As some of you may have realized by now, Ruth and I have gotten somewhat addicted to the game of Disc Golf. I take most of the blame for this as I got introduced to the game many years ago before we got married. At that time, the closest course was 20+ miles away and, being a newlywed, I had better things to do with my time.

Anyway, fast forward 18 years, and a friend invites me out to play a local course that is within 5 miles of the house and the addiction begins again. Only this time, I invite my wife to play along with me. This is a great time for the two of us to get on the course and spend some quality time together away from all of life’s distractions.

So, now you ask, why all of this history and what does any of this have to do with that strange looking contraption pictured to the left? Well, you see, my wife is a little bit competitive. And while she can throw a driver a good distance (about 200 feet), her close range accuracy suffers. During one round I mentioned that they sell portable baskets (what you thought was a strange looking bird feeder is actually a disc golf practice basket)that we could set up in our back yard that would allow the both of us to practice our short games. Ruth was delighted with the idea and I ordered the basket that evening. With practice, Ruth figures she can shave 10 strokes off of her score by making the close range putts she misses now.  This will also allow us to spend time practicing when we are unable to get to the course because of my work load or because of the weather.

By the way, the two discs in the basket at the left is a very rare sight. I made both of these puts just before taking the photo….

Farewell old friend. You were my first, but not my last. In my memory you will always reside. Though you had been recently retired expecting never to fly again, you were never forgotten. Recently pulled out of the drawer, you again reached for the skies. With laser like accuracy and distance unexpected you again became my work-horse. Hyzer, anhyser, flips and flicks you flew bravely along. To again teach an old dog new tricks.

Then came that fateful throw. Water down the right side of the fairway and a grip lock toss in which you sailed far beyond your means. With a single minded purpose, you headed towards your watery demise. Ignoring the screams of “look out” and “Oh No, not again!” you determinedly flew on.

Running to the shores edge to wish you goodbye, you were vainly trying to stay afloat. A myriad of rescue efforts were launched that, ultimately, failed and you slowly sank to the bottom. With tears in my eyes, I bid you a fond farewell and hope, someday, you will be resurrected again to fulfill your dreams of blue skies and long true courses and the days as a submarine become as a faded dream. So, to my trusted Valkyrie, I bid you a sad adieu.

The Champ is beaten!!!

Pssst, hey buddy, over here.  Yeah, you!  Can you take this story to my editor?  It seems that someone is trying to prevent me from filing it. Late night phone calls where no one is on the line. Golf discs with huge chunks taken out of them laying on my pillow. Even the tires of my scooter being slashed.  It just seems that some one does not want this story being told. You can??!!  Thanks buddy!  Please tell my editor that I am going undercover, but that I will file additional stories when I can…. I really appreciate it!

(AP) Snellville – Many of my faithful readers have been wondering what has been happening in the competitive world of championship disc golf during this off season. Stories of “the Champ’s” late nights and wild parties have been abounding, however, the truth is much more startling.

It seems that the champ has been secretly developing a new weapon to use against his competitors. Every time this reporter got close, the goofy smiles disappear and a sinister looks arrive. Trying to get onto the courses during practice rounds was proving to be quite difficult as every time I showed up, he was just leaving… or vice versa.  One wonders what the champ has up his sleeve.

Rumors were flying during the weekend that the Champ was going to be travelling to a nearby course to take on his two closest rivals, “the Gub” Gubser and “Big Gun” Van Vranken. With this intel in hand, I was finally able to catch the champ in action. In order to be unseen and observe the action I had to take on a disguise that would be unnoticed on any disc golf course (see picture inset left).

