winter camp

It's my firm belief that every bowling alley in the world has some sort of "cosmic" bowling. Whether it be "cosmic" or "futuro" or "atomic" or whatever. Basically, they all have that one night a week where everything is more expensive and there's blacklight stuff everywhere to make it a trippy, more exciting experience.

This is no less true in Antarctica than it is anywhere else. Except perhaps the expense part, although I was slightly shocked to discover that it costs money to bowl here (it's a buck a game).

I went cosmic bowling with a bunch of GAs, the station doc, and a lab tech from Crary Lab. Basically, the Christchurch crew (folks I met on the trip down here). It was a blast, and lived up to all my expectations. The lanes were well warped and not at all greased. I'm not a good bowler, but I can make a ball curve if I try. Not on these lanes. My general pattern for bowling held up: First frame: strike, subsequent frames: worse and worse. I found that one great advantage to having human pinsetters is that they can occaisonally be persuaded to kick over pins that otherwise would have remained standing. UPDATE: Due to overwhelming interest, I realized I should add that the pinsetters do, in fact, wear striped socks. This is because in the dark, with blacklights, their vulnerable little ankles aren't very easy to see, making them prone to the litterally bone crushing onslaught of 15 pound bowling balls. The striped socks, however, are perfectly visible under blacklight, and glow like a prairie moon in July (with emphasis on the first syllable, as in: JUly).

my perfect form: