How I Spend My Summer Vacation
Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 04:00PM 
Apparently not blogging enough, which wouldn't be such a problem if I didn't promise "fairly frequent" updates. So, back to it now!
The above photograph sums up the last week pretty well, with its five games of disc golf in as many days. Though mediocre as a player, I am terribly addicted to the sport. Yes, sport. The posted picture captures what disc golf heaven will look like, a place where I can be reunited with all the discs I have either launched into the woods or misplaced in plain sight in a sort of sun-baked haze. In just those previous five rounds I can count four discs among the lost.
That said, I am pretty excited about two replacements I purchased yesterday at Marshall Street, or Disc Golf HQ for the great state of Massachusetts: a Champion Monarch distance driver and a Champion T-Bird fairway driver. That adds up to something like $60, not for the two discs but in terms of total money I have put into disc golf in the last year. Not bad for a hobby! For anyone who has not tried, most courses are free and you can even play with a regular frisbee. I would not recommend the latter option.
June 15 (I think...) will mark the first anniversary of my love affair with the sport. Like any good anniversary, I hope to celebrate with the composition of an occasional poem. Can I pull off rhyming "plastic" with "tick"? I'll have to wait and see.
For the definitive prose version of the disc golf romance, articulated better than I could ever hope by a likewise better competitor, check out this essay by Ander Monson called "The Long Crush." It originally appeared in something called American Nerd and is reprinted in his most excellent essay collection, Neck Deep and Other Predicaments. Speaking of Mr. Monson-- himself a professor in the U of A MFA program whom I don't really know beyond a couple afternoon beers at the 1702 pizza parlor in Tucson-- a photo exists in which I am in the middle of an Ander Monson and Michael Sheehan (a fellow MFA student) sandwich. It's a triptych. It's also awesome. Although I can't link to the photo exactly, you can find it here in the "Faces" section of Joshua Blake's (the photographer's) site.