Baseball Far, Far Away

June 18

In the afternoon, Ray, Alex, and I took a bike ride down to the Chiayi park. Just like in Tainan, it is right in the middle of everything but absolutely gorgeous. It was also quite a bit larger than the park in Tainan. We walked around and saw a bunch of interesting things. We came across Chiayi tower and decided to go up. It was a good view of the city, but the smog limits the view of the mountains. We saw that there was a baseball game going on nearby from the tower, and decided to check that out. Unfortunately, once we got inside I forgot to take any pictures. It was a nice park where that the professional teams use when they come to town. The Taiwan baseball league is different in that the teams are sponsored. Instead of being located in one city, they play all over the island. After watching a few innings of what appeared to be a high school game, we went back because it looked like a storm could hit soon.

For dinner, a bunch of us went to eat at a Thai restaurant. I went for the spicy drunken beef with cashews. It was awesome. I also noticed that my chopstick handling is getting better. I had little problems grabbing the cashews.

After dinner we went bowling. The lane that we got stuck with was possessed. It would randomly put down the guard and stop our balls. The girl working there had to have come over at least 10 times to correct our score. Because of all of the delays, the group next to us finished way ahead of us. So we were able to switch our scores and play on a lane that was working better. When we switched, I was bowling a perfect game through two frames. I proceeded to get a spare followed by two more strikes. I was feeling it. The next ball that I threw got 9 pins, leaving the 7 pin remaining. But there was another problem with the lane, and it reset the pins. In the first game I bowled it happened, but I really didn't care because I was bowling a fairly average game. But in this game, since I was going for a high score (I've been stuck at 199 for a long time) I wanted to make sure that the game had no hiccups. Luckily Mark knew enough Chinese to ask them to fix the problem. He told them that I was going for a high score, and they actually sent a guy down there who pushed all of the pins down except for the one that I had missed. The whole process of getting everything ready took over 5 minutes. After all of that work, I ended up missing the pin by a fraction of an inch. The rest of my game ended up falling apart on me and I ended up with a 168. That game could haunt me for a long time.

To make things worse, the reason we went bowling in the first place was because I had an outstanding challenge with Anna. She was one of the bridesmaids at my sisters wedding and went bowling after the reception in her dress. There was a deal that if I came to Taiwan there would be a rematch. Well she ended up bowling a 128 which was awesome, but all of the drama surrounding my game hid the fact that she did really well. I guess there just might have to be another challenge at a later time.

Additional pictures here.