Birthdays on the road surprise by nature—since a fixed site with invitations aren’t in the picture, one must stay open to the possibilities.  The calendar showed Betsy’s birthday in the middle of our bike tour and she chose to keep silent about it.  Alas, Joppe had our birthdates from our application forms and, per Road Scholar habits, presented Betsy with a sparkling candle on her dessert as we sang the birthday song.  Her secret was out.

A day earlier, we had spied a “Bowling” sign with an arrow near the Vigilante Hotel’s dining room.  Following the arrow, sure enough, we found a bar featuring a pool table and 4 bowling lanes.   Now, the bowling lanes offered a perfect way to celebrate a birthday.

It was largely do-it-yourself bowling, so we rented 2 lanes for an hour, invited the rest of the group to join us, and began knocking down pins.  No matter that most of us hadn’t bowled for years!  The pins were safe from any real damage as many balls took the easy route and dove for the gutter.  Plus the lanes featured an unusual pinsetter—a fine wire connected the top of each pin to its mooring on the pinsetter, so that when pinsetter raised for a re-set, the pins would dance like marionettes before being gently set back down into position.  The wire tether kept the pins from exploding into each other—or maybe that was the low rolling velocity on our bowling balls—so there was a dearth of strikes and spares.  In fact, with 8 bowlers, no one got to triple digits in score.

That had no impact on the amount of fun, and 76-year-old Hank, our SAG master for the bike tour, delighted for days afterward in reminding us that he scored the highest on his lane.

For Betsy, the impromptu party was a birthday bash, and one she will remember.