The round started off relatively early in the day with our three competitors trying to get warm prior to stepping to the first tee. “the Gub” stepped up first and fired a laser shot through the trees giving him an easy birdie on the first hole. “Big Gun” stepped up next and fired another laser through the trees also giving him an easy birdie. The champ confidently strode to the first tee and threw a rocket shot right into a tree with a loud THWACK! This left the champ with a difficult and awkward second shot to the basket which the champ pulled off to save par.  From here on out, it was “big Gun’s” day as he made shot after shot while the Champ chopped his way through the trees. At the end, the champ was defeated by 9 strokes and lead the other two players to give him a new nick name…. From now on, he will be known as the “defective woodpecker”.  ( this reporter was told afterwards that it was due to the champ hitting many trees only once..) It should be noted that the “woodpecker” tied “the Gub” on this day. During an after-match interview “the Gub” said that this was due to the “woodpecker” being a ‘Russian Tourist-Playboy with a big camera gun”. It’s okay, I don’t understand it either!

Later in the day, the “Woodpecker” played another course with “Petal” Rose. I once again donned my disguise and followed the action. During this match, the woodpecker played a tremendous match edging out “Petal” by 1 stroke on the first 18 and by 2 stroked on the next 18. It was at this time that I think I figured out the “woodpeckers’ secret weapon… AN AXE! The course he was playing on had no trees! Apparently the “woodpecker” has been living up to his name and clear cutting the course. I wonder what Green-Peace will have to say about this?

Editorial Note : After receiving the above story, this paper has lost all contact with our reporter. Apparently at the end of his 54th hole the “Woodpecker” walked over to the nearest trash can to throw away his water bottle and Milky Way wrapper and uncovered our hidden reporter. Witnesses describe our reporter screaming “Please don’t compact me!” as he was being dragged off the course. If you have information as to his whereabouts, please contact this paper or your local authorities.

For the past couple of weeks I have been having fun with the folks I have been playing disc golf with by providing “news” reports on our ongoing games. I thought I would include a couple of them here prior to posting my next one.

Posted on 12/22

Mike Wimps Out!!

(AP) Snellville – Legendary (in his own mind) disc golfer Mike McKennon stunned the sports world when he announced that he was not going to be playing a round today. Unconfirmed reports have him stating “it is too stinking cold to play”, leading to speculation that he is a wimp. When trying to reach the champ for comment his lawyer had this to say “reports of my client huddling in bed with his blankey and a hot drink are simply not true!!”   However, photos surfaced later in the day showing him in his woolen footie pajamas and huddling under an electric blanket. Speculation indicates that he might try and play again tomorrow when the temperature returns to a more normal level.

Posted on 12/22

Mike Plays Again!!

(AP) Snellville – Our Bureau chief in Snellville Georgia reports that renowned disc golfer Mike McKennon will be making a surprise appearance at Lenora Church Disc Golf Park at 2pm today. According to his press agent, Mike intends to take on all comers who dare to show their faces at this time.

Posted on 12/23

Does the Champ Cheat?

(AP) Snellville – Today’s sporting world was rocked by allegations that Champion Mike McKennon rigged his ‘open’ challenge by engaging in germ warfare. According to challenger Bruce “The Gub” Gubser “The Champ is a poser because he had inside information that his primary challenger was Ill”.  Mike’s legal counsel responded forcibly “we categorically deny any wrong doing in this case and the vials found in his garbage were planted by unscrupulous people.”  Another unnamed competitor also questioned the mysterious absence of challenger Paul “Petal” Rose citing how curious it was that the “Petal” had to be in Dahlonega two days before Christmas.

With the controversy overshadowing the match, Mike faced his challengers of Bruce “The Gub” Gubser, Phillip “Woodwind” Gubser, and Bob “Boomer” Felts.  The match was going great until hole 10 when “The Gub” started to complain of a mystery illness and faded out of the competition by hole 13.  “Boomer” fell of the competition next when his putter quick sticking to the chains. Eyebrows were raised when a foreign substance was found that was later identified as WD-40. When asked how this could of possibly happened “Boomer” responded “all I know is that I set the bag down to make a drive and then the putter quick working”. Seeing all of this happen “Woodwind’s” confidence appeared shaken and by hole 16 he was done. This allowed the champ to squeak out a close victory.

After the match, tourney officials demanded an immediate rematch to be taken place immediately upon the recovery of the ill participants and the disclosure that the champ was wearing illegal clothing (presumed to be his footie pajamas). Mike responded that this was fine with him and that he will be spending the next few days working on his game to be in top form for this match. He also announced that he will be on the links on December 24^th at 1pm for any who would like to learn from his expertise.

