A little while ago, I held a contest on my blog. It was to come up with an advertising slogan for this company:

I did receive a number of entries, and I do with pride announce the winner, Mr. Jay Marshall, who won with the following slogan:
“When you need man tools, go Gayer!”

Notable mentions go to:
“Because all good manquipment should be Gayer”
“Serving all of Man-Town for over 30 years.”

Thank you for competing in this contest. As a prize, Jay Marshall wins his choice of posting a blog for me or receiving a slide tackle from me when he leasts expects it. I imagine it will be a tough choice. Stay tuned for more pointless contests.

6/19

Well, that was fun. And I can’t readily deny that it’s good to be home, where my bedroom is currently sitting at a steady thousand degrees fahrenheit. I think the trip was a success, even though I never really shot that one truly amazing round, had that one truly amazing shot, or interacted with a single woman who wasn’t there with her husband at her side. If I can say that, you have to admit that it wasn’t all bad.
All in all, I ended up playing 50 rounds in 35 days at 28 different courses, spanning over a dozen states. Compare that to the 2 rounds I usually play in that time period, and you can see that the purpose of this tour was certainly achieved: arm fatigue and certain muscle damage. Let’s breakdown what I learned about my disc golf game first.
I interestingly found that I played the first round of each tournament the poorest. My putting was usually off, and although my drives in general were best in the first round, I didn’t ever really put together a super-hot round (with Kansas City’s 993 being the notable exception). It seemed like as each round would wear on, I would putt better and better, too. I think if you took all of my final rounds (not counting Ashtabula, as the winds that final round were steadily 30mph) I don’t know that I missed a single putt within the circle, and I hit plenty outside of it.
My up game started off very surprisingly good during this tour, and soured back to its unacceptable norm by the end. I need to find a disc I can control when I take some power off of it. I did note, however, that if I have plenty of room to throw a hyzer, my up shots are quite good. If I have to throw a straight up shot or even a turnover shot, I’m dead in the water.
Playing with very good players does not make me nervous, although they seem to shoot worse. I shot with 8 of the top 52 players in the world on this tour in tournament play, and not one of them shot an especially killer round when they played with me (Moser, Orum, and Shweb all played poorly when they shot with me).
I need to stop losing discs.

Now, there were other parts to this trip, namely looking at silly places and signs. Although I did not see the abundance of silly named places as with JayMar on our trip to FL (where we hit towns with the names Boring, Bland, Ordinary, Toast, Coats, Fork, and Coward…), there were some nice moments in Paint and Licking County. I did see some interesting signs:

Now these signs are all over PA, actually. I think they’re pretty clever, but in all honesty, I don’t know that they should advertise like this. Here’s why. On my trip, my final mile count was a whopping 6,534.8 miles traversed. That’s an average of 186.7 miles a day. Now, if I were to continue at that pace for a while (which one could convincingly argue would be a amzingly stupid thing to do), by the time I turned 42 I would be able to unclick my belt while driving and not feel guilty by PA standards. And that’s not counting any of the miles I’ve driven BEFORE this tour. Stupid sign. I mean, if they’re going to do that, you might as well see: “Buckle Up: or I will deliberately hit you with my car.” That would work.
I did the entire trip for a cost of $2,240.49. When you consider that over $700 of that was spent BEFORE I EVEN LEFT, I think I did it at a pretty cost-effective rate. And there’s a reason for that –

I also need to thank a whole slew of people, without whom this trip would have been far far stupider and much less rewarding. Thank you to my family who put up with me for the first leg of the trip. Thank you to Mike Trapasso and everyone at the Grange, Steve and Linda Snyder, Jason and Amy Haas, and Dennis and Janna Freeman. Also thanks to Jason Markin and Rebecca , as well as Mike Lateurrer. I certainly can’t forget my sponsors: Jason Marshall, Dave “Cromwell” McHale, Jason Haas (again), and even Kelly Boyce for the dollar I won on the last day. Also a tremendous thank you to my webmaster Jason Lawton for getting this blog up and running. I had no idea anyone would read it, never mind the decent flow of people who sought to read my verbal dribblings. There are countless others, but I really just thought the whole trip was a blast, and thanks to everyone I came across during the trip.

