Fuck Gas

Sorry for the slack updates. I’ve been in Dayton at a soccer tournament, followed by Holiday World in a town named Santa Claus. Strange days. However, I’ve been working on this polo tournament thing and we’ve got some bad ass prize sponsors jumping on board so it’s looking good so far. There are a few key companies I’ve yet to hear from and if anyone has any info that could help me get in good with Velocity, Brev M., or Eighth Inch for some wheels that would be much appreciated. Seems every tournament has a set to give away so why shouldn’t we… Flyer is in the works as well as a site that you’ll be able to keep up to date at. Don’t worry, the tournament will not be held in the above setting, but some nightly pick up games likely will be over the weekend.

If you’re preparing yourself for cross this season it’s never a bad idea to work on some skills and drills. Tonight, Tuesday, September 7th head out to Seneca Park and get your CX Clinic Tuesday on with BikeCliques. I’m assuming meet up at the restrooms beside the tennis courts. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I don’t know what to tell you other than it’s a building, with restrooms, nest to the tennis courts. It’s free, it’s fun and if the rain keeps up you may even be able to get a little muddy.

That’s all I’ve got. I’m up to my ears in shit to do for this tournament right now and I’, not keeping up with anything else bike related at the moment.

Louisville will be hosting it’s first Hardcourt Bike Polo Tournament Saturday, October 16 at Noon in Shelby Park. This will be in conjunction with a Bicycling for Louisville party welcoming their new HMFIC, Andy Dyson out of Philly. No clue what his background is, but it’s bound to be an improvement. Regardless, being a public park, alcohol is frowned upon so keep that in mind for the tourney. When I say keep it in mind I just mean try to be descreat you know? So yeah, the tournament. No clue how where gonne run this or what we’ll have up for grabs as I just got started on this about 10 minutes ago. Just be sure to mark that shit on your calendar and get your punk ass to Louisville for the weekend. We’ll have updates of the various pick up games, parties, shenanigans and sponsors to come.

Tis the season to be preparing for cow bells, mud and beers… perhaps with some annoying vuvuzelas thrown is for good measure. Work has apparently resumed at the new permanent home of Cyclocross at Eva Bandman park here in Louisville and the season’s first Wednesday night practice session went down last night at the now defunct River Road Country Club, fuck you Louisville dog owners.

In light of all these happenings, I will roll out shortly to a near by park for a sort of gorilla cross recognisance mission. Not sure if there will be any sort of event regarding these endeavors, but who knows. Could be a lot of fun. Either way, it’s just a way for me to have a good place to play on the cross bike without having to travel so far to do so. If anyone else would interested in doing fairly out of the ordinary cross races this year get in touch and let’s see what we can come up with. Something I’d love to see is a teeter-totter obstacle…

More stupid shit we put ourselves through is the enjoyment of the Hardcourt Bike Polo. More often than not however, we don’t. This is something we’ve been attempting to slightly alleviate as of late to little avail. Either way, we’re attempting a gathering of the game this coming Sunday, August 22 at say, 7pm to be safe. Not so hot out at that time and it gives everyone plenty of time to forget that we’re meeting up for this throughout the day. If you’re interested in playing, quietly watching or better yet, heckling, make your way to the Shelby Park tennis courts Sunday evening. Beginners encouraged to attend as we never take it seriously in the first place. Except for that time that I was apparently throwing things after our loss in Lexington at this years Bluegrass State Games. If this was actually the case, I can’t begin to imagine I was serious in any way, and if I was, you should know this now, I may have be intoxicated. I know, hard to imagine, but we here in Louisville like the beers with the polo. Bourbon, we like that too. If you don’t have a mallet, no worries, we should have plenty. Worried about your bike getting banged up? Stop being such a pussy. If you’re that serious, you can borrow mine.

All in all, this is a further attempt at landing ourselves a regular, non-grimey parking garage spot to play at. I think if we make this a regualr occurance and show that we can co-exist on a tennis court with the non-existant tennis players at this park it will help our chances of doing just that. Hope to see you there, rain or shine. If you’re on the Facebook, add yourself to the event page.

Alright, that’s a picture from Lexington, but at least there’s a couple Louisville players in there… At any rate, Zach has been hard at work hounding local government to secure Louisville Hardcourt Bike Polo a permanent home. What we’re looking for is the tennis courts at the old River Road Country Club were the previous cross course was. These things are run down as all hell and overgrown to boot. It will take some work but it could be a great location. Zach has a meeting Wednesday I believe and I’m not sure where we’ll go from there. I’m kind of thinking we just head over there and start working on it and see what happens from there. Sure we can’t resurface the place ourselves but maybe we can get it playable before too long.

