We made it to just north of Knoxville last night, figured we could stop there (was 2 am by then) and then play Admiral Farragut park in the morning, which is a fun little 9 hole course that you thoroughly expect to shoot 9 under on but never quite seem to, but it's raining pretty hard so it looks like our on-the-way-home round is off. A shame, I'm in the mood to play again and we don't know where any other courses are on the way (we sold all of our course directories and I remember how to get to Farragut). Alas.
Before we left Ann Arbor we stopped by the hotel to pick up the Disc Golf Hall of Fame stuff (which is pretty cool, we spent an hour and a half reading through it last tuesday and look forward to doing it again sometime) and Cam met us to resupply the van, not sure when we'll run into him again. Might not be until Miami.
The ride home is about 7 hours old now, I guess, and we've only had 3 different CD's in, they've been playing low in the background while we talk about gross domestic product and the largest city (square mileage wise) in the US (which ain't Jacksonville, by the way, it's Sitka, Alaska at 2,881 square miles, which is almost twice the size of Rhode Island) and whatnot. So Eddie From Ohio rode for a long time and now it's Dar Williams (I guess I'm in a folky mood, eh?). You know the old bar bet about the most easternmost point in the US that you never quite knew if it was true or not? Well, the straight dope is that the easternmost city is in Maine but the easternmost point is in Alaska because none of the settlements out there on the Aleutians are big enough to be cities.
Dude, check this out (and yeah, I really would say that if you were here listening to me), it's stopped raining so we should be able to play Farragut and I can be disappointed in my quest for -18 once again (and probably, to be honest, for double digits). Most excellent.
Oh, for the record, White Castle really sucks. I mean even compared to Krystal, which ain't heaven itself. (How does that quote go? I think it was the mayor of Boston back in the '70s who said, "It's not Camelot but it's not Detroit either."
Left Ann Arbor about an hour or so ago, worlds be all over now... the expected updates didn't materialize because we couldn't get to a phone jack on the nights I had time and didn't have time the nights I could get online. So you got nothing. Although if you read through the other update you could click on the DiscLife link and follow his updates, which were timely...
As you undoubtedly know by now, Kenny won again, which wasn't unexpected. Cam made a damn good run but came up a little short and ended up 7th when Scott Stokely scorched the Monster course on Saturday morning with a -11. Barry Schultz ended up second, 8 shots out. The big news was Dr. Rick (who is old enough to play not only masters, but grandmasters and who won the masters world championship in 1988 (I think)) who ended up 4th overall in open. The other big news was the payout, with Kenny taking home $7,303 (!) for first. I think the total pro payout was just under $94,000, breaking the old record by $44,000. Not too shabby.
Juliana won again, although this was pretty tight until the end. I think she was leading Elaine by 3 shots before the semis and ended up winning by 7.
James, who shot great on the week and qualified for the semifinals on Saturday, slept through his alarm clock and woke up at 7:45 for the 8:00 round (well, the players meeting was at 8, the round immediately after). James ran out the door and got to the course wearing flip flops and the shorts he slept in, sans shoes, bag, and glasses. He borrowed Tim Gill's shoes, his brother's magnet, picked up a few other discs on the way to his hole, and played the whole round that way, in a blurry haze with unfamiliar discs... and shot a +3.
Ryan played himself into pool A after the first two days and then played himself out of the semifinals in the last two holes, taking a 5 on hole 13 at Cass-Benton (that's the easiest hole on the course, in case you ain't been there...) and a 4 on 14 to end the round. Not satisified with this disaster, he proceeded to lose countless bets to yours truly on the final 9 and would surely have owed hundreds of ice cream bars had he not saved himself with technicality after technicality.
What else? Jesper Lundmark's 3rd place finish was the highest ever for a non-north american player, he's all of 19 years old.
The winner of the advanced division (Mike Sommerfeld?) shot a -11, which would've cashed in open. Nobody else from advanced was even close.
I have no idea how many people did it, and it certainly wasn't an earth shaking thing, but Barry Schultz birdied 18 on the original with an air shot in the final 9 (Climo had a putt but missed it).
Chris Voigt won the distance competition with a 570 foot throw that looked liked it was turned over too far and wouldn't come back, and then had to work its way through a couple of trees on the edge of the field. 2 of his other throws came out of his hand so early that people were scattering.
In my 2 rounds on Thursday I played with people from Sweden, Holland, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand. Of the 6 people I played with, only 1 was american.