As for the future of this blog: I think I’m gonna keep it going, though not at quite the frenzied pace. I’ll update it when I have a tournament, a road trip, or even just a shenanigan. You never really know when that will happen, after all.

6/18

7:43am – Man, I’m dragging. I still feel drunk. I might still be drunk, I’m not sure. Either way, I can’t imagine that bodes well for my play. We’ll have to see. They did edit the ratings of the rounds, and I was only off by 6 or 7 on my guesses. That’s a little better. I missed another 1000 rated round by one stroke. D’oh!

12:56pm – Well, I broke a record in round one. And I don’t just mean a course record. I don’t even mean a disc golf record. I broke a WORLD record. I became the first man ever to have an abortion. Man, that was a rough rough round. For the first nine holes, I felt awful. It wasn’t really a hangover, it was more that I was on the verge of throwing up. But that subsided. I just played bad. No excuses. My putting was a wash (I missed two or three but made some big putts – all for fours, oddly enough). My ups were ABYSMAL. I mean, they were in caps, that how bad they were. My drives were erratic, which is never good. And although I did get a couple of good kicks, the bad outweighed them.
For a while, I was worried about making the cut. I will, it turns out, but probably not by too much. And to think, at the start of the round I was only 5 strokes off last cash. That will not be the case at the start of this round. Apparently (I haven’t looked at this layout) there are plenty of deuce opportunities, so let’s hope I can put together something solid to end my tour. I’d hate to leave on the (estimated) 920-rated round I threw.

1:54am – Let’s see, I’m home. That’s HUGE. And I’ll go into greater exposition tomorrow, but let’s recap today. I did make the final round of the tournament, and got to play the short Knob Hill layout. Well, it was an interesting round. I threw three HORRIBLE drives and five HORRIBLE ups (almost all anhyzer, I noticed… interesting…) But my putting was killer, including making four outside the circle. And the rest of my drives were RIGHT where I wanted them. What killed me, then? Luck. Plain and simple. It became comical. My group was even commenting how I couldn’t catch a break that entire round. Whatever tree gods I’ve pissed off, please let’s start over and go back to neutral. Thank you. I ended up above my rating here, too, so that’s cool.

Hole 9 at Knob Hill, taken moments before I FIVED it after getting stuck in a tree.
Then I hopped in my car at 6 to drive home. About an hour or so on Rt. 80, the traffic just STOPS. Parking lot. So I get off and take some creepy backroads (put it this way: I went on a 31 mile road where I only passed 5 cars total). It delayed me about an hour and a half, but I made it. Pictures and rigermerol tomorrow.

8:15pm – The first two rounds of my final tournament of this trip have come to a close. It was a day that has become the norm of this trip: inconsistency between rounds but consistency within the round. For this particular tournament, there is a “cut” after three rounds where only the top 24 make it, so that’s my entire goal. Round one (with Moser and Orum) was nothing spectacular. We started on the short tees at Moraine. See the picture of the very pretty hole.

Hole 15 at Moraine (basket is unseen down the hill)
I managed to put together an above-average round (I would imagine) but it certainly didn’t keep me in the cash. It started ugly – I took a stupid 5 on the first hole which is certainly fourable. Then the next hole (a must deuce) I foured. Ugh. I was already +3 after two holes. I got my head out of it then, though, and managed to string together quite a set of solid holes. Overall, my drives were satisfactory, my upgame was shaky but not bad. Putting, however, was again my downfall (my first round in every tournament at this trip has been the worst putting-wise – interesting). I missed 4 putts within 20′. Ouch. I still finished at 65, which was admittedly 12 off the lead. My whole group had trouble (I only shot 5 worse than Orum and 6 worse than Moser).
I had lunch, and I had Amp. All was good.
I set out on the long tees on the TEXAS MANHANDLER-sized 940+ foot hole 6. I scraped a 6 out of it, which was good considering I had TWO (2) bad tree kicks. (I can’t complain about luck, today, though, because I did come out in the positive for a rare day of good luck). The whole round, I only dinked one putt (and made a 40+ hyzer putt, so it’s a wash). My drives were decent, but my UP GAME was spot-on. I made no less than 4 SICK SICK up shots. I ended up with a pretty hot 67. Even though the hot score was a record-setting 57, I still think I’ll be right around 1000. It moved me up to the bottom of the fourth card (in 16th place). Looks like I’m doing okay for the cut. One more round to make it through to the cut. (I’d guess I’m about 7 strokes out of cash). Let’s home my spleen doesn’t rupture.