Editorial retraction – the reported wrongly attributed “boomer” to Mr.. Felts. His attorney responded with a letter demanding that this nick name be removed as his client was is not now, or ever has been, a girl. This newspaper sincerely apologized to Mr.. Felts and his family and will hence forth use his appropriate nick name of Bob “the Bomb” Felts.

Posted on 12/26

The “Champ” is injured!!

(AP) Snellville – The champ held an open practice session today at Lenora Park that welcomed all comers. In attendance was “The Bomb” Felts, “Woodwind” Gubser, “The Gub” Gubser along with the champ. They were joined by newcomers “Ravaging” Ruth McKennon, Connor “the Kid” Van Vranken, Gerrit “Big Gun” Van Vranken and rookie sensation Carolyn “Smiles” Gubser. 

The day started warm and overcast with a slight drizzle, which reflected the mood of the participants as it was revealed that the champ was fighting a groin injury. This intrepid reporter discovered that the problem was really that the champ’s footie pajamas were in the wash and he was missing that warm, fuzzy feeling.

Progress on the front 9 was slow until “Big Gun”, “the Kid” and an unnamed player decided to play ahead after 5 holes.  By hole 9 “Smiles” was starting to frown and decided to drop out as well. This left the champ in a great position to still carry the day with little trouble.

As this was a warm-up match, not much else is recorded other than the odd breezes that seemed to affect all of the competitors other than the champ. Much discussion was had among the competitors as to the champ’s good fortune leading the champ’s wife to mutter “I guess I should not have served him chili last night”.

During the post match press conference, the champ again invited all comers to head out to Lenora Park again on Saturday the 27^th at 1pm for another shot at the champ.  This intrepid reported will be there attempting to uncover the champ’s secrets and to find his secret stash of WD-40.

That I am sure Ruth is glad that this was not around when we got married. Hmmm, I wonder if she will let me use if for our 25th anniversary?

As discussed in my last blog entry, our dryer is out of order due to a massive amount of water in the vent line that caused a lot of water damage to our downstairs ceilings.  After spending most of Saturday diagnosing the problem, I decided to contact a friend of min,e who teaches construction classes at a local community college as well as works for Habitat for Humanity, about taking over the job of making the repairs. Fortunately for me he agreed.

So for the last couple of evenings, we have been in demolition mode with tearing out parts of the ceiling and removing all of the offending vent line. He is replacing this with aluminum tubing instead of the builder installed flex-line that was initially used. The biggest challenge so far is running this fixed tubing in spaces where flex-line was used and dealing with a new 4 inch pipe instead of the 3.5 inch that was first there?  The answer to this and many more questions you didn’t want to know will be upcoming in a separate entry. But for now, the photo at the left shows a small part of the debris created so far! Our hope is to have the dryer working by the end of today. I must say that Ruth is looking forward to that as well as our pile of laundry is not getting any smaller!

I hope I have your attention with the above title. Now this would not be a problem if I was outside, but when one is standing in one's bathroom you just do not expect this. On Friday Ruth was doing our laundry and we developed a leak in our downstairs bathroom. Water was dripping from our venting fan and onto the commode and the floor. Now, understand, this was a significant amount of water, not just a little dribble.

So, bright and early Saturday morning, I started a water hunt.  Pulling the fan out of the ceiling produced a fair amount of residual water to drop and led me to believe that this was a water leak from the washing machine (presumably the drain). As I cannot see any part of the drain in this location, I head back upstairs to pull some drywall from the back of the laundry area to check the water lines and the drains.  And, much to my surprise, it is perfectly dry.  Hmm, now what.

Heading back downstairs to contemplate the situation, I decide to run a load of laundry to see if I can see the problem happening. In goes a load of darks and 45 minutes watching it run (doesn't that sound like a fun weekend activity?) and..... NOTHING!  There was no leaks that I could decide.  Hmm, so the laundry goes in the dryer as I contemplate the situation again. After about 45 minutes, the leak develops in the same spot. Now, there is only one thing left to do.... Pull down the ceiling and take a direct look (photo left. You can see the bathroom vent toward the bottom of the photo.)

