One Grand Disc Golf Tour

03-20-10

3 of us had slept in a 1 room apartment with a fold-out couch, two air mattresses and 2 black cats with a history of kneading upon them late at night until they spring a leak. It didn’t happen this time, but that didn’t keep us from laying awake most of the night waiting for it to happen.

Up at 7 and out the door around 7:30. We went almost directly to Amelia Earhardt park to give Chad a taste of some south Florida disc golf. We pulled in and there was litter all over the park. Every tee sign we saw from the van had nothing discernable written upon them. We decided that we should just get to Home Depot and head to the course.

At the depot, we (I really) realized that I had made a gr0ss miscalculation in regards to how much lumber the anti-Chrysler would bear. It’s a friggin soccer-mom vehicle, not a tough and rugged work van. Luckily one of the guys from the reservation was only 15 minutes north of us and came down to help us out with his truck, which had two 24” rimmed tires in the back. I took the tires. He took the lumber.

We had to switch vehicles because his tires would hit the fender walls on a bumpy road to the res.
Once there, we unloaded the wood, got our cabin and took our wimpy little home-made sandwiches to the course.

We had to tweak about 5 holes and create some new walking paths as the entire flow had changed from the last time I had been here, which took longer than expected (a recurring theme in course design/building/maintenance)

Keeping the pace, we went back to the gym and got concrete in the buckets and dropped in the sleeves.

Without even cleaning up, we hauled ass about 35 minutes north to the po-dunk town of Clewistown (literally going into town for supplies) Chad didn’t fully care for my choice of groceries so we had to get more.

We had intended to go back to the gym to assemble the baskets, but since neither of us slept very well the night before, by the time we got back, we were toast.

The lights were still on at the gym for us to do the job, so we at least had to go and turn them off.

Tomrrow: If we pull off everything on our list for tomorrow, it will be a most impressive day. Maybe, I’ll even come back and add photos to THIS entry. (But don’t hold your breath)

03-19-10

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before (as I tend to flog those dead horses into glue) I’m appalled at the amount of clerical work that goes into getting courses into the ground, and trying to keep track of what to buy and what we spent once we’ve bought it. Phone calls, emails, letters, bills, legal documents…

But hey, I’m still eyeball deep in disc golf! So, I’ll take it and run, baby!

Bottom line, it’s working! (Thanks in no small part to my partner, Chad Greer, who is not only a talented graphic artist, but also website designer and far better at organization than I’ll ever be)

We did an install last week and we’re gearing up for the next one in S. FL. And another one just went to bid earlier in the week. I was hoping we would have heard if we were outbid by now. And I just finished designing one into a master-plan…got to add some topo, rearrange tree and bush plantings etc.
Plus, we have another 18 holer slated for central Florida which may take a while but, it will happen.

Our club treasurer, Daryl Siddon, is an incredibly focused guy who went waaaaaaaay out of his way to scan ALLLL of the scorecards from this year’s Orlando Open as well as last years, so that I can enter certain players scores into a “Hole-forecaster”, which is a tool used to gauge how well the scores reflect certain skill levels against par. I’ve never used one before and will probably need some guidance from the crazed mathematician who also devised our player rating system, Chuck Kennedy.

This process is all that stands between me and attaining “Senior Designer” status. Getting to it won’t be all that convenient though. It’s not the most immediate necessity.

This coming week’s project will be the Indigo disc golf course at Big Cypress Seminole reservation in the Florida everglades. Loosely translated… most of you will NEVER find your way there (in some cases..even if you TRY). But it just doesn’t matter. It’ll be a fun recreational course where the recreation director, Stan Frischman, can FINALLY take his kids out and play disc golf without having to load them on a bus to Ft. Myers or wherever.  There will be two sets of tees so even an accomplished player will have to work a bit to score well.  Hopefully, alt pins will go in later.

I’ll actually have to tweak a few holes on the fly because, when I went there to design it, we spent a full day on a property that we decided to NOT use. I had one day to get a 9-holer planned out before zipping off to make another meeting with a parks director in west FL. Now, after drawing up a map of the plans, I’ve come up with a better flow…in theory. Sunday’s first task is to put the theory into action.

I’ll go into it more next time since that’s all I’ll be thinking about for a few days.