12:07am – Okay, these ratings are bullshit. Seriously, the advanced guys played better than us (pros). That’s utter crap. I hope these get remedied. This is a bucket of crap.
Miles: 50.7 / 6,084
Money: -$28.45 / -$2,160.04
Rounds played: 2 / 48

6/16

8:58am – It’s time to plow, as Jason would say, and get up to Pittsburgh. This will be the third of four tournaments in a row that will reach above 90 degrees. Lucky me. Good thing my skin is made of eggs. This should be perfect weather for lunch.

4:20pm – Haha. Look at the time. Whoa, that’s funny. *sigh* Looks like the entries for my CONTEST are starting to creep in little by little. There’s still time to get your entry in. I’m still trying to think of a prize. Something will come to me eventually, I’m sure.
Ever think you got a bargain on a hotel and then realized you’re RIGHT on the highway? Yeah, me too.
So I’ve played one of the two courses for the PFDO tournament, which was Moraine State Park. Now first of all, this is a BEAUTIFUL and MASSIVE park, regardless of the disc golf course. It might even be considered a TEXAS MANHANDLER park it’s so big. I really enjoyed the course quite a bit, though I’ll be the first to admit that, being only just a year old, is rough around the edges. Specifically around the rough. Edges. Rough rough edges. And I have the three inch scar on the back of my leg to prove it. But unlike the courses on my shit-list with moronic schule, this schule is mostly indicative of a BAD SHOT and it’s not like a flukey tree-kick will send you into the horrible stuff. So it’s fair schule, even if it’s thick enough to hide convicting evidence.
I threw a 73 (they claim par is 66), and I felt somewhere in the middle about that. I was disappointed, but I think played fairly well – several strokes were because I didn’t know where the fairways were and several others were due to wrong disc selection (also because of not knowing the course). So given that, I played solidly, even canning TWO putts outside 50′.
It’s soon off to Knob Hill to sign in and play a practice round there.

9:23pm – Ah, now we are ready for tournament time, having just finished a salvageable round at Knob Hill Park. It’s a beautiful course which Mitch (who called me during the round) told me was among his favorites. It does have alot of challenge but it, like nearly every course I’ve seemed to play, is VERY ROUGH off the fairway. Jason Haas had charitably donated a Buzzz to my cause after losing my two yesterday, and I was all set to come on here right now and mourn ITS loss. Yes, that’s right, less than 6 hours after its first throw, I lost the thing. A half hour. 5 people looking for it. LOST. I was even ready to put up the following sign:
GREEN Z BUZZZ: 6/15/06 – 6/15/06
I did happen to find it just as I was about to give up, thankfully, as it was a good disc (thanks Jay!!!). I finished at +13, which I would estimate would be a little above my rating, but nothing special. And I will need to shoot ‘special’ tomorrow because I found out who I am playing with for the first round: Mike Moser, Matt Orum and Chris Dietzel. Now I played with Chris two rounds at Ashtabula, and he’s a cool cat who’s around my rating. But Mike and Matt, for the uninformed, are rated #11 and #6 IN THE WORLD. IN THE SPORT. I’ve only played with two top 15 players in my life (Chris Sprague last week and Schweb twice), but never in the same round. I better have my B+ game going, at least.
Now I’m just waiting for SaxMike to show up. No pictures today. I hate visual images.

12:52am – I almost forgot: THE STATS! TEXAS MANHANDLER!
Miles: 250.4 / 6,033.3
Money: -$76.84 / -$2,131.59
Rounds played: 2 / 46
Courses played: 2 / 28

6/15

12:16pm – YOU WILL ALL DIE!!!!