Now for the funny part, the leak was not caused by the washing machine (or any other plumbing) at all. It was caused by our dryer.  The hose that vents the hot moist air out of the house had gotten mostly blocked with lint and this was catching the moisture from each load. At some point this got to be more than the flex line used to duct it could take and it failed. If you look closely in the photo (toward the center) you can see the failure in the line and this allowed the moisture that was captured there to lead out onto the roof.  Funny this is, this vent line failed in at least two other places at the same time. The roof in the garage also shows sign of water leaks along the direct path to the outside vent.  So, no we get to take the ceiling down in many different places and completely replace this line. This time I will replace it with venting that is not the crappy flex-line stuff so it can be cleaned occasionally.  Hopefully, until I can get it repaired, we will have enough clean laundry so we do not have to find a laundromat before then.

There has been a lot rattling around in my head for the last couple of days, but none of it rising to a blog post on it’s own. So I am going to place them all here in their own little sections. Be fore-warned, these are the musings of a tired man and they will likely make little, if any, sense.

When does a hobby become an obsession?

I have talked on my blog in the last couple of posts that I have taken up the sport of disc golf. It is something that really relaxes me after a hard day at the office or just as an excuse to get out of the house on a frequent basis. Over the last couple of weeks, Ruth has gotten into it with me and this makes for some nice couple time away from it all and allows us to talk about a lot of things without the distractions that being in the house offers.

However, there is a down side to all of this. Because it is a sport and Ruth and I are both really competitive in nature, we have been working really hard to get better at the game. In a lot of ways it is like ball golf (just cheaper). A manufacture releases a new disc that promises “More Distance” or “Better Control” and you are tempted to run right to the store and pick one up. After all, who doesn’t want better distance and control? Fortunately a new disc only costs about $10 and playing a round is free. I can easily see the addiction growing. Does anyone know if there is a 12 step program or a disc-golfers anonymous?

Disc Golfing in the wind

On Wednesday evening, Ruth and I hooked up with a friend to play a round of golf. I should of known that this was going to be a challenge as the wind was gusting to about 40mph and had a fairly steady breeze at about 20. One of the things learned was the wind does crazy things to a disc when it is in flight. For example, on one hole, Ruth was attempting to putt out a hole from about 10 feet. She threw her disc and just as it left her hand a big gust of wind came right at her. This lifted the disc about 20 feet in the air an held it there for a couple of second, hovering.  It was one of the most amazing things I have seen. Unfortunately for Ruth, this caused her to miss the putt, but not the laugh.

India’s Enron

When I was in India last year and attempting to build and IT staff for the company I work for, we were constantly vying for the same candidates as Satyam. This company is an IT outsourcer that provides services to the global work force. Yesterday the company announced that they had been over stating profits and understating costs for the last several years. As long as the economy was good and more and more money was pouring into India no one was the wiser. With the new world economic situation, the cooking of the books has finally come crashing down on this company. Yesterday it was announced that it had failed in a spectacular fashion.

These has a couple of really huge impacts to the Indian economy. Firstly, due to the falling dollar overseas, many American companies have been rethinking the staffing in India. Along with the recent terror attacks in Mumbai and the safety issues of their work force, this was a 1-2 punch.  Now with this failure, it will make the world rethink India as a sourcing location. This will be a huge blow to that nation as much of it’s capital comes from foreign investors.  We will have to see how the Indian government reacts to this situation.

A new era?

President Elect Barack Obama gave a speech to the world yesterday talking about the current financial crisis. As expected, he announced that the only way to recover from years of mis-management was for the government to step in and take a more central role. My confusion comes from the fact that the government was the central cause of the current crisis. What makes him think that more government is the solution?  However, he is living up to his campaign promises so far….  Change!  How long will it be before the American people realize that change for change sake is a recipe for disaster?

Maybe what some of the pundits are saying is true. It may be time for the states to consider a new constitutional convention and to take a look at our system from the top down and re-align with our founders vision.

