Rick, I had a nice talk with the general manager, and he revealed a couple possible issues. The bowling center uses one lane machine to apply the house shot, and a different lane machine to apply the PBAX shot. Each machine uses a different lane conditioner. Over the summer, they have been experimenting with Kegel Fire/Ice conditioner, not on the PBAX shot as I previously thought, but on the house shot. Unfortunately, the PBAX machine does not have the matching solvent for the other conditioner, and vice-versa. So, neither machine is optimally equipped to remove the other machine's pattern. Therefore, on any given night, expect remnants of last week's PBAX pattern, the mid-week house shot, and today's new pattern. It all became painfully obvious to me last week when the 32-foot Wolf was still playing nearly as tight as the week before's 52-foot Badger pattern. Badge-A-Wolf anybody? I am pretty sure the manager wants to fix it, especially with the much larger group of winter PBAX bowlers returning in a couple weeks, along with some top local bowlers who know better how the patterns should play. Me? I'm all in.