One Grand Disc Golf Tour

This month eBay charged ME $16.02 for having two vintage discs in a dormant store.

If I’m going to be charged for a store that has been inactive for about 6 months at least I paid $16.02 for a cool little coincidence that I can post to by blah blah blah’g.  Can I write that off now?

Miniac PDGA #1602

The grounds crew at Turkey Lake made another pass through the new fairway #1 of T2 and I’m starting to think that I’m not going to be (perceived as) nearly the jerk I was expecting to be.  The 2nd leg of the fairway is starting to take an interesting shape.  I’d say we need one more 2 hour work day to clean up a few more airborne vines and at least the same amount on the ground and we’ll have a first hole to remember.  As I’ve said before, it is a more aggressive challenge than I would like for the first hole, but I think it is evolving into a pretty tasty fairway.  Shown is the green (novice) tee.  A good first drive from the red or blue tee will land you in this area.

I’ve got a proposal to split into two for a project in S. FL, a Grand Opening to plan in Mt. Dora, an informal experimental temp course event to plan,  parks to look at, meeting follow ups,  attempts to fix problems with courses we started and the client finished, grant applications, book keeping. Discs to order.
Startin to sound like a real job?  Believe it!  We have all this without the benefit of getting paid for most of what we do.

12-25    Christmas Day
I drove the 2 hours down to Sarasota to have brunch with the family. After everyone else bailed out, I stuck around at my bro’s place long enough to check out his new BMW Z4 that he bid for on eBay and unintentionally won it.  Woops!

I detoured north to Clearwater to find T Murph who dyed a few discs for me.  I only had his home # and he wasn’t there.  So I stuck around Cliff Stevens dgc long enough to try out the new Innova Katana.  Yeowww,  Now THAT’S my kind of disc!   Very fast and a very neutral stability level.  A very long straight flyer.  (rubbing hands together…) excellent!!!

It was after dark, and I still couldn’t reach Murph.  I knew there was a player Christmas party nearby but could not remember where the house was.  Finally a player that I know, Don Rowden, drove by me and recognized the World Champion Disc Golf Design logo on my van and stopped to talk to me.  He gave me directions to the house.  Whew!

Murph was playing a kind of card game called “Apples to Apples”.  Oh, and he forgot to bring the discs.  When the game eventually ended, I drove him to his house and picked up the discs.  They looked great, so I gave him 3 more to do, took him back to the party…ate a little more finger food and drove the remaining two hours home.

12-26    Jam Time!
A left coast (WA) freestyler by the name of Rick Sader was in the Orlando area visiting family and we convinced him to come into town for a jam.  He has a very solid counter game and can also handle clock very well.  We played 3 hours without a break before his family came to pick him up.

To say I was sore afterward was akin to saying that Climo is a decent disc golfer.  I did the yoga thing and substantially less Aleve than I wanted, then more stretching.  I was afraid to lie down because I didn’t want to cramp up.  Eventually, I went to bed around 2AM.  At 4:30 am I decided to try a sleep aid.

12-27    Date Night
The sleep aid may have worked but it was hard to tell.  Around 9:30 AM I figured I may as well get up and go to play some Ultimate, since a little “hair-of-the-dog” treatment for my screaming legs and hips was about the only way to get them to loosen up.

Our Sunday AM league is a pretty laid back game of Ultimate since most people just want to throw the “hail Mary” pass, instead of, as one Ultimate player pointed out,  working through it and feeling the pain and suffering that Mary did.
Shortly thereafter, I personified that statement by laying out for a dive catch and tuck roll.  The roll wasn’t as smooth as in years past and it hurt quite a bit, but at least my next throw scored on the play.  Mercifully, the game ended a couple of plays later.

I got a call from Chad, my WCDGD partner, whose father plays disc golf and is in town.  We considered going out to Turkey Lake for a round, I was thinking it might be a good way to cool down from Ultimate without just lying down and cramping up.  But the weather forecast called for rain and they moved on to other diversions.  Instead, I stretched a bit, did some emails and fell asleep in my big fat chair after incessantly beating on my glutes and hips with my “thumper” vibrator.

Getting out of the chair was more strenuous than the horizontal layout had been earlier in the day.  I went for a short walk and decided to take a longer walk and work on my mini airbrushing since I am to be doing a segment on minis at Jam Camp, which was only a few days away.  Airbrushing wasn’t too painful.  Picking up the mini when I dropped it… was.

