THE FRONT RANGE RANTER, Issue #1 Vol.1

I haven't done anything in this blog for a while...and I haven't bowled since our last league finish in May.  So, since I have nothing bowling related, I thought I'd share one of my woes with the City Of Lakewood, Colorado....it goes like this... 


(This is a re-post from my Facebook page btw..)

What can I start this first issue off with..??  Hmmmm...

I know..

• I guess the City of Lakewood, Colorado likes to hire lazy people....or is it just me?  

It is me right?

Last week we had a horrendous hail storm.  Maybe not an apocalyptic one, but a pretty bad one. 

A reminder..

It destroyed/damaged a few things on my property like our swamp cooler, some of my deck furniture, but most notably, defoliated most of our trees and broke a couple branches...big branches. Now, I heard then, that the City Of Lakewood will come in, in the next few days and pick up your leaves and other broken flotsam as long as you sweep it onto the street. No prob, sounds great.

Well today, they come through and clean up the street, no big deal right? So I come home, rolling down my road and see that most of the dead leaves and crap has been picked up, but not my stuff in front of my house. Now my guess is, is that they came in with a street sweeper and sucked up all the little shit but left the bigger piles. If they did, I wish they said(online or in the local rag) to spread that shit out so's the machine can pick it up...and as for branches, you're on your own.  I thought they'd send crews out on foot to shovel this stuff up...boy was I wrong there. How stupid of me to think they actually get out of their snail paced Elgin (or whatever) street sweeper and make an effort to pick up a few leaves by hand. Boy am I dumb to think that...I should have known. What an asshole I am to assume that..?!

The piles of dead vegetation in front of my property. Damn..that's a lot of trash there...to heavy to handle..Nieghbors across the street didn't get their piles picked up either. The audacity of us pushing our dead leaves into the street for pick up.

Now I used to put up with kind of shit when I lived in Riverside, California. Their sanitation service employed some pretty nice guys, but there was always that one sanitation worker who would complain about the kind of trash you were leaving. I had dogs there too, and time to time I'd have clean up dog waste and I'd put it in the trash, simple enough. I also had cats and I'd clean out the cat box and dump that waste in the trash as well. But invariably, the City Of Riverside Sanitation Dept would leave little nasty grams telling me that I was discarding animal waste wrong, and they wouldn't tell me how to do it right!!  AAAAARGH it made me crazy!!  What did I have to do..gift wrap it?

(One sec..gotta feed the dogs..brb..)

(Back..)

I complain too much folks tell me. "It doesn't matter anyway...let it go.."  (..grumble..)

We do pay city taxes right? I mean the City Of Lakewood did raise their sales taxes a couple years ago so's we can at least insure that we have our streets plowed out when we get huge blizzard dumps in the winter, and I assume it's applied to summertime thunderstorm hail bombardments. Am I right? AM I RIGHT?? We also pay a "sewage use tax", which by the way, they send a payment card seperately every goddamn month without fail..and we pay that too. So you tell me, why can't they pick up a few more leaves and broken branches? Tell me why? I'll listen....

The author showing the City Of Lakewood, Co. Street Maintenance 
that they're NUMBER ONE!!  (No offense by the way..don't take it personal)

BTW...let's not mistake this as a rant about ALL the City Of Lakewood. I mean this city does have a pretty decent Police and Fire Departments, very responsive, very thorough.  It's just the street maintenance service I have issue (and concern) with. I'm also not going to bash them continuously. But they have a small discrepency, and I'd like it addressed..that's all.

Enough said about them.

So..guess who has to go back out in the street and clean up what the city couldn't?  Me.  I have to go back out there, chop up the broken branches put them in the trash, and hope EDS (our private santitation service since Lakewood doesn't provide trash pick-up) will haul this shit off.  Some of those braches are pretty big, and I don't have a chainsaw...FUCK..  I feel another hot weekend coming up.  I really wish Lakewood would allow leaf burning..especially in the fall. Would save a lot of trouble. (Oh wait..fire danger..that's right!)

*sigh*

Now you'll excuse me while I go play CityVille and see how a real city runs things...(I'm being sarcastical..if that's a word..)

---END TRANSMISSION---

BDB Update #7 (WTF?)

Okay...tonight I bowled pretty good..I guess........

But I'm here to rant, gripe..or whatever... or just complain and comment. I won't mince words..I'll just get right to the point. I won't name names, I'll make it all anonymous-like. (All opinions here are mine alone and does not reflect those of the USBC or any other entity)

Here's goes..

There's one guy on one of the bowling teams that, as it turns out, is a real dickwad. He's some guy in his late 50's and he's the husband of someone important in our league. She's a sweet gal...he's a fucking asshole of the highest calibre.  I understand bowling etiquette, and bowling do's and don'ts, like not being in the bowlers line of sight in the lane next to you when they're up on the line getting ready to throw and all that shit. I understand..

I.. FUCKING.. GET IT!!

..if I do get in your way, I'm sorry, it won't happen again. I'm a ghost...now go throw your fuckin' ball already.

