Poll 63: Blowing up on the course

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OK, folks, it’s time to really have some fun.

This poll truly only works, however, if you leave a comment at the end explaining.

poll

We want to know this — have you, or have you seen, somebody have an honest-to-goodness blowup on the course? We’re not talking just a toss of a towel or something, but a true boomer that makes people stop and stare?

We’ll expand more on that in a moment.

Before we get into the new poll, let’s check out the results and some comments from the last poll, when we asked you what your favorite season was for disc golf.

Of the 156 people who voted in the poll, it was a runaway victory for fall, which garnered 91 votes (58 percent). Summer followed with 31 votes (20 percent). Spring placed third (30 votes/19 percent) and winter was last (4 votes/3 percent).

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Disc golf Zen

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(photo by P.J. Harmer)

By Lou Garcia — For Rattling Chains

Thinking of nothing

Standing in nowhere

Calm

Peaceful

Zen

The air that once filled the winds gust

Now fills your lungs

Waiting

Patient

Ready

Eyes open you see it in your sight

You know what to do

Exhale

Believe

Trust

In a moments time all that could be done

No longer matters

Slow

Paused

Timeless

expect nothing other then fate

What will be…

Will be

Lou Garcia is a disc golfer based in New Jersey. 

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

Win some MVP discs!

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By P.J. Harmer — Rattling Chains staff

OK, folks, it’s time to give away some more plastic.

And we have a couple of nice discs to give you this time, but before we get to that, let’s clean up our last giveaway.

You can win these MVP discs!

You can win these MVP discs! (photo by Steve Hill)

The winner of that awesome Rattling Chains prize pack was Erik J. Barzeski, whose twitter entry earned him the pack! Congrats, Erik. An e-mail will be sent and please get us the needed info within a few days, or we’ll have to re-draw for another winner!

And now, back to the task at hand.

We have two MVP discs, slightly used by Rattling Chains staffer Steve Hill for review purposes. Outside of that, they are slick and ready to add to your bag! So, hook it up and enter to win!

The discs:

  • An MVP Resistor (pink)
  • An MVP Volt, proton plastic (green)

The winner will be chosen at random by RaffleCopter at the end of the giveaway.

How it works: To gain entries, you have to do the items below. The first is mandatory — a comment on the blog — and you have to answer a question, which you can see when you click on that option. PLEASE answer that question as last time some people didn’t do so. We do this to make it fun and interactive.

Once you do that, the other items unlock and you can see what is there. You can earn more entries by tweeting each day, too. If you click on the tweet button under that option, there’s a tweet ready to go for you! Just make sure you’re already signed in.

Even better for those of you who follow us on social media or entered last month’s giveaway, the entries should be quicker and easier!

Enjoy and have fun! Good luck!

Enter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
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If you have any comments, questions, thoughts, ideas or anything else, feel free to e-mail me and the crew at: pj@rattlingchains.com. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

Disc golf lingo: Many groups have their own dialect

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In a recent round at DeLaveaga, I paused briefly to tell my friend that his last throw had tons of “E.V.,” but I held the comment for later when we noticed a large group of marauders was quickly gaining on us. So naturally we…

What’s that? Not exactly following my meaning?

jackDon’t worry, you’re not behind on the latest disc golf lingo — at least, not yet.

Most of those reading this are well acquainted with the fact that, while disc golf borrows a great deal of terminology from its stick-and-ball ancestor (par, birdie, drive, putt, etc.), the sport has a lexicon all its own as well.

Words like hyzer, anhyzer and thumber, and terms like “chain music” and “high-tech roller” mean nothing outside of disc golf (or at least disc sports). And words like “chunder” and “schule” — while they can be found in a standard dictionary — have very different applications in the world where golf meets flying disc.

These words and phrases serve as an instant bond between people who might otherwise have zero in common. Picture, for instance, a 55-year old clean-cut professional type visiting a course he’s never played before during some free time on a business trip.

As he arrives at the teepad of a blind hole, he encounters a couple of long-haired, dreadlocked, hemp-wearing locals. The locals offer to let him play through, and the traveler asks them where the basket is located. One of them replies “If you throw a big anhyzer over those trees on the left and can get it to ‘S’ out at the end, you’ll be putting for birdie.”

Different as they might appear and even be, in respect to the other aspects of their lives, the visitor and the locals understand each other perfectly well on the disc golf course. We’re all members of a subculture that, while steadily growing, is still far from the mainstream, and our lexicon of unique terminology is one of the true identifying marks about which those not yet part of the clan remain completely ignorant.

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Andrew’s Travelogue: Building the Dragon’s Lair

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As I said in my last travelogue, while South Korea is small as countries go, it can still be difficult and time-consuming to travel anywhere. This is largely relegated to the Seoul area.

