Deck the Balls With Scents of Holly

How many times have you been at a bowling alley, ready to throw your next shot, perhaps a strike or two away from a perfect game (or just hoping not to throw ANOTHER gutter ball,) and suddenly it hits you?

“This ball stinks!”

I mean seriously.  When was the last time it bathed?  I have a bowling towel to wipe the excess oil from the lane, but that hardly counts as a good cleaning.

Somewhere, at some time, someone had too much time on their hands.  Or too much to drink.  And they thought to themselves, “why don’t we make scented bowling balls?”

I.  Kid.  You.  Not.

My kids bought me a Storm bowling ball for Christmas.  The box said fragrance: Caramel Pecan.  WTF?

 

It really does have a scent.  It was making me hungry–like a huge piece of caramel candy.  I think I gained 15 pounds!  But who needs (or wants) a fragrant bowling ball?  And just what was wrong with the way my balls smelled before?

I promptly Googled this shit to see if it was real.

Aromatic Bowling.

Competitors dismiss Bill Chrisman’s scented bowling balls as a “novelty,” but he believes there’s more to his success than that, reports Jonathan Eig in The Wall Street Journal. Bill’s balls — marketed by Storm Products, Inc., stormbowling.com, of Brigham City, Utah — smell of peppermint, spearmint, orange, blueberry, amaretto, banana, cinnamon-apple, and pina colada, for instance. Bill’s been making the aromatic balls for about four years now, to a point where his brand is to the market leader in high-end bowling balls, ahead of Brunswick. (You might think Brunswick and the other ball-makers would be rushing scented balls to market. Storm does not officially claim that its aromas affect performance, but the company’s technical director, Steve Koempken, “says the aromatic liquid chemicals added to the vats of urethane had the unintended effect of increasing the tackiness or friction of the surface area, which resulted in a tiny bit of extra hook.” Not only that, but some customers report that the fragrances have the dual effect of relaxing them while distracting their opponents.

I am stunned.  Speechless (but I can still type.)  How does the chemical selectively relax one person but annoy another?  Technology is simply fantastic.

Do the chemicals act like pheromones?  Will my ball be attracting other balls?  What do the pins think about this?  So many questions; so little interest in answering them.

I wonder if they will start adding fragrances to running shoes.  Now that would be a great idea!

I smell a 300 game in my future!

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What the Haboob was THAT?

Funny word.  Haboob.  Sounds anatomical.

Got Milk?  I got Haboob.  Or two.  That’s better.

But actually, a haboob is a type of desert storm.

And I survived the desert storm.

We were visiting friends in Phoenix, and two days before we were scheduled to leave, we met the haboob head on.  We had just returned to the house from dinner and looked up into the sky to see this:

It's coming fast . . .

It was just like those movies in the desert where a wall of sand is crashing down upon you like some huge, dirty tidal wave.  Well, that’s just what it looked like to us.  I’m glad we didn’t get caught driving in that!

It was the worst sand storm our Phoenix friends (who took the pictures) had seen since they moved there several years ago.

What's that in your eye? Could be dust!

It got to the point where you couldn’t see the houses across the street.  The wind howled through the roof vents.  The pool in the backyard looked like some muddy swamp in a horror movie.  But it passed quickly, which I suppose happens when the winds are traveling 60 mph.  It left everything dirty in its wake, despite a small amount of rainfall that followed it.  We saw one plane flying across the front of it.  We didn’t hear about any crashes so I assume they made it through the storm okay.

We survived the haboob!  Bring on the habeer!

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