2:49pm – See, I go away for just a little while and look what happens. I apologize, everyone, for the seemingly off-the-wall death threat. That was completely uncalled for. It took me a minute to figure out what had happened, but then I found all the evidence I needed.

Now that’s just not right. Kreepy Monkey has been reprimanded and put back into his air-proof case to ensure that nothing like that will happen again. Some monkeys just can’t be trusted. I would, at this time, like to thank Mr. JayMar once again for being a sponsor of my tour, having donated a nice little sum because, in his words, since he’s going to die anyway, it just seems like the right thing to do. You’re the man, Marshall.
Anyway, I’ve been watching soccer (which some people mistakenly call football), and I’ve been watching golf (which people really mistakenly call rugby) and watching the Indians beating the Yankees. So really, I can’t be much happier. Except Retief Goosen, my pick for the fantasy golf league I’m in (yes you heard me correctly) shot a MULLET +7, all but knocking him out of big cash. *sigh* You can’t trust people named Retief.
I’m going to play more disc golf with Jason when he’s done from work. Which is nice because that beautiful blue sky should be experienced at some point.

10:57pm – Well, I’ve added another course to my official Shit List. And that course is the Great Seal State Park in Chillicothe OH. It didn’t make my list for being an ill-designed course. Actually, it was quite a pleasure to play the first nine holes, as they were interesting holes with playable fairways and good uses of wooded terrain. I even commented to Jay how it was a very pretty forest, something you don’t see all that often. But then starting on hole 10, the course maintenance just became unbearable and there was schule (sp?) up to the knees and impenetrably thick. On two consecutive holes (a 180′ dinker and a 550′ bomb) I lost two more Z-Buzzz’s, bringing my total lost disc count up to preposterous levels. I have now lost three Buzzz’s alone on this trip, never mind all my long-distance drivers and countless other shots. With Jason helping me, it was still fruitless to look for these discs (though we both agreed the first disc should have been much easier to find, as it was AT LONGEST a 200′ hole). I gave up looking for the second disc after less than 5 minutes because of how overgrown it was in there.
So the course is a nice course to play ONLY IF IT IS PROPERLY manicured. I best equated to this: the course is like a hot woman who has let herself go. While she isn’t totally unattractive, it’s almost painful to look at her now because you can only imagine what she once was. Jason agreed, and then went on to say something off color.
I ended up taking great action shots of Jay driving on some of the holes, but because of my idiocy, I deleted them on my camera before making small copies of them. So here instead if me rendering Jay driving using normal computer characters.
O !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
—< ~~~ — | | | | |
| \ | | | /
^ ===
/ \ _|_
Perfect form, Jason, especially with your legs both being broken like that
Speaking of reasons to celebrate, today marks only the SECOND day of my long tour that I’ve come out ahead, financially. And that’s thanks again to JayMar for his kindly donation. So let’s see what we got, here.
Miles: 0 / 5,782.9
Money: +$1.94 / -$2,054.75
Rounds played: 1 / 44
Courses played: 1 / 26

6/14

4:10pm – Ah, back at the Haas’ place of awesomidity. There’s just something magical about this place, and that could be the 4029 square feet the seem to have. It’s a big place with stories and everything. It makes me almost wish I didn’t live in a tiny apartment with a lunatic. But that’s where I’m at, and I’ll take it. So it was a pretty uneventful day, aside from playing the Mt. Airy Forest course in Cincinnati, based on the strong recommendation from Jason himself. And boy was he right. This was a great course. One of the better ones I’ve played on my tour. There are SMART fairways and good use of the land. There are only a handful of true woods holes, yet they used the sporadic field trees very well. I shot an uninspiring +4 (took a five on the last hole I played, the uber-tough hole #10). Aside from what I’m going to assume is misnumbering (I played holed 4, walked backwards to 5 and 6, then went BACK to the basket of 4 to get to 7 and 8, then CROSSED 5 and 6 to get to 9…) it was a great course. The walk from 11 to 12 is stupid, but if my biggest complaint about a course is the walk between the holes, then I don’t have much to complain about at all. My putting was pretty good again today, and my drives were a little more on line. Maybe playing less, like Mitch suggested before I even left, is a good idea. Who knew?