After loading the van up this am and getting a mop chop, I went to Turkey Lake to grab some supplies and played a bizzaro round on T2’s blues. I started off smokin’ (Birdied the very tough par-4 #1 and deuced 2) then started chokin’ (bogied 3 of the next 4) bagged an easy bird and a missed easy bird, then my putt started pokin’ (the chains, that is) with a BIG putt (40’) on 9 & 10 (45’) a crazy roller upshot birdie-3 on 11, a blow-by drive on 13 with a 35’ return, a park-job on 14, a 20’ around-a-tree deuce on 15, a chain-tickle from a ridiculously restricted 60’r on 16, an upshot park-job birdie-3 on 17 and a disc-appointing 3 on 18. To come back to –7/53 after being –2 after #2 and then +1 after #6. Yup, that’s bizzaro all-right.

I also tried out the new Gold #7 tee. The drive was clean but I hit wood on the next two throws, leaving me a 60’r around a tree for a par, which I hit. But it didn’t count as I was playing the blues for score.

Tomorrow: We’ll bail from Orlando late afternoon and head to Miami beach, where Chad’s buddy, a CPA, will help us set up our books properly. Sound like a fun way to spend a Saturday night? DON’T TELL ME I DON’T KNOW HOW TO PARRRRTTTEEEEE!

03-12-10

Spent the morning going through some paper work as it continued to rain all morning.

Hit the P.O., bank, gym and then to the park (still raining) to unload the R-A-C baskets etc… but, I had to rearrange the storage area a bit.
By the time I got finished, Chad didn’t have time to get together to work on biz. As it turns out, he has a life.

Since I don’t, I stuck around and took care of a few things at Turkey Lake that I had been threatening to do for months. A trim near the tee of TLO #15 and a new Gold tee at T2 #7. A 555’ par 4 that should prove to be interesting. I didn’t throw it, partly because it was raining, but mostly because I didn’t have a single golf disc in the van.

The rest of the evening was spent listening to some great old 70’s and 80’s music while I made utterly futile attempts to balance my checkbook.

Tomorrow: Will probably skip handicap since the rowing regatta will have nearly 3k people and they will be destroying several of the fairways with their cars! I don’t think I can be around to watch that happening. So, we’ll probably get some friz biz done.

OK, don’t ask me how this happened but somehow, I managed to dump the post from the first day at Kulaqua.  So I’m listing it again because, well, I want it on here.  OK, I’ll add another photo to it.

Camp Kulaqua

03-09-10

In June of 2009, World Champion Disc Golf Design installed our first “Rent-a-Course” at Camp Kulaqua in High Springs, FL. (about 20 minutes north of Northside park dgc in Gainesville, FL.)

Just two days after the PDGAW in Kansas City, I put on 3 days worth of disc golf clinics for the Seminole tribe of Florida during their Summer retreat at Camp Kulaqua. This is a very nice 7th Day Adventist camp with other amenities such as, go-carts, horse back riding and an excellent aquatic facility.

The camp director started playing disc golf and, well… now he’s hooked. Some of the staffers are playing as well. So, after a couple of financial hiccups (right now, EVERYONE is having them) they found a way to make the course permanent.

We arrived Monday night and started by mixing quick-crete in buckets and dropping the sleeves in them to cure over night. We assembled the baskets in their brand new storage building.

This morning I was on the course at 8:30 and we started digging out the tee pad areas. We did more building up than digging and it took the better part of today to get them level.

Near twilight, we decided that our “after-dark” activity would be to disassemble the old refurbished Tri-States (temps) that were being replaced by shiny new DISCatchers (perms).

Each course design/install provides the opportunity to learn something new. Today’s lesson?…
At the time of installation, cover the top of the pole OR drill drainage relief holes at the bottom of the poles.

The Tri-States, which had been sitting in the ground since July had had plenty of time to collect fresh rain water and naturally refine it into a sewage-like liquid that smelled like an anchovie’s rectal cavity. This, of course, was only discovered as it freely drained onto our clothing and accompanying golf cart. Even though I’ve showered, the stench feels as if it is creeping into my soul. “Cool aqua” it was NOT.

We bailed out on disassembling the Tri-States even though I think I may be growing extra mutated appendages.

Tomorrow: build up and/or dig out tee areas, construct tee frames, bury some sleeves, drop in some targets…

03-11-10

Spent most of the morning in bed doing some writing and catching up on emails.

I responded to a post on the dg designers group about the tee pads on KC’s Blue Valley which are shaped like the respective fairways.  Cliff Towne (the man who keeps our PDGA directory in check) responded that I really found the “positive” side of such over-the-top efforts.  I told him that I just happened to be in “Dr. Jeckle” mode since I had managed to get some blessed sleep after an arduous day.

I took the NT test online. Oh boy… I own a rules book but have not a clue where it is. I referenced the online rules, but believe it or not, all but 1 or 2 sections from the “804” portion of the rules displayed no text whatsoever. I thought it might be a browser issue. I tried a different browser…same thing.

