Anyone for Bowls?

My friends had invited me to join their tennis and bowling club and made a strong case that it would be a lovely thing for the whole family. I was skeptical. First, no one in my family plays tennis and how fun could lawn bowling really be. On top of that, what would you do with the kids? Nine days ago, they convinced me by simply taking me to the club for a picnic and some lawn bowling.





This bowling is not like the lawn bowling set one picks up on clearance at Wally-world. The slightly skewed ellipsoids are called bowls and they definitely do not travel in a straight line (unless hurled through air). They are rolled (bowled) along a trajectory that bends toward the target, a white ball named jack. As you see in my picture below, the bowls are marked with a small dot and a larger dot. The small dot is the direction to which the bowl will turn. This seems pretty simple, but I have sent a few bowls down the green only to be absolutely appalled as they started turning away from the illusive jack. (Reminder: blow up the picture by clicking on it.)



If you watched much curling during the Olympics, it is very similar (except there are no brooms, the ground is warmer, and it is much harder to slide along on one foot). The idea is to get your bowls closer to the jack; you score 1 point for each of your bowls that is closer than all of the opponent’s bowls. That’s the whole game. Since octogenarians run rampant on the bowling greens, you are misled to believe the game is easy. Our first attempts left an array of bowls that looked like the jack was sitting on top of a hill. We got better, but still have little chance to compete against the old men on the bowling green. Here’s a better introduction.



Apparently the game is dying in the US, but is alive and well in Edinburgh. Essentially every neighborhood has a bowling club. I wonder if I can put a bowling green in my back yard? George Washington had one!

PS: This hundred push-up challenge is humbling. I tried starting on week 4 and after one work out, dropped back to week 3. The last exercise of the two days is to max out and do at least X push-ups. Um, I can't.