After getting back on the road, Marcus fell asleep again! and I kept looking at the km´s go down on the gps. Then we finally made it to St. Louis, and it´s a beautiful city, kind of urban but beautiful and especially the St. Louis arch, after a little driving around the city, we finally made it to the bowling alley, so we got out stretched a little bit, watched the girls bowl their last games and then went to lunch with Kendall and his mom and Geoffrey´s parents at TGI Fridays, I had a small steak, it was just lovely and then we went back to the bowling alley and got ready for the tournament.
I found out that the pattern we would play on was 39ft in lenght and had a lot of volume of oil, and it looked like it was very playable, so I made my ball choices and was pretty much happy about it, then in warm-ups I felt the 7 hour drive wearing me down, but I was able to make some good shots in the practice, but I wasn´t really lined up. Then we started and I made some really good shots but got rewarded so poorly. I had 2x 7-10, 2x 4-9, a 8-10 and a pocket 4-9... and my first game was a poor 134, then it got a little better but the carry (pinfall) was so terrible and I shot 182. At this point, will barnes comes up to me and tells me that the lanes are pretty open and says that I should throw 2 handed, so in game 3 I decide to throw 2 handed, and after the first 5 frames I jumped down to about 4-5 arrow and just whacked the ball on the release and saw some carry, unfortunately in this game it was too late, so I shot 184, then 210 (so things were looking up), then I found some amazing carry I shot 266 (should have been a 300, I had a solid 7 pin in 3rd. frame and missed the spare and then a solid 9 pin in shot 12), but I was making up ground and anticipation was set for the last game, I started off really bad with 2 open frames, then a double, 8 spare and another double, and just as I was about to take my next shot I lost my concentration for a second, which made my timing go off and I dropped the ball off my hand and in to the gutter :( ... however I made the spare, but lost a lot of pins on that one shot! at that timepoint I lost my line to the pocket and spared out the game for a 178, so overall I shot 1156 or for a 192,8 ave. (I was making good shots, in the first 2 games I had about 80% pocket hits, and then in my last four I had about 95% pocket hits ... so if the carry would have been better I would have shot probably in the 1280´s or 1320´s)
Overall I though it went alright, although I had to go back to my 2handed game, but since there was a slight delay and the playing took forever, we didn´t finish until 9 p.m. and then we had at least 7 hours on the road, not to mention we had to eat some dinner before we would have to get back on the road!
So we put our balls in the trunk of the car and I put in White Castle on GPS and we were going to try a White Castle burger since we were in Illinois and since White Castle is not in Kansas, so after about 10 minutes of driving we get in to this shady neighboorhood and there is was WHITE CASTLE
So me and Marcus walk in and get in line, I took a look around and realized that there was not a single white person in the place besides me and Marcus! so to make Marcus aware of the situation, I decided to talk to him in Swedish, which made me realize even something worse... we were 2 white guys surrounded by black people at a White Castle, speaking SWEDISH! (and at that point I was beginning to fear for my life, so when we got our food (which took like 30 minutes) we decided to eat in the car) so when we walked out to the car with the food, we realized that there were about 15 parked cars, and all of them had black people in them, so to avoid any incidents, we decided to go to a McDonalds parking lot to eat our White Castle burgers, but as we drove off the White Castle parking lot I wanting badly to photograph this experience, so I took out my camera and started flashing photographs,,, and some black people that were walking out of the place gave us some funny looks, so that´s when I hit the gas peddle of the car with all my powers and drove off! (just want to say that I have nothing against black people, just when you´re in the ghetto of St. louis at a White Castle, surrounded by black people that look like they could bust a cap in your ass, the mind get´s a wondering!) .... the burgers were not as good as I thougt ... they were very very very greasy and tasted alright, but I would not drive to Illinois just to get them. So I´m glad I at least tried it , and LIVED!So after this experience we got some gas, 3 Red Bulls and hit the road again, Marcus was able to stay awake the first 40 minutes but then it was just me ... a couple of Red Bulls and the road!!! The first 2 hours were really hard, because all the exhaustion and lack of sleep the last few days was really starting to affect me. Then after we passed Kansas City and had only one road to Wichita, our highway was closed due to construction, so after stopping at a Holiday Inn for directions, after 30 minutes of talking, Marcus just hits the detour button on the gps and bingo! we had our route! So at that point we had about 100 minutes left of driving and I am without a doubt sure that those were the hardest 100 minutes I´ve ever spent keeping my eyes open! At one point of time I actually saw a cougar jump in front of the car, and then realized that my mind was playing tricks on me...! but I managed to stay awake and stay alive so ... now it´s just spring break for a week and then back to school!
But until next time I bid thou Adjou :P
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