I imagined the old bowling alley back in its heyday. Maybe some goofball character straight out of a movie, sliding his T-top Firebird 360 degrees into a parking spot, music blaring announcing his arrival. Lights reflecting in his aviator shades, giant moustache with an half finished cigarette hanging out his mouth. Bowling bag in one hand as the legend in his own mind walks to the bowling alley entrance.
Now I imagined that same guy with a the same car barely running. These days probably some accountant or other boring occupation that might leave person wanting an outlet for excitement. A nobody in normal life, now still a legend at the bowling alley. How did I get sucked into the nonsense of a bowling alley? I blame the Coen brothers. My buddies watched their damn movie about "The Dude" and starting bowling one day, often quoting the movie during the games. I guess I'm the modern version of the T-Top driving, self important individual. Just like the mental picture I had lost my way, or even meaning. From working sixty to eighty hours a week to having plenty of spare time for bowling. Like all people that get sucked into this strange world of indoor activities it starts out thinking how easy bowling is with the lucky game every once in a while. The thought that in a couple weeks or months someone can just pick up a house ball and bowl a 300, or perfect, game.
It has probably happened somewhere but for most people it takes a lot of practice. I would like to say I was Dude-like, but the truth is I'm bull-headed and can be difficult to get along with. The last job I had was growing cannabis for a legal operation in Washington State. Introduced through a mutual friend I worked for some of the California boys we would call them. People who had moved here from Northern California who were going to show real farmers how to grow something less difficult to grow than crops we already grew. These California boys who had rub their farm into the ground were determined to teach someone already known nationwide and beyond for growing. It was like a fast food worker who had just figured out the grill teaching a master chef how to cook.
I love cannabis, so against my better judgement I took on the challenge. I grew about 85 different strains and help them go from 85 lbs to over 2000 in a season. That life seemed like a distant memory. Born to be a gardener, or so it seems, it is hard not to cultivate anything that will grow. Now I'm in my mid 30s, and had started growing around the age of 15. I could recognize a strain of cannabis like an old friend I'd been wondering about. What was important now was bowling.
Before bowling my friends and myself would take dabs. Dabs, if you don't know, is BHO or Butane Hash Oil usually, but it can be made with other solvents. Even though it's only become popular in recent years, how to make it was in the Anarchist Cook Book, which is a rare find these days. In some dusty old box in a storage building that thing resides, waiting for a future rebellious generation to unleash mischief.
Anyhow I'll describe the process. It felt like a different version of "Breaking Bad" when I first learned to make it. The best dab starts with the best trim. What gets blasted by myself or friends in the inner circle is better than 90 per cent of anything world wide on any market. Everything is grown to absolute perfection and then cured for around 56 days hanging upside down in a dark room.
The leaves without crystals are trimmed off first to prevent any hay-like smell or wet taste. At first the plants, when wet, start drying with a 40 per cent humidity level. After most of the moisture is gone the humidity is allowed to rise to about 50 degrees F. If done right the smell should have a full flavor. The bud itself should be completely dry but pliable and sticky at the same time.
Once the consistency is correct a second trim is done to remove the crystalline leaves around the buds. The buds are kept but the leaves that most people leave on there is what we use for the BHO. Next this byproduct is stuffed into a glass tube with a small end the size of a butane bottle tip and the large end and 1 1/4" inside diameter. After putting a fines screen and a coffee filter on the end of the tube the butane gas is forced through the tube usually into a Pyrex dish.
Important to note that special mats are used to discharge static electricity. This can also be done with a fabric softener. (Butane gas is highly flammable.) After the butane is blasted through the tube - about one 12 oz. can of butane per every 25 grams of material - the Pyrex dish is set on a heating surface below 120 degrees F so that flavor, cannibinoids, and the terpins that affect flavor are not lost. After the initial purge the remaining sticky substance is scraped up and than put in a vacuum pure set below 120 degrees F under vacuum pressure for 48 hours. This removes the remainder of the light gasses left by the butane.
After this wild process it is smoked in a device called a 'dab bong'. It is like taking the innocent pot of the 60s and finding a way to make it look like harder drugs. This powerful product can ruin a beginner, creating anxiety attacks. Anyhow myself and my friends are pretty heavy-duty so we might take a dab first thing in the morning. So after a smoke session that could slow down Tommy Chong we head red-eyed in our altered state to the alternate universe called the bowling alley. Bowling, like everything else, just became something to learn about and figure out. It turns out that just grabbing a ball off the shelf and expecting to bowl a perfect game in a few weeks is not reasonable.
What happens is people go in thinking they will get better. Pretty soon they learn about the Pro Shop and the equipment available. The idea of bowling is to get a ball to cut across at the end of a lane and hit the pins at a perfect 30°angle. There are what is called 'reactive' or 'particle' balls that have spin to accomplish this goal. It takes some weird stance and awkward fingering position in combination with unnatural movements. According to my friends the professionals get a little deeper, knowing the individual lanes across the country. They know which ball to use and what type of spin it needs. The pro lanes also use a different oil pattern to make it more difficult. Rumour has it that they keep lanes hidden from the professionals so they can't become familiar. The bowling alley is just a blast from the past that lets a person like myself forget about all the troubles.
Politics and opinions take a back seat and all that is important is that next throw. So far I have proven to be a terrible bowler. Often I am just looking at the activity in the bowling alley trying to determine the net profit of a place like that. That is just how my mind works; it is always taking everything apart to see how it works.
Alex was just another lost soul looking for his place in a changing world. The Bowling Vortex was just the latest rabbit hole he had wondered into.