The Gaza strip

As I have been watching the news over the last week about the Israeli troops going into Gaza I have been amazed at how slanted most of the news reporting is. I keep hearing (and reading) over and over that the world demands that Israel immediately cease fire and pull out. Yet for the months (and years) that Hamas and other pro-Palestinian groups keep firing rockets into Israel and no mention is made. I liken it to a schoolyard bully who keeps punching a kid day after day after day and when the kid has had enough and fights back gets in trouble for it. There will be no hope for peace in the region until the world hold BOTH sides accountable for their actions.  To me, there is no difference in a single rocket attack or full out military action. One begets the other.

Well, enough ramblings for one day…. Now to go find my morning caffeine!!!

In yesterdays post, I mentioned getting one of my better scores on hole 13 at Lenora Park.  This hole is a real pain in the neck for those of us (like me) that throw right handed and back handed.  The natural flight of the disc for this type of throw is to go straight for a while and then break to the left to finish it’s flight.  Not a good thing when faced with a hole like this that needs a right hand break to reach the hole.

The picture above is from Google Earth and shows this hole. The white rectangle on the right is a tee pad for the hole and the red X is where you want the disc to go. I have shown three different routes that you can take to reach the hole. The yellow route is a fairly straight shot that is really tight through the trees. I have spent many, many weeks attempting this path and have hit every tree along the way. And if you hit a tree the disc typically lands right behind another tree. This often leads to 4s and 5s on this hole. I would say my success rate with this path is less than 10%.  The blue route is a longer path and I typically take this one when I do not want to take a risk. It almost certainly guarantees a 3 on the hole, but there is very little chance of anything else. The green path is the one I am trying most recently. While there are trees along this route, there is also greater room for error. The last couple of times I have taken this shot I have been mostly successful with a handful of 3s and a few 2s. I think I will keep working on this path for a while.

I guess this is one of the things I love about this sport. It is a great time to get out and walk through the park and get some exercise at the same time. Along with the mental challenges trying to figure out the best line for your ability makes the game a lot of fun. The other thing I am really enjoying with it is that I can spend time with Ruth on the course and we are not competing against each other. Just our previous best scores.

For the last couple of days I have been fighting an illness. This has left me week and not feeling up to doing much but sleeping.  Unfortunately, I had to prepare a sermon to be delivered today. So, using the last of the energy I possessed, I stepped in front of the congregation and delivered a short sermon on Proverbs 1.

We had planned on staying afterwards to help take down the Christmas decorations, but I was exhausted at this point and decided to go home and crawl back into bed. After a couple of hours, Ruth mentioned how pretty it was outside and maybe we should go play a round of disc golf in the nice weather.  I reluctantly agreed and grabbed the discs to head out.

The park we play at is mostly open and and long. I have been playing this course primarily for several months and have always struggled with my accuracy. While I can throw long when needed I usually have no idea where the disc is going to land. Feeling somewhat weak today, I decided to concentrate on accuracy over distance. And surprise, I threw one of my better rounds...

This is one of the best games I have thrown in a long time on this course. I guess what Ruth said after the round is correct. Smooth is good.

One interesting note on this round is the 2 on hole 13. This is a left to right hole that is through some trees. I have done my lumberjack impression on this hole more than I care to remember. I don't believe there is a tree in this section that I have not hit with a disc. Today I tried a new route and a new disc on this hole and wound up placing the disc within 5 feet of the hole!  I was very excited!

Now all I have to do is remember how I did this for future rounds. I just hope that I don't pay for this little bit of fun today when I wake up in the morning and have to return to work.

I think I see a market for used kilts!

In my last post on August 1st 2008 I mentioned that I was done blogging for a while. I had come to the end of things I thought I wished to say.  However, new things are starting to happen in my life that has sparked the creative juices flowing again that need a place to be expressed.

So I will be posting to this blog again. Likely not as often as before, but hopefully once a week.  So for those of my readers that are still subscribed, Happy New Year and I hope that the upcoming posts do not bore you too much!