There are pro bowlers, and then there are epic pro bowlers. Why am I talking about bowling? I’m talking about bowling because I’m in 3 leagues a week. I’ve been bowling for many years, and it’s a huge part of my life. This is my social environment, and the only one where I’m perfectly comfortable. Yeah, you can’t picture Stone hanging around a bunch of drunk hilljacks… stop with the stereotypes. Mostly true, but we’re going to pretend that’s not the case. There are some great people that I never would have met without bowling. Men, women, everyone in between – many of us are drawn to the challenge of bowling. Young and old, it’s just a melting pot of people you’d never otherwise encounter.

I’m not talking about Kyle! I’m in Indianapolis which is a bowling capitol. When you see bowling on TV, before you hurry to change the channel, try to look at where they are. Indianapolis is very common. We’re the racing capitol, and either Las Vegas or Indy is the bowling capitol. You’ll definitely notice Kyle Troup when you watch bowling competitions. The hair gives him away – it’s an epic trademark. He’s one of the controversial two-handed bowlers. Ok, so if you’re not a bowler you’re picturing a person using two hands to roll the ball between their legs… that’s not how it works. They don’t use a thumb hole on their ball, just two fingers. The second hand serves to balance the ball since the thumb hole isn’t there. They do this to drastically increase ball revolutions that (basically) creates a lot more action when the ball hits the pins. It also has a drastic acceleration effect when the ball hits the dry area at the back of the lane where it takes hold.

Dry area? What the heck is that? Most people don’t realize that bowling lanes are “oiled”… and I put that in quotes because we call it oil, but there are several components to it. Anyhow, when the ball gets near the pins and hits that dry area, it will hook sideways and also accelerate due to the spin on your ball. There are different oil patterns that create different conditions for the bowler to adjust to. But if you’re just a casual bowler with a ball off the rack, it makes absolutely no difference. This is a situation for league bowlers with performance balls. There are oil pattern that will blow you mind, but that’s not important. How do oil patterns get on the lanes? There’s a little machine that they run down the lanes before each league. The first pass cleans the surface, and the second pass lays the pattern.

So don’t ever walk out onto a bowling lane. You’ll fall on your ass because it’s like ice.