the great albany bowl-crawl part 6 - green island lanes

well hullo!

i'm back again with another installment of the bowl crawl. this week took us a bit north of albany to a town-village amalgam known as green island. though it hasn't been a real island since the 60's, green island is the smallest town (by area) in all of new york state! WOW!

i met christine around 8:30, so i was able to shoot an dusky ominous exterior shot:






went inside and got shoes ($1), and were put on lane 7. walked to the bar and got a coors light (shut up) ($2.75). checked out the snack bar, which unfortunately, was closed, but they have whole pizzas! took a while to find good bowling balls, the selection of 8-9 lb balls was really sort of pitiful, and the ball i did find really ripped off my finger nails, but that is a horse of another color entirely.

on to the games! i think we may have been out of practice. or maybe we were nervous because the men in the bar were cheering for us when we got spares. or maybe the bowling balls weren't right. but the air blower for drying off your hands was really strong (A+) and the lanes were in great shape and had really nice early 80's type of graphics overhead. here are some interior shots and a shot of the great bar which was really open and nice.







okay and like i said, we had an off night with our scores. but we may become pros very soon! (more on this after i show you the scores)





whatever. i won both games. okay so somewhere in there we started talking with tom walsh jr. the owner of green island lanes, and two other bowling alleys around town as well! we were talking about our bowling mission and how many places we've been and which ones are our favorites and what kind of things we like about bowling, because he wanted to know about 'occasional bowlers' he ended up giving us so many bowling tips and showing us how the pros bowl. he also said he would give us a free lesson, and gave us his card so we can call him before we go to one of his other lanes and he can be there to give us tips. he is also going to read this so i am trying to be as inoffensive as possible. not that there was anything to be offensive about, but you know what i mean.....

tom giving christine some hands on tips:




okay so now the best part. we were really chatting with tom about bowling and meeting his buddies and all of that, and then i mentioned how much i loved the shoes i had received from them that evening, and he said "you can take them" TAKE THEM!!!

I AM NOW THE PROUD OWNER OF THE BEST AND MOST COMFORTABLE BOWLING SHOES OF ALL TIME.



i am so happy! they live in my car now so that i am ready for whenever i might feel like bowling. ha! when i went up to the counter to pay for our games ($3 each) i told the counter guy "he said i could have these shoes" and he goes "pfft, yeah right" and some other guy said "no really, he did" and then i walked out with them! thanks tom! we can't wait to become pro bowlers!

score:
price: 4
equipment: 3
snack bar: 2.5
bar bar: 4
character: 4
overall: 3.5


see you next time!