I’ll post more on this as it progresses. If there’s anything you want to do to help in the mean time join up with the facebook group and get in touch.

So you may have heard about this, but here it is. FBM have put together a prototype frame and fork set for hardcourt polo and it looks niiiice! Additionally, the first thing I thought of upon glaring at FBM’s website was the potential for a single speed cross bike. I’m gonna have to do some geometry comparisons so who knows. Either way this thing looks bad ass and while I have to admit I really didn’t like the way the 1st edition Sword I had rode, this is a completely different frame so the sky’s the limit right? See more pics over at the FBM Fixed site or if you’ll be at the North American Championships this weekend or the Worlds in August be sure to track down Nick Vaughan out of Richmond, he’s the lucky guy riding this steed.

Saturday, June 19 will bring an end to the segregation that has kept Indiana out of the Polo tournament circle for far, far too long. Okay, maybe not too long, it’s Indiana for fuck’s sake. The only thing good about that state is the view they get of Louisville after all… just kidding, that’s where I go to hurl myself through the air on a BMX bike so they’ve got that going for them as well.

So polo, yeah. Saturday, June 19, Bloomington, Indiana. 10 am. More info to follow. I know Bloomington isn’t the biggest city, but I can’t imagine we’re all just going to show up and find one another so stay tuned for maps, rules and all the normal info. What I’ve got at the moment is it’s $5 a person or $15 per team and you can email tdavies@indiana.edu for housing and registration info. You would have gotten the same thing had you taken the time to read the flier you lazy bitch. You can also check out BloomingtonBikePolo.com for upcoming stuffs. Hope to see you there!

I fucking HATE Winnie the Pooh. Thanks to a clever nickname by my parents I grew up despising the fat little bastard and all his pansy ass friends except for Rabbit, that dude seems alright. Anyway, it’s raining. Not sure how that affect tonight’s pedaling, but rest assured polo is gonna kill it. There’s a reason we play inside. Hope to see you all tonight!

Given you’re stuck inside for the morning and looking for something to occupy your time with, then check out Velocast 63. Always some entertaining and insightful conversation from those Scotts.

Lastly, I spotted this gem while browsing thru the pre-Stupor Bowl XIII preperations over at Bike Jerks. To me, this looks real. If you look closely, you can see tire marks on the wall leading to the bad ass (potentially broke ass) velodromer… anybody know if he pulled this shit?

Tomorrow night’s Polo Party has seriously snowballed into something very strange… and awesome. Word has it that players are descending on this fare city of ours from 6 cities, maybe more. All this for a night of bike polo in a cold, dirty parking garage. This is just another testament to the community built up around this bicycle contraption.

The weather forecast is looking like rain and snow, but we’re still planning on meeting up for the rides. We’ll just see what happens from there. At the moment there is discussion of two games, one upstairs and another down. One of these may possibly be aimed at beginners as we have a lot of first time players from the Louisville area expressing interest. If you’re coming in from out of town and this will be your fist time playing with us here in Louisville, don’t take it personally if we’re a little touchy out on the court. Now I don’t mean we’re gonna be rubbing on your ass, unless you’re okay with that of course, but I suppose it’s been an issue in the past as we’re a bit contact heavy in the game. If something happens you don’t like, lets discuss it, no need to get pushy. Plus, we drink a lot… okay, when I say we, I mean me. Although there are a handful that seriously enjoy the libations. Keep that in mind too. After all, our bars are open til 4am. What would you expect?

If you’re skipping the rides and just heading straight to the garage, you’re looking for 416 West Chestnut Street, between 4th and 5th Streets, across from the strip clubs. We like to keep it classy.

I realise that last post had nothing to do with bicycles so thought I should throw this out there…

Tonight there will be a handful of people meeting up for some pick up polo at the garage (416 W Chestnut, between 4th and 5th Streets) around 8 pm. Sort of a primer for the Polo Party on the 5th I suppose. Could be a good chance to come check it out if you haven’t been before. If anything you can just come out to spectate and have some drinks. Hope to see you there.

Additionally we’ll be hosting another ride on Saturday, January 30. Waiting to hear back from On Your Left for the okay to meet up there, but it’s going down with a ride starting somewhere one way or another. The end result will be a showing of The Triplets of Belleville at The Swan Dive. There will also be food and High Life specials along with a couple freebies so mark this shit on your calander.

The polo piece i wrote for Urban Velo can be read online and at the moment it’s hanging out at the top of thier blog. Check out the entire article here. Again, thanks to Brad and Jeff at Urban Velo for the opportunity to get this together and to everyone that took the time to discuss polo with me.