Slippin'n'Slidin' Weather

Back in college, I used to go bowling a lot. I know, I know. This is something that probably surprises the hell out of you. How could it be that such a wonderful, intelligent, and remarkably good-looking CherkyB would spend his time at a bowling alley? Mostly because I was dating a nice lady who you may now today know as The Mrs., but she was going to school in Sillydelphia. That left me with a lot of free time on my hands, being as the classes weren't all that hard at UB and I was, even back then, a sooper-genius, and if you can't chase after college coeds, the only two other things there were to do in Barfalo were drink and bowl.

Or both.

There was a great old bowling alley not too far from campus that gave student discounts after midnight. $0.90/game. Imagine. And you got to bowl on their old real-wood lanes, as they saved the fancy new laminate lanes for the paying customers. Modern bowlers are too foofy to bowl on real wood lanes. They need the boringly smooth and predictable laminate that has a photograph of real wood glued to it and then 50 coats of urethane over the top of that.

Pussies.

We became purists for real wood lanes.

Another thing they had was a "college league" that was non-sanctioned (since college students couldn't afford the annual ABC (now called the USBC) membership fee of about $45 required to bowl in sanctioned leagues). I and a bunch of the doods from my dorm got a team together and joined the league. It was a great excuse to have to go "practice" all the time. It's also when I learned all about the "lubrication" requirements a man has in order to bowl properly. But I was yet to turn 21, so GreggyM had to buy all the beer (and for that service, he rewarded us by drinking most of it, too). He was our captain, and also our big beer-bellied dood that every successful bowling team in Barfalo requires.

So anyways, one night GreggyM had had about two pitchers of Bud during the course of the match, and he was feeling a bit too lit up to drive back. He had driven two of us there, though (we lived next door to one another in the dorms). So he tossed me the keys and said, "CherkyB, congratulations. You drank the least of us, so you get to drive the IROC back."

I know, you're shocked. If you're one of my parents, you're shocked because I said a bit back that I wasn't 21, and here GreggyM is saying I "drank the least of us." If you're anyone else, you're shocked because you can't imagine anyone ever saying such a thing to the old CherkyB.

It was, however, true. I was actually trying to concentrate on my game that evening, so I'd had maybe a total of 16oz of beer throughout the whole three games.

So we hopped in the IROC-Z and headed back to campus. It was raining. A fairly light, though steady drizzle. Standard Autumn weather in Barfalo. Now, I had never before driven a big-engined rear-wheel-drive muscle car with Goodyear Z-speed-rated Gatorbacks before. I had ridden in this particular one at 132mph once, but never driven it. My family owned nothing but front-wheel drive family sedans.

We got to a little intersection on campus where I had to turn left. I had been trying to drive carefully, given the rain and all. GreggyM is sitting next to me, all drunk and happy, and he says, "Why are you babying it? Punch it and see how she corners!"

OK.

Weeee!!!! We're spinning! I ended up doing only a 270, and happily got it stopped about three inches from the big, cut-stone curbs that graced the campus roadways because of some payola deal between the stonecutters union and the state (SUNY campuses were not allowed to have concrete curbs back then, believe it or not).

Sometimes, the weather provides unexpected fun.

And terror.