Urban Frisbee Golf

Back in July at the Meetup 4th of July party, I came in contact with a guy named Ben. Coincidentally he worked in IT consulting with SAP as well and we quickly became friends. Ben is one of those guys that always has something going on. If you thought I was a social butterfly, this guy redefines the term. He's always planning nights out, socials, parties, and events for his circle of friends.

Ben invited me to an Urban Frisbee Golf tournament through Sydney. If you've never played frisbee golf before (technically, I guess it's called disc golf), it's really simple. You throw a frisbee at a designated target, hitting it in the least amount of throws as possible. Yes, there is even a professional league. My brother is really into this and plays on designated courses back home, but our course was set up randomly throughout the city.

Another caveat to our event was that you had to wear golf attire (see picture above - lots of argyle) and take a shot of liquor at every hole. This was going to get interesting... and sloppy.  The only exception was Ben's dad, who wore lederhosen.  Why?  I'm not sure.  I just wore some dress slacks that I tucked into argyle socks.  I didn't have much else to work with, so that would have to do.

We started off around dusk at Observatory Park which had a great overlook of the Harbor Bridge.  There were two different wedding parties taking photos near us, and I'm sure they loved the fact that we were dressed the way we were, being loud, and flinging discs every which way.

We made our way from the park to a tunnel under the bridge, then into Circular Quay where I may or may not have pegged an innocent bystander in a sari. I yelled 'Fore!' What else do you want me to do? We got some interesting looks from tourists in the Quay because of our attire and all of our gear. All of us had drinks in hand, I'm sure it was quite a scene to witness.

The course took us beside the Royal Botanical Garden and through another tunnel where we interrupted a few bums that were sleeping. One proceeded to heckle everyone that had a bad throw - he was such a good sport that Ben gave him a beer. Only one frisbee was lost, and Ben ill-advisedly tried to rescue it by scaling an 8 foot iron fence with pikes atop the bars. Luckily, and I mean VERY luckily, his injuries were minor (and the frisbee was lost).

As we entered Hyde Park we got some grief from security guards about our open drinks. We had been prepared for this to happen all night and we're lucky it didn't come up sooner. We got through about 8 holes and decided to call the rest of the game off. Ben invited us all back to his place for pizza and we spent the rest of the evening on his rooftop.

After tallying the scores, I think I won. I guess that makes me the Southern Hemisphere World Champion (according to Ben's Facebook invite of the title of the event).