Get anywhere near Seoul, and you will find yourself with a serious travel headache, unless you grew up in Asia, mostly because of the sheer density of the population.

belet

About 90 percent of South Koreans live in Seoul. That’s not around Seoul, or the greater area of Seoul, that’s in Seoul. Pretty wild, no?

Now, being as far north as I am, and seeing as how we are somewhat restricted in our freedom of travel, I quickly deduced that making 3- to 8-hour round trip to play disc golf every weekend wasn’t going to work. I’d end up broke or insane, or perhaps both.

So this left me with one logical solution — build my own course!

Luckily, my barracks are in a rather nice part of the base known as “Dragon Valley,” and I figured I could pretty easily cram a 9-hole course in with no problem. I began scouting the area while I did morning physical training and, with the aid of Google Earth, came up with a delightfully challenging layout.

course mapdragons lair

The course layout.

That was the easy part.

The next step would be the real kicker — cutting through the red tape and actually getting permission to build the course. This turned out to be a bit more difficult than I thought. My first stop was at Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) for a meeting about getting a few bucks to install baskets and signs, and for them to help me get permission to use the land.

Three minutes into our meeting I was duly informed that, thanks to sequestration and severe budget cuts, they wouldn’t be able to supply me with anything. In fact, they were so short-staffed they couldn’t even go with me to meet the higher-ups for permission to use the land.

They tried their best to help though, making a few phone calls on my behalf and sending me on the way to meet the people I needed to meet. But, for now, this course was going to be built with my blood, sweat, tears, and, perhaps most importantly, my money.

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Photo Focus: Oct. 7

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(Photo focus will run every few weeks or so on Rattling Chains. The idea is to focus on disc golf photographs submitted by staff members and readers. To see the guidelines for submitting a photograph for this feature, click here.)

The fall can be a great time to get some cool disc golf images.

When I’m out disc golfing, I’m usually looking beyond the throws and scores.

Often, my camera will be with me as it’s normally just a casual round. The fall with all its colors makes for some good disc golf photos.

While I realize it’s possible that it’s harder to find certain discs, it’s also a cool time to use nature for photos.

The above photo was pure luck.

I through an errant shot and it ended up, like normal, among some trees. It bounced off at least one and then landed. We had no idea where. We looked for a bit before I finally spotted it.

This is exactly how the disc landed. Could it have landed any more perfect for a photo?

Of course I had to snap away before pulling the disc up for the next shot.

One of the most important things I’ve learned about photography and disc golf is you should always be ready to take photos of the different things as you never know when something will make itself available, much like my Buzzz did.

— P.J. Harmer

Techie info:

  • Camera: Canon 7D
  • Aperture: f/4.0
  • Exposure: 1/500
  • Focal Length: 17 mm
  • ISO: 800

If you have any comments, questions, thoughts, ideas or anything else, feel free to e-mail me and the crew at: pj@rattlingchains.com. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

Put the Sharpie down and back away from the basket

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Dear Disc Golfer,

Congratulations, you hit an ace! I am sure it was a crowning achievement in your plastic throwing career, and something you’ll tell your grandchildren about many years from now. We’re very proud of you.

Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, allow me to let you in on a little secret: No one cares.

steve

OK, OK, I’m sure someone cares. I bet if you send your mom a text message she’ll respond with a smiley, and the group you were playing with that day probably pitched in for a frosty cold one. So there is some care.

But you know who doesn’t care? Everyone else to ever play that basket, or anyone who has to walk by and see your signature on it.

That’s right, I’m talking to you, Mr. or Mrs. Basket Signer. We’re all happy about that ace, but did you really have to deface an innocent sheath of metal with your poorly scrawled Sharpie? Couldn’t you have given high-fives to your friends and moved on, or perhaps signed the disc with which you hit the ace?

No.

Instead, you had to vandalize a valuable, and very visible, piece of equipment that is the cornerstone of our sport. Your arrogance and need for attention has caused an eyesore. In a sport that already has enough stigmas, you are adding another to it by needlessly putting graffiti on a piece of the course.

It’s just a disc golf basket, you probably thought to yourself. Everyone does it. It’s part of the game.

No, it isn’t.

You know what it is? Bad karma. I bet within the next day or two something awful happened, like you lost your perfectly seasoned Buzzz in a ravine, or you caged a gimme putt to lose out on cash at league night.

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Product Review: MVP Resistor

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By Steve Hill, Jack Trageser and P.J. Harmer — Rattling Chains staff

What’s in a name?

For most golf discs, not much. Monikers such as Teebird, Roc, Wizard, or Buzzz don’t tell much about how a disc will fly, rather lending themselves to artwork that will attract consumers. It’s the same as a car, beer, or many other products.

