Duckpin bowling

On Saturday, Greg suggested to go bowling and four of us, including Vladimir and Djiana went to AMF Pikesville Lanes.

Upon entering the premise, I was glad that I did not smell cigarette smoke since lighting was banned. I hate to breathe second-hand smoke! I also noticed that there were a lot of boys and men wearing yarmlkes on their heads and dressed in white shirts and dark pants. This is no surprise since Pikesville has a large community of Jews. The head gear reminds Jews of God living in heaven above and they shows their respect to the divine presence by wearing a cap at all times.

Families with young kids, dating couples and bowling buddies were having fun bowling. We each paid $16 for unlimited games till closing time. At 10pm, lights went out and music came on like in the movies.

When we went to our lane, I noticed that the bowling balls were smaller than average size balls but slightly bigger than a shot put ball with no holes for inserting fingers. The pins were also smaller than usual and the lanes were shorter. I wondered why we were given a piece of paper when we collected our bowling shoes. I realized that it was used to record our results manually! There was no screen announcing the results. The best of all, we had to push a button every time to swipe and replace the pins. Compared with Ten-pin bowling, bowlers were allowed three shots per frame, rather than two.

While writing this post, I did some researching and found out that what we played was actually called Duckpin bowling. The ball was lighter which I played to my advantage by using brute force to knock down the pins but was ungraceful at my lofting. I scored the highest for two games and tied for one. The good thing about Duckpin bowling is that I do not suffer from arm aches the next day from throwing heavy balls as in Ten-pin bowling.