We drove over 600 miles during worlds, getting to and from the courses.
On Friday before the fly-mart there was a gas main break by US-23 (which was the road we used to get everywhere) which caused this monster traffic backup in both directions, lots of people didn't get to the fly mart until 8:30 and then were forcibly removed at 10. The shortness aside, it was the best fly-mart I've ever been to. Lots of vendors and lots of people buying stuff... it just ended way, way too early. The tent was still essentially full when the kicked everyone out.
Todd's Tee-Bird got stuck 90 feet up in a tree and never came back down...
I lost 5 or 6 discs and had them all come back (I think), including my turnover roc that I lost warming up at the Campground course, I yanked it from tee #1 into the woods past the parking area and didn't expect to ever see it again.
They had the new Mach-V's at the Campground course and they got pretty mixed reviews (which is to say, an awful lot of people didn't like them). There were a lot of cut throughs and bounce outs, although I didn't have one personally. They did have a nice blue finish, though, which looked cool. Ed also introduced a Mach-III with a dome-top with a light in it for easier night play which was cool and a charging bag which makes charging glow discs a whole helluva lot easier and more effective. We're not sure if they're available yet or if this was just a prototype.
Dave McCormack was giving away prototypes of his new mid-range driver which was very fast and very overstable, smiilar to an MRX (except faster and, well, more overstable). Because I wasn't sure if I'd ever have the chance again, I threw one approach shot with it during my round... I'm pretty sure that I shouldn't blame my 220th place finish on that, however.
Derek Robbins lost his camera and red disc when he was freestyling on Saturday, if you know where they are, let us know...
The girls basketball camp left early so we didn't hear any more jokes from the coach.
Cam is playing the Lumberjack open and will be making his way south, playing some B-tiers on the way to Southern Nationals and then will be playing the Miami, Augusta, US Championships stretch before going to Texas for the Veterans Park Open where he hopes to win $2000 in the MaceMan Skins.
Beef and broccoli doesn't last well overnight in a dorm room.
We're not 174 miles from Cincinnati and Mt. Airy, if it doesn't rain. Hell, yeah.
The dorm must do something to a person's sense of peace and beauty because several people came by and told me my guitar noodling sounded good last night. A clear case of mass-hallucination.
The dorms used a suite-system so we shared a bathroom with two other guys, one of which introduced himself the first day. We never saw either of them again.
I didn't eat a single twinkie the whole week. In case you were wondering.
Ron Russell hurt his hand in the last round Friday and then dropped from 3rd place out of the top 20 during the semifinals on Saturday.
Innova had some crystal clear tee-birds for sale at the fly-mart and they went fast at $20 each, I wish I'd gotten one. I think they would've sold for $100.
Todd says the highlight of his tournament was throwing to the top of hole 16 on the toboggan course and getting golf claps from everyone in sight.
I got my first PDGA ace on hole 6 at Campground, got $30 for it, which is down a bit from the $87 Ryan got in Rochester. If they had a $5 ace pool I can't imagine any pro not being in it and that would've been about 440x5 = $2200. There were 25 pro aces which would've been $88 each. If you do that and add the $750 sponsorship money that would've been $2950 so $118 each.
The Japanese guy I played with looked a lot like Crazy John Brooks when he threw, which may not be a coincidence since Crazy lived there for a while (right?).
I got to talk rugby with the guy from New Zealand (Shane? Yeah, I think so)...
Local told me we ended up tied (he played masters) for the tournament.
Jo finished very well in Advanced women, as did Barrett White.
Me, Todd, and Brett all ended up buried in our respective divisions. I bet we beat a combined total of less than 70 players. Yowzas.
We got a flat tire on one of the trailer tires when we pulled into Hudson Mills for the first time, but have a tire plug kit that came in awfully handy.
We also blew a power steering cable on Monday when we were leaving Cass-Benton, a ford place which was right near there ordered us the part (from Chicago... what the hell?) and when it got there on Wednesday it turned out to be the wrong part, so the machine guy at the ford place did a macgyver job and got things working again. Which was much appreciated, have you ever tried to pull a 38' trailer without power steering?
