Bowling has become Zeke’s game of choice. He is so good at Wii bowling that he beats his siblings. When he had resorted to standing crayons on end for pins, I decided to buy him a children’s bowling set for his birthday. He sets it up on the floor or on the bench and practices quite often. Periodically, all other occupants of the house are forced into games of bowling. When bowling, he puts his game face on. He is already attempting to work on his hook as he releases the ball with his knuckles on top. I see shades of Dale’s Daddy when he throws. At Chuck E. Cheese this week, he spent most of his coins at skee ball. Skee balls are a bit heavy, so I could see that his arm was tiring and I tried to encourage him to move to another game. But he refused to stop. When I wasn’t looking, he’d slip another coin in the slot and throw some more skee balls. Dale may have hope yet to play in a league with his family. Lucky for him, he has enough children that he won’t be handicapped by his wife. Zeke has learned what Dale knows quite well: I am a terrible bowler. When Zeke tired on skee ball, I decided to try to help him out, and he realized quite quickly that maybe I wasn’t much help at all.
I spent a few days this week visiting projects in Dahuk and Erbil. COL Pfenning, my boss, is due to return to the US next month. So he is making his last visit to all of the USACE offices in GRN, which he commands. On Thursday, we had lunch with Governor Nawzad Hadi, Governor of Erbil. I was intrigued by the invitation he extended because he told us to bring our swim trunks if we were interested in swimming.
The lunch venue ended up being the Hawler Water Park. Erbil is also referred to as Hawler by most Kurds. The water park is a public park owned and operated by the government in Erbil. The main attraction is a giant pool with water slides. Fortunately for everyone around, I did not bring a pair of swim trunks.
We arrived at the park a little early. So while we were waiting for the governor to arrive, the park operator showed us his bowling alley. How many people do you know that have gone bowling while deployed to Iraq? Maybe the Army will have to take back my Hazardous Duty Pay (HDP) and Danger Pay (DP) for that day. Since I get $100 per month for HDP and $225 per month for DP, I stand to lose about $10.83 for one day. I definitely prefer the danger pay the Aussies receive!
It took me a little while to get warmed up. But I blame that on having to use an alley ball. It didn’t fit right and kept slipping off my thumb! COL Pfenning looks like he has spent some time in bowling alleys in the past. After the governor arrived, he and COL Pfenning bowled 5 more frames together. Governor Nawzad uses the brute force approach to bowling and slings the ball down the alley as hard as possible. He reminded me a lot of Jeff!