Now this league, if I stated it before, is a Friday night party league. Yes, it's sanctioned by the USBC, but folks come here to unwind and have fun. If you're only here to further your so-called "bowling career"..then you're in the wrong league. Go find a PBA Experience league or some kind of PRO-AM league or tournament. I don't care which one you choose..but go fucking find one, and let the Friday Night party league be that, A PARTY LEAGUE!! (dipshit)

But this is what I found out.  When I bowl, I have my own towel to wipe off the oil that my ball picks up on the lane. After I wipe off my ball, sometimes I'll put my towel over the hand blower so's it'll be there when I come back to grab it and head back to my seat. This'll take about a minute to occur. Simple enough. What I didn't see is this individual (with the blessing of Hades and after taking a bite out of his fresh asshole sandwich)..will grab my towel with out my looking and slam it down on the scoring console. Then after I bowl a particular fantastic strike, I see it up there;  think nothing of it, grab it and head back to my seat.  I don't know that he's doing this. And really, I don't care. I don't give a fuck. He's just a miserable individual married to a helluva nice woman.  How I found out about this is that my wife witnessed his little micro tirades taking it out on my poor unsuspecting towel. That poor towel..I tell you, it goes through a lot of shit. I mean, I'm wiping off oil and water and whatever, and my towel is taking it all in stride. It's a trooper.  To give him the benefit of a doubt, he was bowling some particularly crappy frames..so I guess ASS-ZILLA was having a bad night.  (Wait for it..3..2..1)  OH BOO-HOO!! As it turned out, I wasn't bowling so great either, but you didn't see me having quasi-psychotic-internal-seething-hypertension-vein-popping temper tantrums. But for the love of Zombie Jesus...LET IT GO!!

But I digress..

So... ASSHOLE CHARLIE (Not his name btw..but I kinda' like it) has to put in his caustic two cents worth and take it out on my plush "Storm Bowling Balls" green towel. Oh the shame of it...the humility of it all. I'll never show my face in public again.  Piss on the fire and call the dog..

Now to be honest, I tend to live in my head a lot and it takes a two by four to get my attention. I've been this way all my life. And of course when I bowl, I have to put myself into some semblance of a "zone". I have a pretty good bowling average because of this ability to shut off the world around me and do what I have to just to bowl my average and then some.  But all you have to do is tell me nicely to pay attention and I'll gladly heed your suggestions, I'm an easy guy to get along with. Hell, I'll even buy you a drink as an apology.

So any rate, this has kind of tainted my whole bowling league adventure with this particular league. I mean there's a lot of nice people on this league and a lot nice folks who work at this particular bowling alley, especially the house owner and proprietor who's one of the coolest, nicest guys around, but all it takes is one "dickhead" to spoil the whole experience.

Chances are my wife and I probably won't be coming back for the Fall 2011 start up. I hate to say it..but what can I do?  I truly hate confrontation, and if it came to blows..I'd probably lose out and get my ass kicked (or killed) by some psycho shaved ape with a bad temper on top of it.  It not worth it, so we're probably out of there come next autumn.  Sigh.  It's bad enough that my wife and I are committed to this current league till May of this year.  I mean, my wife and I barely have two dimes to rub together, but this Friday night bowling league is our outlet...and we have to tolerate this kind of bullshit? Fuck that noise.   It's a fucked up situation all around.

But to be honest (again)..It's probably nothing...but the signs are there.

As one guy said:

 "Can't we all just get along?"

Any hoo...there ya go. It's A-Hole night at the bowling alley. Yay for us..

BDB Update #6

Since there's no league right now, I'll bore you with my latest bowling exploit. This evening, me, my wife and a friend went over to a local BZ and bowled a couple frames. I sucked hard, wifey didn't do too much better. Our friend had a couple good games. But it was BZ..and the only alley(s) open on Christmas since our usual mom n' pop lane haunts are shut down for the day.  I guess AMFs would be open too.

I got some $$$ for Christmas (Thanks mom!! I'm still that 11 year old kid to her) and I might get a new ball with it...either that or a new Apple TV interface...who knows.

*Yawn* ..exciting eh?

BDB Update #5

The fall league has ended, winter league up next.

Our team came in last..out of..um.. 8 teams. (and one team was a ghost team) ..


I picked up my 500 scratch series magnet, and I came in first place on Men's High Series Handicap at 872. Not bad..but I don't see myself getting anymore awards in the coming leagues since I seem to be improving and my handicap is lowering. But I'm bowling better so that's good.

So there ya are..

GO GUTTER MONKEEZ!!

Big Daddy Bowling Update..#4 (?)

Did great last night. Bowled a 237. If I only bowled strikes in the (I think) 4th and 7th frames..I would of had a cool 300....but no such luck. My last game  was 193...my first was 130-- something...I forget..

Last week I forgot to update, but a fellow on one of the teams bowled a 300. And when the league president went to document the result, the one who bowled that 300..his ball didn't have the manufacturing serial numbers on the ball since they've been slowly resurfaced away over time. The ball I bowl with doesn't have it's numbers either since they've also been resurfaced away.  So I don't know what to tell the league president if I  happen to actually bowl a 300.   I know, I'll called it "Numero Uno"...!!

Who knows..

A little better..

My 3 games (tonight) were okay. I managed to at least make my average twice. This put my new average to around 155.  Also, slowing down my release seems to work better.

Exciting stuff eh?

Good..but not great..

Out of the three games I bowled last evening (Friday 11/26), I bowled a 193. That was the highest. The last game was crap. Didn't hit my average, but who's counting?  By the middle of the second game, my back started hurting.  I had Colleen put some Salonpas(tm) on the area which helped greatly pain-wise, but didn't do a thing for my crappy bowling.

Do I need a new ball? Who knows..

I can't believe that I'm doing a blog on bowling. I must be desperate for attention (not that I'm getting any) ..or something.

I mean, how sad is that?