Disc Golf: December 2005 Archives

We finally went to the venerable Pease Park for some disc golfing. I was in bad form today, so it was tough for me. There are a lot of trees and adjacent river areas (although very low from the drought). And I found many of them. It was so bad that when I went to retrieve a lost disc from the river, I lost my glasses in the river! Sigh. I blame John becase he lost his disc retriever. ;)

Still, it was fun. And I would do it again when I get better at this and have more control. We went to Huts for a good burger, onion rings, and malted shakes.

There was another warm and non-wintery day so another round of disc golf was played. Roxana joined us again. But unfortunately she did not wear her helmet like she was jokingly threatening. We played at Cat Hollow again.

And just to show that I don't always toot my own horn, here is a really nice throw by my partner John. It almost landed in the hole.

This time, I tried taking videos of everyone throwing their disc:

• Micheal Chapel
• Jon Grimm
• Roxana Grimm
• John Gravitt
• Adam Ruprecht
• Rehana

Ahhh.... The end of the year, and I only have to work one more day. Well, perhaps I'll break it up into two half days instead. So hopefully, I'll get lots of disc golf and gaming in. And today was a beautiful day out. At least temperature-wise and sunny-wise. The only problem was the wind. Which ranged from annoying to problematic to a freakin' nightmare.

I was pretty erratic today. I had some horrible throws that were way off course. And then I had some good approach shots. Like the one above. Where my second throw lies next to the other's third throws.

Another aspect of my erraticness was my water throws. One was easily retrievable by stick. The other needed a tool and a retrieval by John.

Another sunny and beautiful day for disc golf... err, except for the high wind advisory. And another new course for us to try. This one only had 9 holes, so we played it twice. Another good thing about the course is that there is no water around. I like that since I usually find the water with my sinking discs.

I came early and practiced. Since it was so windy, I used my arrow putter for the whole course. And it performed pretty well. Well, except for the time that it caught the wind and flew way off course. Or the time where it rolled and kept rolling far off course.

On the second hole, Adam had an amusing putt. He hit the goal with the disc and the disc bounced up into the wind. And then it came back to the goal, hit it, and bounced off a second time! Jon also had an amusing throw that kept no more than a couple of inches off of the ground for a ways. He must of had some help from ground effect wind. Either that or Star Wars hovercraft special effects.

Where you throw for the second hole, you have this cross. And for the ninth hole you have to avoid three large crosses.

Another day of disc golf. It was not that great of weather outside. It was overcast and cold. And we started later than usual since Mike and I went to see King Kong. And I pulled a brain fart, since I asked that we start at 3:30 rather than 2:30pm. This meant that I arrived quite early and had a lot of time to practice.

Roxana played with us for the first time. This meant that John and I teamed together since we were the only singles there. And we dominated. I was putting pretty well today. But it is not meant to be a competitive game. Rather, its an excuse to get outside and play with a group of people.

There were some injuries. I whacked my finger against a metal tree support stake. And poor Roxana was whacked on the head by a disc on the last hole.

Another sunny, beautiful, and warm day for disc golf. I was a little worried with the cold snap of the past few days. So much so, that I actually wore long jeans. This is an interesting course to drive to. The last couple hundred feet of the drive is down an eroded and washed out rocky road surrounded by dead plants just itching to scratch your vehicle.

Apparently, we missed a party. Its interesting that I tend to notice more of the environment in my effort to try and take a picture.

There were four of us. Mike wanted to do individuals. However, I was having none of that and chose Jon as my partner. When you play partners, you can throw from the best spot of the last throws. This is necessary as we are rather spastic in our aiming right now. I am sure that Mike is thanking me after the game since he managed to hit every tree on the course.

I was lucky in one of my throws. We were behind in the score and needed to catch up in order to stay competitive. And the teams were pretty balanced since we were tied at the 17th hole. On the 18th hole, Jon and I managed to win the game!

Another round of Disc Golf during an unusually warm day (80s for December in Austin). This time we went to Bartholomew. This park looked pretty run down and Ghetto. Unfortunately, the course is not well marked. The holes are mainly steel and missing the yellow rings on the top. The throwing areas are not clearly marked (except for a couple of holes). And there was construction going on in the park, so I think we were missing a hole or two. We searched for a while for the first hole and then gave up and picked one. After the second hole of doing this, Jon finally found another disc golfer and asked where the holes were. So then we found hole one and decided to start over.

On one hole, Adam throws his disc way up high in a tree. And Jon climbs up it like a monkey to retreive it. The best part of the game was one hole where we had to throw over a rather large section of a river. Unfortunately, Jon's disc goes right in the middle of the water. Now I am up to throw and, since I know Jon is going into the river to retrieve it, I decide to throw it over the water. And it makes it across! Woo woo!

Some of the off-limits parts of the course were the highway, fenced in construction areas, a building that contained a pool, and this crack house with an expert security system. And of course, we threw our discs into some of those areas.

After the game, we went down to Hula Hut for a good lunch. And afterwards, we drove over to Pease Park to buy some discs. We heard from John that there was a pro-shop in the park. And, to our amusement, this was it. But I did buy two more discs. These were an overstable and an understable long range driver, both weighing 174 grams. Hopefully, this will provide me with some scientific data. The are a lot of variables in a disc.