Got a “jones” for Chicken Lasagna, so I went to the local grocery store and picked some up.  Once it went in the oven, I decided to make a massive batch of gorp (nuts & dried fruit) for the upcoming trip.  I was shaking a container of dates to break up the clusters and the lid came loose.  I spent the next 20 minutes picking up tiny pieces of date all over the kitchen and dining room.  (Wow, that could be taken out of context)  That’s about the closest thing to a “date night” I’ve had in a while.
(Hey J.T. SHUT UUUUUUP!)

Tomorrow: Cleaning up my room and van so I can actually FIND the stuff I need to pack for Wednesday’s flight.

12-22-09

12-08
My biz partner, Chad and I met with the Seminole County parks board (just N of Orlando) about the possibility of installing a disc golf course. They suggested a dormant, but still mowed, golf course that runs through a nice neighborhood. We’re working on a plan of attack for them.

12-09
World Champion Disc Golf Design installed our 2nd “Have Course-Will Travel” Rent-a-Course at Lincoln Avenue Park West in Mount Dora, FL. Located about 30 minutes NW of Orlando. The course is situated in stand of mature live oaks (my favorite) directly across the street from Mount Dora Middle School.

The baskets will stay in the ground for 6 months, at the end of which, the city parks and recreation dept will decide if they want us to pull it out or replace it with new baskets. We plan to run a formal grand opening in January along with instructional clinics and hopefully a regular league.

The 9-hole layout is only 1,799 feet (hole average 199’) and is a bit annoying for a strong disc golfer because it feels as if you should be able to birdie every hole. In fact, most advanced and up level players ARE capable of a birdie on every hole, but doing so in-a-row won’t be easy.  I’ve yet to do it.

12-14
The Orlando area has TWO weekly night-golf events. The one at Turkey Lake is officially called “Wednesday Night Flights”, but I prefer Turkey Dark Meet. There’s another one on Monday, at an undisclosed location. Contact me for details (frivolist@cfl.rr.com).

12-19
We took another stab at a work day despite the holiday rush etc. I didn’t expect many people and I got what I expected. 2 people, other than myself, showed for the work day. (Thanks Marshal & Jaime) I skipped the handicap (several people showed for that) and just went straight to working on the course.  It took 7 hours but we got it done.

I’m pleased to have the work day at my home-course behind me. Not because of the actual work. I just hate to have a promise hanging out there that I’ve not been able to make good on due to extenuating circumcises …uh, stances.

Here’s what we are giving up at TL…

This area was completely over-grown with weeds and huge vines. I cleaned it up and once it got really nice, we had to move it because of the park’s master plan.

So we pushed the fairway off to the right (from this photo’s perspective)
Here’s the rec tee for the new fairway…

An ideal shot from the red or blue tee will give you this look.
Still plenty of clean-up to do but it should work out to be a nice hole in a few months.
Meanwhile, I’m prepared to be called the biggest jerk in disc golf (again) for a few months while people try to wrap their heads around a new challenge that I originally had no intention of giving them. It’s a far more aggressive fairway than I’d like to see on the first hole, but, as I’ve said before. It’s not my idea, I just have to make it work.

12-21
I met Jaime at a local 9-holer to disc-uss plans to run an informal tourney as a fund raiser for Rick Rupe, a Daytona disc golfer who was diagnosed with brain cancer. We want to try to bring out 9 more holes to make it a full 18. So we walked a few of the “planned” fairways to check for playability.

I stuck around for night-golf and ended up being odd-man. Irony? Maybe.
I shot –16 par and took the spoils! To be fair, we played 27 holes from short, long, short.

I uncharacteristically fell asleep before midnight. Of course, I awoke around 4:30 AM and after another hour of consciously staring at the inside of my eyelids, I gave up on sleep and decided to see what I could do with a few extra hours. You’ve just read the results. Oh well, it started out promising anyway…

Tomorr… uh, later today…
Christmas shopping, errands, WCDGD meeting

12-07-09

but first…

12-03-09
Leon, my roomie, and I buried Hogan in the backyard directly under one of my disc golf targets, where Hogan would lay down and watch while I practiced. He truly loved Frisbee. When he heard the chains he would always find his way into the back yard to watch us play. He was born at a course in Hogansville, GA, I won him in a disc golf tournament and his final resting place will be under the primary basket where I putt in my back yard.

I miss him far more than a grown man should miss a cat.