Hole 11 at Mt. Airy

Hole 14 at Mt. Airy
Jason’s just informed me that, because of me playing my new album, Love is Kinda Funny Sometimes, for him when I first stopped by here, he had the song “Cold Hearted Snake” stuck in his head for three days. If that’s not a ringing endorsement for picking up the newest album, I don’t know what is.
Also, we have one entry in for yesterday’s contest. It’s a doozie, and definitely the one to beat. Plenty of time, people. Look up Day 29 and scroll to the bottom for the contest.

11:55pm – Still today. Woof. Not much new to report. I watched both the Mets and the Yankees games here, which I pride myself on only because I’m not in a NY market anymore, but I’m in OH, the only state I can think of whose three major cities all start with the same letter. Hmmm? Jason was sad I didn’t have any stats up yet. So, buddy, I would like to dedicate my stats tonight to my good pal, Jason Haas. Except for the rounds played. That in NO WAY goes to you, sucka….
Miles: 215.2 / 5,782.9
Money: -$7.48 / -$2056.69
Rounds played: 1 / 43
Courses played: 1 / 25

6/13

9:44am – It is with heavy heart that I leave the Freeman household after nearly a week of professional mooching. The kindness that Dennis and Janna have shown has been awe-inspiring. The gratitude that I have for them and their mind-boggling kindness is inestimable. And this picture proves it.

2:33pm – I’m about to go on a rant. And this rant is rated A for angry. Wait, no, it’s rated A+ for downright acrimonious. I played a course that sucked the proverbial monkey. It seriously was second only to that miserable bog in Florida to courses that infuriated me. Let’s see WHY that might have happened. It was the Front Course at Albert Oakland Park in Columbia MO. As you can see, it’s a short course, but don’t let that fool you – there aren’t a whole lot of birdies to be had. There are several reasons for this. 1) There aren’t “fairways” per se. The course is in a park with sporadic trees, but instead of using these trees wisely as objects, the tees and baskets seem to be randomly strewn about, making fairways where you’d need impossible angles to hit. 2) On each tee, you can see several baskets and the ill-drawn diagrams don’t actually AID you in figuring out which basket you are to throw to. I counted 6 separate baskets from one tee, and I could only immediately rule two of them out. 3) The basket you DO have to aim for is usually not even one of the ones you can see. 4) There are 2 or 3 pin placements on each hole, and guess what – they’re also poorly marked. I shot a -1, which is only because on the holes I shot the wrong baskets, I took a par out of spite. The only bright side was on hole 16 (as I was counting down the seconds until I could get the hell out of Columbia) I hit metal on one of the few holes with a fairway.

Basket is direct center of the pic, near the top (just under the left tree)
Of course, no ace.

6:20pm – I have a new slogan for Illinois. “Illinois: Where God Just Ran Out of Ideas”

10:37pm – I seriously love hotels that don’t tell you the cheapest rate until you are about to leave for cheaper grounds. I admire the guy for giving me the low rate, but I don’t appreciate that he made it seem like HE was doing ME a favor. Ah well.
I’m at least settled down after driving through a few states. I opted to NOT take Rt. 70 back to Columbus (to see the Haas Conglomerate again) but to take Rt. 50, a neat little highway. I was looking to find some of that local-road charm that I can’t ever see on the major highways. So I would like to present the next special presentation: a picture for every interesting thing I saw while driving through Southern Illinois.

That’s right, bupkis.
I did snap the following somewhere along the way, and it will lead me to a first here on www.esoderek.com.