Just pulled out of Mt. Airy in Cincinnati, I shot a +5 with 2 doubles and a triple. Todd shot a 72 and Brett shot a 75. Wowzas. As we got there I was warming up on tee #1 and there was a guy and 3 girls on hole 9, across the street. They were standing there watching me so I told them they were going to be disappointed, turns out it was their first time playing so, for the first and (undoubtedly last) time in my life I impressed someone with a 330 foot roc shot. Heh-heh. The one that was a smart-ass was pretty cute, too, shame she don't live in Georgia. Anyway, as we were leaving a guy comes walking up, said he saw us there and went out to the cash machine and hoped we'd lose a disc on hole 18... he had a PDGA number in the 3000's but we don't remember his name. If you see this, let us know your name... So anyway, we asked him if he knew anywhere to buy diesel because we were effectively dry and he led us to the promised land where we spent a whopping $59.50 on diesel...
Left Atlanta at 8 pm on Friday, meaning to drive for a few hours and then stop and get to Ann Arbor late on Saturday. We ended up driving all 13 hours that night and got in about 9 am… very tired. So we stopped by CJ's party store and dropped off a package and talked to them for a bit before going to hudson mills, where we bought our year long pass because it was cheaper than paying each time we went in. Todd didn't want to put the sticker on the window because he'd have to scrape it off later, so he got the poor kid to give him a brand new (un peeled off) sticker which he sat in the window. So we get there and before we do anything a security guard starts asking us what we're doing there. They are extremely strict about the no selling in the park stuff, we assure them we're not going to sell in the park. Then they don't want us taking up so many parking spaces so they ask us to move. That went on for quite a while before we finally ended up moving, except todd couldn't get the trailer backed into the space so… oh, nevermind. Essentially, they weren't particularly friendly even though we weren't trying to sell to anyone. Sort of like they were dealing with trespassers rather than guests.
Not to sound too negative about the parks, they're fantastic, huge and well kept. We played the Kensington Tunnel course today (after crashing last night at 7 pm and sleeping for 16 hours) in the morning in the rain and none of us shot particularly well (reflecting our true level of ability, probably). We headed for the Toboggan course after the rain stopped (and hit the coke machine on the way... which had a sign on it, Pop $1.25, Water $1.00) and, dude, it rules. We've only played 4 of the courses so far, but I have no doubt that the Toboggan is the best. Unfortunately it's coming out after worlds, so it's too late for you to play. There are only two holes on it less than 300 feet and a whole bunch of multi-shot holes, plus it's really hilly and really pretty and just generally kicks ass. Unless I'm forgetting something, there aren't any holes that I don't like (and I usually remember that sort of thing, so...).
So we're staying at the Eastern Michigan dorm (Walton Hall, if you're wondering), where we have a kick-ass parking spot for the trailer (although the truck's parked about three counties away). The phone jack in the room is shut off so we're doing this from the front lobby, where we've heard all about some fight a girl here for soccer camp or basketball camp or some such thing got into. The cops have been here for a couple of hours taking statements, so it must've been something serious.
They didn't give us any sheets for the beds (although they swear they'll have some tomorrow), and it's pretty hot in there. After an hour we remembered we have a fan in the trailer, hopefully that'll cool things off some. Otherwise we're sleeping with the door open to keep the air moving.
Johnny McCray and Bob Blair are across the hall from us, they're dumb enough to be waking up at the crack of dawn to play doubles.
That's enough. I'm going to sleep.
Oh, Todd says to mention the mosquitoes, although I'm pretty sure that's not necessary, there's enough of 'em that you'll probably have been bitten a few times just by reading this damn page.
Todd also just said something about the number of tires on the trucks, if you care, ask him.
This basketball coach who's here for the camp just told us a joke:
(George "Baby" Duncan)
There was an opening for a job at the CIA and they had the field narrowed down to 3 applicants: two guys and a girl. So the interviewer says to the first guy, "Here's a gun, your wife's in that room right there, I want you to go in and kill her." So the guy said, "I love my wife, I can't kill her," and the interviewer tells him that he's not the right man for the job. So then the interviewer says to the second guy, "Here's a gun, your wife's in that room right there, go in and kill her." Well, he goes in there and after about five minutes of silence comes out and says, "I just can't kill her," and the interviewer tells him he's not the man for the job. So then he says to the woman, "Here's a gun, your husband's in that room right there, go in and kill him." She takes the gun and goes into the room, he hears gunshots going off and windows and furniture breaking, all hell breaking loose for about five minutes. When she finally comes out she says, "You should've told me there were blanks in the gun, I had to kill him with the chair."
'night
Oh, and since you're silly enough to read through all that crap, I'll point you to the site for online scores and various tidbits (which undoubtedly won't have the excitement of my page, but hey...).
