Another hot day of disc golf at the usual Friday location of Old Settler’s Park. Normally, it is just myself and John that play. But since it is a holiday, MikeA, Adam, and Roxana showed up! John was the only person to throw their disc in the water. However, it was in the small creek (that is slowly drying up), so it was retreivable. Adam found another disc sitting out in the open. It must have been dropped out of a bag.

Someone’s disc got stuck in the tree. We starting throwing water bottles at it, to knock it down. But Jon got impatient and climbed up to retrieve the disc (like he needs an excuse to get up there).

My team was on fire today. One of us would always throw a good shot. Adam and I usually throw the discs the same distance (and Jon for that matter). I seemed to throw the disc farther than usual today. I don’t know why. On hole 17, Adam threw first to the goal. He missed, but the next putt would be a sure thing. This allowed me to agressively putt. And I was able to sink it from 50 feet away!

Afterwards, we went to the Mexican Ice Cream place to cool off.

It has been a while since we played at the Lutheran Church. This course is much closer to Adam and Rehana, but it is tiny (only nine holes). There is a big parking lot and it is empty on Saturday (apparently not a day of worship). But I am A.R. about parking away from other cars (and taking two spots). So Jon gave me grief. He joked that another car would park by me even though I was pretty distant from anything. And guess what happens? Mike parks right next to me! This was his first time to the course, so he spotted my truck and parked next to it.

After playing at Old Settlers Park for so long, the holes here seem so tiny in comparison. I could use my putter for the whole course. On hole two, I can overthrow the hole with my putter. However, I usually stick with my long range disc since it gives me some more options for throwing styles. John recently discovered the “Thumb throw” where you hold the disc straight up and grip it with your thumb on one side and the fingers on the other and throw it like a baseball. You can throw it high over the trees. And it flies essentially straight (well +/- 20 feet). John used it for most of his throws off of the tee.

Speaking of tees, my throw off of tee 3 veered off to the right and landed at tee 4.

For lunch we went to Red Robin. I tried their taco salad which looked like a huge starfish alien. Not only is it far too much food for a meal, but they drizzle ranch sauce over it (200 extra fat-based calories). So I got them to substitute salsa for it.

Afterwards we drove down to King’s Hobby and browsed. And then off to The Gas Pipe on Burnett. We bought some more discs cause we keep loosing them, you know?

Adam joined us for the usual round of disc golf on Friday afternoon. It was hot out there and it was at least in the 90s. This is a bad sign for the comming summer. I hope to continue playing Fridays. But we shall see though. On the first hole, Adam’s disc lands on top of the goal! Which, unfortunately, does not count as in and I gave him the first letter in PIG by sinking it myself.

On hole two, we lost John’s Wraith. We assume that it went into the creek and tried looking for it. Either it went into the deep (and obscured) part or it was laying somewhere on the grass and we never noticed it. But I did notice a set of colorful plastic flowers that were trampled into the mud. So ephemeral…

On hole four Adam loses his disc into the lake. Luckily it was floating on top and was buoyed by a pocket of air. But when we threw the retreiver at it, it promply sunk and dissipeared into the murkey depths. Adam went in wading but was not brave enough to go far enough in to get his shorts wet. So we called it a loss.

On hole 5, my disc veered off to the left and hit the road and skipped to the other side. Someone had spray painted E’s across the road (some of which looked like stick figure Klingon bird of preys). Who knows what that signifies.

Unfortunately all of this searching for discs caused us to skip three holes. We did throw at hole 18 and I some how slid my disc under a fence that protects a transformer.

It was late and I only missed a couple minutes of my Pilates class.

For our Saturday round of disc golf, we played at Cat Hollow after learning that the new course in Williamson county was still unfinished and was missing its goals. There were a couple of announcements on the message board (apparently, there are enough women around here to make a weekly mini).

Adam threw a disc at an angle high up over the trees and it landed, after punching through the canopy), in a playable spot. So I took a chance and tried the same style of throw. Unfortunately, my disc was a little too far to the right and did not come back over the course. It also failed to puch through the tops of the trees. Thanks in part to the pervasive clinging thorny vines that climb over trees and starve them of light. So, I called in the heavy-hitting tree-climbing Jon. He was able to climb up to the top, grab the disc, and throw it down. There was a little scare when the branch he was using as a foot hold gave way. But he held on and found another spot.

