Playing 501's

I went to a friend's house on account of an overdue loan. Didn't really expect to linger long, the whole business was in-and-out. For some reason, though, they offered me coffee on a hot and balmy evening, so I stayed. Then, it hit me, they had a dart board in the garage, complete with scoreboard. Interesting...

Now, darts is another game familiar to me only because my dad used to play it. We had a dartboard at home, in fact, though through the years, it has been reduced to a mere artifact to provide color to an otherwise bland wall. Tragic as that may sound, it was entirely my fault. In college, I sold off my dad's darts in pursuit of beer and gin money. So without the darts, there was little use for the board, as you can imagine.

Back to my friend's place, the allure of the dartboard had me staring at it, literally at the bull's eye, which was in pristine, virginal condition. In a flash (which at my leisurely pace is anywhere from 2-5 minutes), I had my fingers pulling out the darts, which were scattered across the board (the last player was a really poor mark, I'm guessing). I walked past the black line on the floor and surveyed the distance between me and the red triple-20, spent time finding my best footing without leaning too much across the line, and let the first dart fly. I missed by a centimeter, I still had it, great! The next two darts found themselves hurled in a nice little array, precise, but a little off on the accuracy. I needed practice, obviously, but not bad after a long lay-off.

So it's an omen.

You see, the past 3 weeks, I've been spotting this bar at the Home Depot Center which features dart tournaments every other night. I didn't fancy joining it, of course, but was mildly amused that there was a place these 'darters' could still play. I was watching one of the players fiddle around with his darts, interchanging shafts and flights, trying get the right balance. Sure, he probably could have spent all that time doing other more productive things, but he looked like he was having a fairly good amount of fun.

Now my mind's all made up, I'm going to the folk's place and stealing that dartboard (conveniently, the folks are on vacation). Then I'm buying darts, maybe a set of cheap tungsten ones, then get about 3 sets of flights and shafts to play around with.

Hmm, the problem now is, where do I set up the board?