This post should have been up Friday, but unfortunately I was moving and thinking a bit slowly after a late Thursday night.
I’d been wanting to catch up with some of these guys from the DCFixed discussion board that I’d found after tracing a link from one of their threads to a post on my blog. On Thursday nights a bunch of them play bike polo down in SE DC at a court that has been set up for roller hockey with the side boards and all. After grabbing a few drinks with the typical Thursday happy hour crew I hopped the fixie down to Rush Rink at 13th and D SE and found the first game just about to begin. I sat on the side with another first timer and watched for the first game before playing the next couple of games.
In the end I came out with a bloody nose, a banged up knee, a twisted headset, more crashes under my belt then I’ve had in the past year and a half of city riding and a big ear to ear grin on my face. While it’s pretty tough to get a handle on, bike polo is an extremely fun and challenging game. As for injuries; it’s like my father always used to tell me about anything and everything I didn’t want to do or when I got hurt or… everything really, it builds character! (This little saying was also brought up by Tink on DCFixed for concrete crashes).
Anyway, the group seems like a great crew and after joining them for a “drink” at another player’s bar I drunken cycled home sometime around midnight. My single beer quickly spiraled into a couple of pitchers a random shot of who knows what and an Irish Car Bomb with the bartender Shane for good measure. Apparently this is more commonly referred to by the group as “getting Shaned”, hence the lack of my Friday post.
I spent the amazing weekend outside working an animal adoption event in Bethesda Saturday afternoon and riding a nice easy ride through downtown afterwards. Sunday, I got caught up in the parade festivities of the Garrison Frisbee crew before heading back down to the SE area to help clean up another basketball court area for some more bike polo.
*Marathon countdown: 6 days baby!
4 comments:
Man that sounds like fun. Based on your injury report, I'm guessing that checking is allowed?
Actually, though it is painful to admit this, there was no checking involved in the games I played. The bloody nose came from me watching a ball I'd just let roll by me into the goal and running directly into a team mate. The rest of it came from general crashes, ie... turning the handle bars to far trying to make a sharp turn or falling off while going for the ball. I think there will be a pretty steep learning curve here but for now I plan to leave battered and bruised everytime.
Oh, and it is totally worth it too in case you were wondering!
KMAX!
missed you on thursday!
i played my first game and came out of it with multiple bruises on my legs and hands.
come back and play polo!
oh, it's ilikebike from dcfixed. :)
Will be there with a coworker as well this week. I'm all about this, even put in for the ski poles/new polo mallets from Ebay that veeco picked up. Not to mention the soon to be built conversion/beater/polo bike I picked up last night...
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