlem and I ended up sitting with Devaney and Tomek for lunch, then O’Neill and Fagan joined us. We sat and talked for a while, wasting time until it was time to go back and get ready for the night block.

I worked out the three new balls, then headed out to the lanes to get ready. Before the round started, Greg Hoppe stopped me and gave me a pin for all of the guys to sign. Greg had contacted me a few weeks ago about a young man that had Leukemia, and he was gathering items for an auction to raise money for the young man. I told him that I would be happy to help, so I took the pin and went around gathering signatures from as many guys as I could. I only wish I could do more to help in situations like this. I have my own charity foundation, and I know how tough it can be to raise money for good causes. Hopefully they can raise a substantial amount of money and help this young man out as much as possible.

Once we got started in practice, it was pretty evident that the lanes weren’t playing the same as they did this morning. That makes three weeks in a row now that the lanes conditions totally flip-flopped from the morning round. It would be nice if somebody could figure this out, since the PBA is the “Pinnacle” of our sport. It would be nice to see an outside organization come in and take over the lane maintenance program. That way their sole job would be to focus on the lane pattern and how it plays on each week’s lane surface. I’m not saying that our laneman doesn’t know what he’s doing, I just don’t think that anybody really takes this problem as seriously as it should be taken. We constantly deal with the left/right issue ( with this week being a major problem again ), and the changes in the lane conditions from round to round. Somebody somewhere has to have a solution to this problem. Hopefully someday it will get figured out. The lanes hook earlier in the evening round, and the ball didn’t bounce off of the gutter as much as it did earlier. The balls we drilled earlier seemed to read the back of the pattern a little too strong, so they weren’t going to see much action. I started the night block standing at 20 and going through 7-8 at the arrows with my T-Struck.

Thursday, February 15 -- Round of 64 Block 2

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Game 1 (  ) – 10-pin in the 2nd, 7-pin in the 2nd, 4-pin in the 7th, 3-4-6-7 in the 8th, and a 10-pin in the 11th. I made one bad shot this game and paid dearly for it. Pretty typical game, the way things have been going lately.
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Game 2 (   ) – 2-pin in the 1st, 10-pin in the 2nd, 3-6-10 in the 4th, 10-pin in the 5th and 8th, 3-6 in the 9th ( which I chopped ). I started the game with my T-Struck, but it wouldn’t read the midlane. I went to a T-Road Pearl and it was better, just a little too strong on the back of the pattern and not very controllable.
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Game 3 (   ) – 4-pin in the 2nd, 6-9-10 in the 4th, 4-9 in the 6th, 4-pin in the 9th, 4-7-9 in the 11th. The left lane was hooking quite a bit more on this pair. I went back to a Shift for this game and fished non-stop, looking for something to get me going.
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Game 4 (   ) – 6-pin in the 1st, 2-8 in the 2nd, 4-pin in the 3rd, 2-10 in the 4th, 10-pin in the 5th, 2-pin in the 6th, 4-pin in the 7th. As you can see, this pair wasn’t much fun at all. I went through 5 balls during the first 7 frames before I finally moved in to around 15, throwing the last 5 to bail out the game. I never got this far left during the morning round, so why would I have guessed to move there now ?
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Game 5 (   ) – 2-8 in the 1st, 4-7 in the 2nd, 4-7 in the 3rd, 3-4-6-7 in the 4th, solid 7 in the 7th, 10-pin in the 9th and 10th. Since we were pretty much out of it by now, BK and I decided to bet a dollar on this game. I know, theres no gambling at Bushwood ( Caddyshack humor ), but we were trying to lighten the mood. Neither one of us had much this game, but we just kept moving farther and farther left. By the time we were done, I was going 20 to 5 with a shift. By the way, BK won the dollar.
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Game 6 (   ) – 2-10 in the 2nd, ring 10 in the 3rd. Once again, there was a dollar on the line for this game. The difference……I stopped BK this time. I moved a little farther left and found some serious push, allowing me to wheel a Shift to the gutter and watch it peel off. I didn’t quite get the one in the 2nd to the gutter and it left a 2-10, but other than that everyshot was high flush ( and yes, I won the dollar to get us back to even ).
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Game 7 (   ) – 4 pin in the 4th, 6-pin in the 10th. Game 6 got within sniffing distance of the number, but I knew that I would need a minimum of 279 to get there. I got off to a good start with the front three, but I caught the one in the 4th a little strong and left a 4-pin. I threw the next five, but I caught my heel on the ball return on the right lane in the 10th. Instead of stopping like I should have, I kept going and left an “off-balance” 6-pin. That was a stupid mistake on my part. As it turned out, a 279 would’ve missed by a pin so it didn’t really matter. I ended up the evening round at +122 and +255 for the event. I made up a lot of ground and picked up some extra points with those last two games, but that still wasn’t much consolation for missing yet another cut. Frustrated, I loaded my equipment and headed back to the hotel without eating dinner. Since Chad Kloss owed me a pro-am, I had him take mine this week so I could head home and spend the weekend with the kids again. I got back to the room, packed up my stuff and went to bed.

Friday February 16th

I got up Friday morning, took Sean to the bowl and headed home. It was a 6 ½ hour drive home and as soon as I got home I had to deal with the 12-14 inches of snow everywhere. So I grabbed a snow shovel and went at it !!!

This pretty much concludes this week’s report. I’m going to spend most of the weekend with the kids and I’ll be spending Monday getting caught up on Fan Club stuff, tax stuff and several other things that need to be done. The bad thing is that when I’m on the road, life doesn’t stand still at home. There are still a lot of household things that need to be done and I only have a limited time to do them. I’m leaving for Parkersburg, WV on Monday night ( weather permitting ) and I’ll be gone for two weeks. Then at least we have a week break, which I’m already looking forward to. Next week’s report will be coming to you from Parkersburg, WV where I’m hoping the weather will be much better than it is right now !!! Until then as always, Bowl up a Storm !!!