Last night I went duckpin bowling with some fellow librarians. ACRL MD is the academic libraries division of the Maryland Library Association. We try to host a happy hour or some sort of social event a few times per year. This time we rented a few lanes at a duckpin bowling alley.

If you’re not familiar with duckpin bowling, which I’m guessing you’re not if you don’t live in Maryland, the pins look like regular bowling pins except they are smaller. The balls are also smaller. Probably a little larger than a softball. You can hold them in one hand they don’t have finger holes in them like a regular bowling ball. Because everything is smaller than normal you get three rolls per frame instead of just two. Even then it’s still harder than regular bowling. Given that and the fact that I’m a pitiful bowler I was pretty pleased with my 78.

This bowling alley was real old school as most of the duckpin alleys tend to be. There was no electronic scoring and you had to hit the reset buttons yourself between every roll. Nothing happened automatically. It was almost surprising they didn’t have to have someone back behind the lane resetting the pins. That was about the only automated thing about the place. I’m glad someone else was keeping score. I know how, but I much prefer when it’s done automatically for me.

It was a fun night out. Hopefully we’ll do it again in the future.