Referral, and bike polo!

I want to pass along this gem from Andy Cline. It's a brief essay on courtesy and sociopathy, and worth a few minutes of your time.

Last night was Car-Free Happy Hour, Marco Polo edition. It was held at Barret Bar, which has a fenced-in court in the parking lot. It was fenced in to be a half-length (actually shorter) basketball court, but has since been repurposed as a bike polo court. There is a bike polo club that frequents the bar (of course necessitating that the bar keep a large supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon in 16 ounce cans in stock for the bike polo crowd and the assorted hipsters that are attracted to the "scene"), and several members were there last night. They invited neophytes to try, and a few friends did. I opted out--with my recent back issue not fully-resolved, my coordination and flexibility are not quite to my preference for trying it yet. Maybe another time.

Still, it was fun to watch. The rules are pretty simple. Players who touch the ground with their feet must go to mid-court and "tap in" by touching their mallet head to the side fence. There is a line painted on the court near the goal, and if the ball is closer to the goal than that line, and in motion toward the goal, defenders cannot strike it (I suppose it would be goal tending, although I'm not sure of their formal term). If the ball is inside that marker, an offensive player must get it out of that area before hitting it toward the goal.

Long view of the court:

 

The goal:

While I was there, some of the polo club members replaced the old goals with nicer ones, the picture above being one. There is some aluminum behind the opening that makes some bit of noise when the ball enters hard enough, and routs the ball back out to the court to enable faster return to play.

The old goals looked like this. You can see the goal-tending line here (in pink):

Some of the games I saw were one-on-one. Some were teams of two players. There is a LOT to keep up on when doing this, but I'm told that it becomes habit once one plays a while.

David Crowell was there, and had ridden his Big Dummy. A couple of the more experienced players took it out to see how it would do.

The Big Dummy is great at its intended purpose, but it's a challenge to get that long thing around in a tight polo court. I can see it being an entirely different game for two teams on Big Dummy or Kona Ute or Yuba Mundo bikes.