Adam had two interesting putts. From our location, the steep and downward flight path of the disc looked on target to hit the goal. But it missed and cratered the earth. When we got to the goal, we noticed how close it was. Only a foot or so away…

On Wednesday, surprisingly enough, I saw a note on Round Rock Gamers – Disc Golf that Jon was “working from home” and wanted to play disc golf. So I left a little bit early and we met up at Old Settler’s park. John Gravitt also showed up. I practiced a little bit and stumbled across this disc sitting out in the open field. It was a brand new TeeRex in the star plastic. It is unsurprising to find discs in this manner. When you throw discs, sometimes you loose track of where they land. You search in a likely area but don’t find the disc because it took an unlikely flight path and landed somewhere else. Case in point, John lost a disc that was thrown towards hole one and he later found the disc, unexpectedly, next to hole two!

Spring time brings with it some dangerous weather. Last night at around 3am in the morning, a fierce storm blew through. I could hear the wind really howling out there.

We were planning on attending The World’s Biggest Disc Golf event. We figured that it would be crowded in Zilker park, so we planned on playing in Kyle. There can’t be that many people in Kyle now, can there? Anyways, Jon, John, and myself were sitting at a crowded Starbucks at 7:15 am when Mike calls me. He says that the course is flooded and the event was cancelled. Apparently, some holes were underwater. Bah!

So we decided to play at Old Settlers. It is all buffalo grass. And we figured that it would be playable if we avoided the muddy tees. Apparently, the winds in that storm were worse than I thought. Many trees were had limbs torn from them.

Hole four caused us the most problems! Jon threw his disc into the water but it landed on the other side of the creek. Unfortunately, John lost two new wraiths in that same creek. Even though the creek is tiny, the water was all murky from the storm. And we could not find them.

At hole 10, I managed to get my putter stuck high in a tree. And that was not the only thing stuck up there! Besides the usual rocks, there was a metal tree stake! The tree now looks like a warrior Ent.

Went out to Old Settlers Park as usual. I started off having trouble finding two of my throws. But, I got into a groove and started picking up speed. A couple allowed me to play through on hole 8.

In the “parking lot” was this golf ball sitting in a puddle of water. I hope that golfers are not targeting our vehicles!

We went back to the Rivery again. Today, I decided to drive down from Dukes to park underneath IH-35. And, wow, was the road washed out! Fortunately, my pickup truck has some clearance and I was able to navigate it. Georgetown really needs to do something about drainage here! Either fix the road or block it off. I don’t see it lasting much longer if we keep getting heavy rains that causes flash flooding. The third picture was shot from down in the four foot trench that was dug out from running water.

I wanted to practice throwing some discs in the field. But it was damp from dew (and last night’s rain) and was also was overgrown. They really need to mow down here, durn it! But I did notice what looked to be a bat sleeping on the concrete wall in the shade. I got as close as I dared to take a picture and tried not to disturb Mr. Bat.

This course really needs some work. Almost all of the temporary markings are gone. Only a few small signs are left. And only people who played when it existed in better condition could play here now.

One of John’s putts was really lucky. It balanced right on the edge of the basket.

A new class of obstacles is the swinging vine. This managed to block one of John’s throws.

And I was really lucky today! One of my putts was slightly over thrown. But it hit the tree behind the basket and bounced into the goal! Score!!!!!!!!

Innova discs have this
stamped on them, so I looked it up. And this is what they patent:

abstract

A one-piece flying disc formed of a flexible plastic with an annular rim and a central section joined together by an annular shoulder. The rim has a lower edge defining a lower plane of the disc and the central section has an upper zone defining an upper plane of the disc, with the rim having a triangular cross-section with a lower rounded corner forming the lower edge, an outer rounded corner, and an upper corner merging with the shoulder. The outer corner of the rim is located between the upper and lower planes, and the shoulder decreases in thickness from the rim to the central section.

claims

1. A circular flying disc comprising:

an annular rim and a central section joined together by an annular shoulder, and formed in a single piece of flexible plastic,

said rim having a lower edge defining a lower plane of said disc, and said central section having an upper zone defining an upper plane of said disc,

said rim having a substantially equilateral triangular cross-section with a lower rounded corner forming said lower edge, an outer rounded corner, and an upper corner merging with said shoulder, with said outer corner located between said upper and lower planes,

said shoulder decreasing in thickness from said rim to said central section, with the thickness of said shoulder at said rim in the order of twice the thickness of said central section, and with the outer surface of said disc from said rim outer corner to said central section having a continuous smooth curved lifting surface, and

the upper surface of said central section being substantially flat when the disc is stationery, with said central section being sufficiently thin and flexible to dome upwards when in flight.

What was interesting was that it was filed on October 27, 1983. Almost twenty four years ago! This thing should be expired by now (actually by 2000).

Played with John at Old Settlers as usual. The winds were pretty fierce although not as bad as before. We ended early at hole 16 since there were rain clouds above us. And I thought there might be hail around. Although when I got home, nothing was on the radar. Sigh… It got here around 3am in the next morning.