No Lawn Bowling Tournament

We withdrew from the lawn bowling tournament. When we got a list of the rules, we found that they were going to play 10 ends instead of the usual 8, which means each session was going to be 2-1/2 hours -- four sessions over the two days of the tournament. That wouldn’t be such a problem, except that the morning sessions began at 10 (we had to be there by 9:30) and would not end until 12:30. The afternoon sessions began at 1:00. We would only have 30 minutes (maybe less) to ride our bicycles back to Uncle Joe (about 10 minutes), walk Shadow, grab whatever we could for lunch and get back to the lawn bowling facility. Then we would not finish until 3:30, getting home close to 4:00 pm. That’s just too long of a day for Shadow, not to mention too long for Paddy and me. When we found out what an arduous event it would be we dropped out.

I still plan to participate in lawn bowling a few afternoons a week, just not tournaments that take all day without enough time for a decent lunch break.

I haven’t mentioned the “whites” rules, although Paddy has told about it on his blog. On Fridays, and for this tournament, participants are expected to wear white clothes. I don’t have any white pants and wasn’t able to buy any at this time of year, but I do have some pants that are close to white and I have been wearing them on Fridays. I have a couple of white shirts and bought some white shoes at Wal-Mart a couple of weeks ago. I have bowled in the regular afternoon games a few times now, plus practicing on my own and with Paddy in the mornings a few times. I’m getting better but still have a long way to go.

Over the weekend we went to visit our friends Dave and Mare in Chandler. Dave smoked some pork for the group, and was kind enough to grill a boneless, skinless chicken breast for me. We had a great visit with them, even though our teams lost in football. You can’t have everything.

It rained last night, but we were happy with that rather than the snow happening this week in Olympia. The sun came out here today; more snow is expected in Oly for the next two days. We’re happy.