Strike! Bowling at the National Bowling Stadium

I'm quickly becoming the tamest writer on "It's Your Weekend," with my stories of rural towns and, now: bowling.

Yes, I went bowling this weekend, but the reason me and my friends went is because it was a rare opportunity (for those of us who will never be professionals) to bowl in the National Bowling Stadium downtown. I'd never even seen the bowling lanes in the stadium before, so I figured I might as well go.

The Reno High marching band was holding a fund-raiser on Saturday in which you could bowl for $5, so there's a couple more reasons, helping out the kids and the price was right.

My friends Linsay (that's Linsay and her hot pink ball in the photo) and Ali and I aren't gonna break any bowling records (are there such a thing?), but we had a great time. The place is huge -- more bowling lanes than anywhere I'd seen. The set-up was nice: a top tier of seating for spectators, a lower level of booths and tables for snack breaks and some more booths right on the lanes. And it was all nice and clean and didn't smell nearly as bad as your typical bowling alley.

The scorekeeping was done by a high-tech touch-screen computer and the score was also projected on a big screen above our lane. The computer had a few little glitches (it canceled our first game in the middle) but it just meant that we got more frames for our money. My score? A blazing 85.