An hour or so later, there was a completely unexpected feeling of relief. In the last month, I had done little else than tend to Hogan’s needs and feeding schedule. While I’m sure that factored into it, the relief felt as if it emanated from the fact that he was no longer suffering. He lived a wonderful life and enhanced my enjoyment of life as much as any pet could.

I took the anger (from so many veterinary oversights and mishaps) and frustration (over the fact that I had done everything I could to no avail) and started focusing the pent up energy toward World Champion Disc Golf Design’s projects. Fortunately, Chad, my partner, has a couple of cats and had a clue what was going on with me during Hogan’s decline. It wasn’t fair to him that I was virtually useless during that time frame, but there was little to do with or about it.

I went to Mt. Dora, FL (about 30 minutes NW of Orlando) to meet with the guy running parks and rec to show him the layout and discuss a couple of contractual issues with the “Have Course-Will Travel” Rent-a-course program.

He signed it and the install looks like a “go” for Wednesday, Dec 9. It will be a shorter recreational track through a nice clean stand of mature oaks across the street from a middle school. He is planning a grand opening and some paid clinics for the kids. We expect that, at the end of the rental period, they will be more than interested in purchasing a course for another larger section of the park.

The next couple of days were spent working on our website and printed materials, buying more hardware for the MD install, and cleaning up a bunch of older baskets for the aforementioned install. We also got a call today from a S. FL company that we had spoken to a couple months back about a project, but they didn’t include a budget for a designer. Apparently our advice, combined with the package we sent, convinced them that a PRO was the way to GO. A very nice little pick-me-up on this difficult day.

Saturday 12-05-09
I had not been able to effectively get the word out that we planned on having a work day at Turkey Lake that effect 3 different holes on T2 and TLOriginal. The weather was pissy anyway, so only 4 people showed up for the handicap. Of those 4, 2 stuck around to work.

While I was making good on my commitment to make the necessary changes to the TL complex, Chad was taking off old stickers and cleaning up the baskets that we will be installing this coming Wednesday.

Sunday 12-06-09
A very good friend’s birthday today. After blabbing incessantly with her for a while, I got to work on our presentation etc. When the body could no longer stand to be idle, I ripped over to Barnett just before dusk to get in a quick speed-golf round.
I started on hole 9 with a bogey and finished the back at –6 with some BIG putts. I hit my final putt on #8 at –10 in 16:40 (or so)

Monday 12-07-09
Chad and I converged on Turkey Lake’s maintenance area in the AM and we continued to clean up and paint the baskets for our 2nd Rent-a-course project. It took all day. Long enough that the two guys who drove down from Jax, and asked if anyone could give them disc golf lessons…had left before I could find them and help them out. Figgers.

Tomorrow:
More work on the Seminole County presentation and then we’ll give it.

12-02-09

Hogan is gone.

Last week the specialist put in a feeding tube that worked well but it wasn’t really secured. While the tube stayed in place, the feeding end drug on the floor. Not that big a deal except for the cat box.

So when I went back the 3rd time, they gave me a mesh ‘sweater’ to hold it in place. I was against it but didn’t fight hard enough against it.
Sure enough, his claws got stuck in it over night and the tube ended up getting pulled out.

They wanted nearly $700 to put another tube into the OTHER side of his neck. I took him home over the weekend and resumed feeding him orally. It was messy but he was eating. I got about 3/4 can in him the first day (They suggested a whole can of prescription food a day) I got about 1/2 in him the 2nd day. Monday morning he wasn’t interested at all.

That morning, I found a vet that would do it for less than half the price and took him in immediately.

He was weak from not eating and they thought that the cancer may have spread to his lungs. He woke up very weak and wasn’t breathing well at all.

Monday night he sounded just awful. When I tried to give him food through the new tube, about 30 seconds into it, he would jerk spasmodically as if I had just fed him acid. A couple minutes later, he would relax and fall asleep.

Tuesday I took him back in at 9am. The held him most of the day trying to figure out what was going on to no avail.

Today he showed no real improvement. His breathing was a tad better but he still couldn’t deal with food.
I called someone that Leon’s sister suggested to come over and help him pass.

Holy crap that was hard! I’ve never had to do this to one of my pets and Hogan was my favorite of all time. I had the purest childlike love for him.

It got dark before we could take him outside and bury him so it will have to wait until the morning.

My room mate quoted Carlin who said “When you get a pet, you put heartbreak on layaway”. True. This is eating me alive, but I’d do it all over again.