As a result of trying to clarify a rule that should have been in that area (but wasn’t) the test timed out on me. I looked down and instead of seeing #14 of 15 questions, I was back at #3 of 15! &^%$#@???
I had to take it again. This time a felt rushed, and rifled through it, half guessing at a couple of gray areas. I was credited with a wrong answer to a question that, frankly, I didn’t even SEE.

But I passed.

I called a lawyer we saw over a week ago who said he’d get back to me in a couple of days.
I called Master Lock co to find out if I can get another lock that is keyed the same for yesterday’s install. I had to leave messages for both.

It was overcast all morning and by the time I was ready to get out and unload the van, the skies decided to unload on us. After a couple hours of busy work, I started getting very antsy. So I decided that, if I hit a “locator” (a blind back roll to a catch.) on the first try, (My version of flipping a coin) I’d go see a flick. I hit it. I went. I am not a cheap date, even alone.

Tomorrow: Bank, gym, unload van, call a bunch-o-people, pay a whole bunch-o-people…

I’m no longer convinced that the number of readers exceeds or even equals the number of people writing this blah blah blah’g. But here it is nonetheless…

03-10-10

On our first visit to Kulaqua, (the temp install) we were put up in a kids cabin. All 3 of us surpassed the 6’ mark but had only 6’ long bunk beds with vinyl mattresses on which to sleep. These, of course, were made for the “Marines”, which is what we called the bed-wetters when I was a counselor back when the Bill Murray movie “Meatballs hit the theatres.

My next visit was after 2 days of hard driving following the 09 KC PDGAW. I did 3 days of kids clinics and was treated to a lovely, clean chalet with two bedrooms and full kitchen facilities.

On this 3rd visit, though I had requested another chalet for Chad and myself, we ended up with a sort of hybrid cabin. At first, we expected another kids cabin. But when we opened the door, there was a full sized bed clad with an almost tasteful bedspread. The room had carpet, a cushy couch, dressers, a sink and looked cozy. The shower had a decent head, not one of those sinister “mister” heads that sprays in a mist so fine that the water has to come out at roughly the temperature of the sun in order to dip to a comfortable warmth by the time it hits your back & shoulders. Any water that misses the back or shoulders drops down to one degree above crystallization by the time it hits the lower extremities.

We walked through to the “common room” where Chad would sleep and there was a couch and another set of bunk beds. Only after two nights on the couch did Chad discover that it was a pull-out bed.  D’oh!

One of the toughest jobs in disc golf course installation is concrete tees in remote areas. In this case, we had a bobcat operator driving buckets to each tee where two of us pulled the crete around and leveled it. We got the 2nd bucket driver to assist with that while I went around and put our not-patented-but-should-be rough surface on each tee and finished with an edger.

Another unintentional surfacing technique is to pour the pads in autumn when the oak leaves are coming down at a rate of roughly 1k per second.  Consequently, there will be literally hundreds of leaf fossil marks on each tee.

We replaced our budget “rental” signs with our full-color standard signs and dug out our old baskets and put in theirs. We had picked up 9 same-keyed locks, one of which wouldn’t open and we nearly didn’t get our check for the job because that one missing lock meant that the job wasn’t completed. We will need to go back to our local Home Depot and try to get a single lock that uses the same key. That should be a fun project. While we’re on the subject of locks… In our haste, we didn’t bring our set of keys for the temps and they couldn’t find theirs. Can you say ‘bolt-cutters’?

Bottom line? Our Rent-a-Course program is intended to give folks a chance to try out disc golf before buying their own course. So far, we’re 100%!!

Despite my whining, Camp Kulaqua is actually a very nice facility and the staff was eager to help us to get the job done.  We are very grateful for the opportunity to build a quality course for them. Thanks so much to all who were involved!

Tomorrow: Mostly bed rest. But I’ll need to unload the equipment and give my van’s ailing leaf springs a break.

I just receieved a post from the Orlando disc golf club saying that the Gator disc golf club is running a fun-draiser to finance a trip to the collegiate championships!!

Well… HERE’S A WAY TO EARN SOME $$$$ FOR THE CLUB.  But you’d better be QUICK about it.

World Champion Disc Golf Design is installing a 9-hole recreational course at Camp Kulaqua in High Springs, FL.

We are pouring the concrete (long) pads today (Wednesday, March 10th) starting at 9AM.

WCDGD will donate $50 to the Gator disc golf club, if we can get at least TWO people to assist with the pour.

We’ll donate $100 if we get 4 or more.  But come prepared to work!  The pour shouldn’t take any longer than 3 hours!

Please arrive by 9AM or call Gregg at 407 701-9058