Last night Liz and I went into town mid-afternoon to run some errands and decided to do some bowling afterwards.  I realized I was becoming very uptight about the local style of bowling out here.  We've been trying to find a good bowling alley, ten pin style, and haven't been able to find one around.  At least not one that we like.

If you don't know about candlepin bowling, check out this article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlepin_bowling ) on wikipedia.  It should explain everything for you.  I think the lanes are normal size, or maybe just a tad bit shorter.  You roll these little balls down the lane and you get 3 per frame.  They look like little shot puts or bocci balls.  I don't think they'd look too kindly on you chucking one down the lane.

We got a little hung up on the scoring system and had to get some help.  It's semi-manual scoring because the pins aren't cleared away inbetween rolls.  One bonus is you can hit a downed pin and knock that around to take out more pins.  You also have to manually reset the lane at the end of every turn.

When the bowling alley kid came over to help us, he started explaining how spares are scored.  I told him we knew about that, we were just having trouble figuring out the process on the machine.  I also told him we were used to 10-pin bowling and were totally out of our element.  That's about the same time he noticed we entered our names as "Dude" and "Maude."  He got a few chuckles out of that.

The Bowl-O-Rama in Portsmouth, NH is a pretty good bowling alley.  The place was clean, well lit, adequately staffed, and the lanes were in good condition.  They also have a full service snack bar with waitresses coming around taking orders.  This place is lightyears ahead of Dover Bowl in Dover, NH.

If you're trying to find a local alley in your area, check out www.bowling2u.com.  I've been able to find a few leads on there.  Some alleys also have received votes and have user comments associated with them.

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