I am so stoked. Today the Yahoo Gooey group (Gooey = GUI = Graphical User Interface = User Interface = Visual and interaction design + research) went on an offsite, spending three hours bowling in Palo Alto.

For something I only do once a year or two, bowling is something I really like. I used to be on a league (8th grade, I used to ride my skateboard to the bowling alley seven miles away on Saturday mornings. (no, don't be silly. I had a locker for the ball)) but I was never very good. I played for two seasons and, thanks to stellar older teammates (they were 14 and 15 to my 13 years) and a dynamite handicap, we took first place with my 114 season average.

The next season my average was 122, but I got last place, on a team with less experienced (than me, even!) teammates. I still have the trophies at home.

Anyhow, nowadays I'm an inconstant bowler on my annual sojourns. Some days I'll struggle to break 90, others I'll manage 130 or even 135. I played a few months ago and fell right about in the middle of that range.

Today was simply incredible. I can't believe it. I don't understand it. I can't question it, other than to wonder if a lighter ball is what I needed all along. I played four games today. First game I couldn't hit a strike for my life. Every ball hit the pocket, but the center pin would always remain standing in the rubble. I was happy with the 119 I got that game, though it came more from picking up spares than anything else.

The next game, and I'll spare you the play by play version, saw me do something I'd never managed before, a 'turkey,' the technical term for three strikes in a row. Everything was perfect and as soon as the ball left my hand each time, I just knew.

And on the fourth ball I did it again. Four in a row. Wog.

The highest game I'd ever bowled was when I was 14, when I came up with an amazing-to-me 156. I still have the frame-by-frame account of that game kept in my bowling bag. This second game blew it away. 176.

The third game went pretty much like the second, but without a four-fer. Amazingly the game wasn't a fluke because the third game tallied up to 172.

My last game, and what might be my last game for a while, because I don't want to touch a bowling ball after that magic, I started off slow. Going into the fifth frame I had 54 points. Not spectacular, and barely enough to set me up for another 119. Then the mojo kicked in again. Four strikes, a spare, and another closing strike. 201.

Bowling 201 is, to me, like running a mile and looking at your watch and finding out that it took less than five minutes, or filling up your car and finding out that you got 100 miles to the gallon on your last tank. It just doesn't seem possible. It doesn't occur to you. Or at least to me.

Okay, taking the obligatory application of topical insights to the human condition, I'm surprised that I could be surprised; that with all my studying about how things work and self assessment of who I am, that something could jump out like that. I'm still floating from the act.

Of course, for all of you who are thinking "neat" (or "pretty full of himself, isn't he?"), there's one person (okay maybe two) who is probably steaming mad that I took her luck again.

Anyhow, this, as much as anything, is a representation of my day:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Final 8 / 9 - 9 / 7 2 7 / X   X   X   X   7 / X 201 19 28 45 54 74 104 134 161 181 201