It’s CONTEST TIME!!!
That’s right, it’s time for a contest. Here’s the way to win: submit to me a potential advertising slogan for this business. It just seems RIFE for slogans. Click here to submit (and yes, I realize I’m just re-using my FAQ form – I’ll know it’s not a FAQ, but rather a contest slogan). When my tour is done, I’ll pick the best one and post it. Probably post some others too. Don’t know if you’ll win anything. I’m getting pretty broke. And let’s see how broke:
Miles: 550.3 / 5,567.7
Money: -$77.69 / -$2,094.21
Rounds played: 1 / 42
Courses played: 1 / 24
Metal hit on this trip off the tee: 5 (chains twice, pole three times (no skip)

6/12

4:18pm – After a day of relaxing and enjoying a good night’s sleep, I went out one more time with Dennis to try to not suck quite as bad as I did the last round we played together. We played the other course at Rosedale, the tiny Down Under course. It’s a dinker, I only went out with a Buzzz and a putter (and an Avenger that I threw twice). I played like a mullet, thus proving that when I am not playing for money, I don’t seem to play altogether too well. Oh well. It’s another notch in my course belt, and it’s another notch in my humbility belt, which might be a made up word.

Dennis sporting good disc golf follow-through
Now it’s time to decide what to do tonight. Play a league in the ghetto to the east? Play a league on a prairie in the south? Go to one of the 4 casinos in town? Some combination of these? Or sit at home and vegetate? So much to consider…

2:07am – I don’t particularly feel like getting into a semantic argument that 2:07am is not *technically* today, and it is tomorrow, and especially I don’t feel like getting into the argument that it can never *technically* be tomorrow, so save it. Seriously, knock it off.
I opted to do both things I had listed above – I first went out and played the league at Prairie Center Park in Olathe, KS. It was, like most leagues, $5 (plus a buck for a shot at the ace pot worth over $600). Well, the cut the anticipation short, I didn’t win the ace pot. I didn’t even cash in the league. The Olathe course boasts 18 holes, probably 16 of which are deucable holes. I deuced exactly three of them, but also carded two bogies. It’s pretty open, but after as much golf as I’ve played, my accuracy has suffered lately (the last round out the tourney and the two today). There’s a 50/50 chance tomorrow won’t involve any disc golf.

Nice sky over Olathe KS
Speaking of odds, I then went off to Harrah’s casino after stopping at an ATM to pick up $120. That was my limit. But I didn’t worry, because I was playing Let It Ride (a game I’ve come out over $300 ahead in in my life). After the first, I’d say, 20 minutes, sixty of my dollars were already gone. I forked over the other $60 (which is what I did the first time I won big at the game, started bad… put more money in… started winning). I did start winning, but just enough to stay afloat. I probably sat there about an hour. When I got down to my last $30, I gave it up and went over to blackjack.
As soon as I get there, there’s an old Asian man next to me yelling “Monkey!” every time he needed a good card. I immediately felt good about this table. They had a weird side-game where for $1, if you got a 7 as your first card, you won $3, and if you happened to get back-to-back 7′s, you’d win $50. After three or four hands of not even bothering with the side-game, I tried it and BOOM – $50 the first hand. (If they had been the same suit, it would have been $100… d’oh! 3 7′s in a row would have been $500) Anyway, I was already up and that felt good. The guys at the table were a little younger than me and all had a good time shouting “Monkey!”, not knowing at all the significance that word has held for me over the years. Even Debra (the good dealer) like shouting it out. Seriously, everyone should shout it out at least once in their life. Preferably not during sex – it’s REALLY hard to explain that one.
So after about 2 hours of playing, I was back to $110. Should I take the $10 hit and go home, or try to earn back that $10 and break even? A new dealer came in, and I immediately lost the first two hands. Down to $100 (and a $20 loss). So I take my chips and leave. Or almost leave. I watch a few more hands. And it bugged me to not come out even. So I plop a big $10 on the table. I see an Ace for me. (Monkey!) And then a four (no monkey!). And it didn’t matter because dealer had blackjack. And I walked with my $90. Over four hours of gambling and only losing $30? I’ll take it.
Come on stats:
Miles: 77.7 / 5,017.4 (oh sure, NOW I get 3 7′s!!!)
Money: -$49.02 / -$2,016.52
Rounds played: 2 / 41
Courses played: 2 / 23
‘Monkeys’ spoken: dozens