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For the Resistor, the new fairway driver from MVP Disc Sports, though, the name tells it all.

With a healthy serving of high speed stability, this disc resists turning over on a flat throw, helping it live up to MVP’s “stable-overstable” label.

With a rim width of 1.7 centimeters, the Resistor falls into the same speed class as the aforementioned Teebird, a slower disc that is meant to be used for control and precision. While this represents a step down in speed from MVP’s other driver offerings, I feel it represents addition by subtraction.

By dialing down the rim width, MVP is offering a disc that has the same beefy flight of its other stable-overstable driver, the Shock, while adding a level of reliability that comes from being housed within a more comfortable, easier to control shape.

At 174 grams, my flat-top, hot pink tester was the epitome of stable. When I gassed it, it would fly straight with a forward-penetrating fade at the end of its flight. In this regard, it reminded me of a longer version of the Tensor, MVP’s overstable mid-range.

Also similar to the Tensor was the Resistor’s flight on a hard anhyzer — it would turn a bit but never all the way over, then start to fade back at roughly three quarters of the way through its flight path. So, while it certainly has enough stability to be relied upon for a needed fade on dogleg holes, its not overly piggish to where it cannot be used to shape lines. In fact, I think it makes a better line shaper because you can intentionally torque it and know it will come back without fail.

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Sept. 30: What’s in your bag?

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(Editor’s note: We are bringing back the “What’s in your bag?” feature to Rattling Chains. It will run once a month or so. If you would like to submit what’s in your bag, please check the details at the end of this post)

This edition of “What’s in your bag?” comes from Kris “Professor” Mickelson, who lives and manages a disc golf club in El Granada, Calif.

He’s played disc golf since 2010, and competed in the open division since 2010. Mickelson participates in the San Francisco Disc Golf Club weekly, which is held rain or shine each Sunday.

He also co-wrote a feature-length film script based on disc golf and is the owner of Half Moon Bay Disc Golf.

Besides disc golf, he also coaches little league baseball.

As for the contents of his bag, there’s a bit of uniformity. See, he notes, that he’s been there when trying to find a yellow disc for 10 minutes, just to realize it’s in his bag and he should have been looking for a blue disc.

Yikes.

So, Mickelson eliminated that by having all of his plastic custom stamped with a shield on them. He’s used the same person since 2005.

Take a peek at his discs:

Kris Mickelson's discs.

Kris Mickelson’s discs.

From the bottom center (Blizzard Blue) and going clockwise:

  • 159g Blizzard Katana
  • 175g Boss (Signed by Gregg Barsby)
  • 175g Spider
  • 175g Wraith (understable 2009 Star — just beginning to get sweet)
  • 175g Wraith (New and overstable — into a gail!)
  • 175g Leopard
  • 178g San Marino ROC
  • 175g Avair (signed by Gerard Butler of 300- King Loenidas)
  • 169g Champion Omega
  • 150g Star Omega
  • 165g Beast
  • (Yellow Center Disc) 159 Champion Gummy KC 11-time (For pre-tournament catch/stretch out only)
  • 2- 36oz. Blue Nalgene Bottles with the Half Moon Bay Disc Golf Club Logo on them.

Want to submit your bag and contents? Here’s what we need: A couple of photos of your bag and discs. Put together a list of everything you carry in the bag — from food to discs to anything else. Then maybe give a paragraph or two about your bag and if there’s anything you do between casual and tournament rounds etc. Finally, don’t forget your name, location and home course! Cell phone photos are fine, but please try and make it as high quality as possible. Grainy shots might not be able to be used. E-mail all of these things to pj@rattlingchains.com with the subject “What’s in my bag.”

Exploring a new course makes for an interesting round

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binguniv

Binghamton University’s new disc golf course has the potential to be top-notch. It also proved to be a crazy welcome back for one disc golfer. (photo by P.J. Harmer)

Do you ever get that feeling where it’s like you are throwing a disc for the first time?

Though I get a small part of that feeling on almost every outing, I really was overwhelmed with it a couple of weekends ago.

harmer_sigIt was like I was pulling out plastic for the first time.

It had been more than three months since I had last played the game, so I was excited to meet with two others and play a round. We met at Binghamton University in upstate New York for a round on a new course. This course, which had been open for less than a month, was designed by Dan Doyle, who also worked on the design of the famed Warwick course.

And, I’m sure, many of you may have seen the interview where Ken Climo put Warwick up there as his favorite course in the United States.

So forgive me if I was a little giddy when told by a friend than Doyle was the designer of this course.

Binghamton University is a deceptively large campus. It doesn’t seem like it should be as big as it is, but there is quite a bit of land. This course is spread over the upper part of the campus, going in and out of the woods, some open land and the occasional parking lot.

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