Okay, I try to post at least one post a month here, but I've done a pretty bad job at that so far. Actually, I'm not that bad on it, I've only really missed January. As I'm strill trying to find a voice for this blog, it's time for another category: local events.

To start with, we'll go with an od favorite, The Sweeper at Leopard Lanes in Bellevue. It's a bowling event that's happened every week for as long as I can remember (and I'm sure even longer than that). I've been attending for many years, though I've not been participating tat long. My parents played every Friday and Saturday night, though demand has pared that back down to only Saturday nights now  So, every Saturday, you can pay $12 for three games of bowling. You can do that pretty much anywhere in town (in fact, most places won't be that expensive), so what are you getting for your twelve bones?

Well, quite a bit. Obviously, you get the bowling itself, the camaradarie, the competition, and generally, the drinking. Drinks are extra, of course, but it's a different atmosphere than a bar (there's one of those if you'd like, too). They also give you a raffle ticket for your receipt which shows which lanes you bowl on. You'll be bowling in the dark in "moonlight mode," down to only the lights they're required to leave on, so don't take yourself too seriously out there. They've got red and green pins in with the white ones, which the computer's sensors don't always see, so your scores will end up a little off. Don't worry about this, just watch out for a colored pin in the 7 or 10 slot being missed and scored a strike (just hit the reset button and take your 9-pin gift). At the end of each game, write your scores down on the recap sheet, and move on to the next game.

That's the basics: three games, get your shoes back, and go home. But those colored pins? What's up with them? If there's a colored headpin and you get a strike, you win money. Usually, these shots are worth a buck or two (1 for a red head pin alone, 2 for a green head pin or a red 1-2 or 1-3 pins, and there's some other rarer combinations that are worth more, like a red 1-7-10 for $10 or a red 1-2-3 for $25). Also, if you gutter or mark a 1 for your first ball, you get a "second chance." The second ball only needs to take out the colored pins that made the shot worth something to win the money. If you're unlucky enough to leave a split, don't panic. They're all possible -- I've even picked up the 7-10 before, on the first ball! -- and if they have a red pin, they're worth money. The money escalates with the difficulty of the split, from $1 for something like a 3-10 or a 4-5, to $15 for the fairly-difficult ones like the 5-7 and the 5-10 to $1000 for the 7-10. But you have to have a red pin, green on its own doesn't count. There's a caller (Steve, usually) who will call out the lane and the value of the shot for both strikes and splits, and if he doesn't call it, it isn't worth anything. They give away a free entry to a future Sweeper toward the end of the second game using those raffle tickets you got as a receipt, so make sure you don't throw yours away.

That's what your $12 gets you. But it also opens up a few extra options. First is the high game pot. For $1, if you bowl the highest game of those who put in the pool in the first, second, or third game, you win a third of the pot. So if 30 people signed up for the high game, the highest of them from each of the three games wins $10 per game (you can win all the games if you have an exceptional series). While I have seen a 300 take this, I've only seen it once. Usually, this falls in the mid-200s, though if you can get over 220 with any consistency, you're probably good enough to put in your dollar. The second side pot is the mystery score. Again, only $1 to get in, this is more like a lottery or raffle. As long as you can bowl a 70, you should probably be putting your dollar in. After everyone's finished with their first or second game, the caller will draw numbers from a bin (they took 200 poker chips and wrote a number between 70 and 260 on each of them). If you bowled that score (and put your dollar in), you win half the pot. In the middle of the winter, when the Sweeper is at its fullest, this could easily be $50. They'll keep calling numbers until someone bowled the pulled score. Ties split, so it's not "First person to yell wins."

The final side pot and perhaps one of the biggest draws of the event is the strike pot. This one works a little different than the others, as it's fully separate from your main bowling. It's operated as a raffle -- 5 tickets for $1, 30 tickets for $5, no more than $40 per person per game, no trading of tickets. Toward the end of each of the three games, they'll draw 10 tickets from these, each will have one chance at 1/10th of the ticket sales (rounded to $25 increments). If you hit your shot, you get whatever that ticket was worth. If you miss, the money is carried over into the next game (or the next week at the end of the night). So the carry-over will vary based on how well the players do, though it can grow fairly high (it started around $1500 the last time I went, which got knocked down significantly at the end of the night). The lanes they have set up for these shots are not oiled normally -- they have oil much further down the lane, across the whole lane, and a bit thicker than a normal lane. This makes for a very flat shot. If you're used to seeing huge hooks into the pocket at the end of the shot, you'll be disappointed here as you watch balls consistenly slide into the 3 and 6 pins. Some people have gotten pretty good at compensating for these conditions, but you still need your ticket to be called to get the shot, which you can't really practice for outside of those shots. I've got the shot fairly well licked, but even still, I'm only about 50% on it. Didn't stop me from hitting a $175 shot one week and a $200 one the next.

So that's the Sweeper. It's every Saturday night at Leopard Lanes in Bellevue, sign up by 8:30 (you can pay in advance all week long, and you probably should during the middle of winter), play around 9:30. It's still a cash-only operation, though they do have an ATM. It makes for a great one-time group event for casual rollers (birthdays, office get-togethers, etc.) as well as a good regular event for a bowling enthusiast. Check it out some time, if you're so inclined.