Ups and Downs

Three quick announcements. (1) is that there is a "full moon" bike ride happening this wednesday. Meet 10pm at the sample gates! Brent (who's played a few times) is organizing this and it should be hella fun. There's a good chance we might end the course at my house and engage in some post-ride intoxication! We'll see. Item #(2) is that on January 1st the guys in Indy will be playing an exhibition game for First Friday (an art gallery/community event, i think). Anyway, we're invited and it's super close, so let's go show them what we're made of! And finally, (3) the St.Louis friendlies are this weekend!!! I'm very excited to see lee and cole and jake and lucky and hopefully a bunch of the como kids show up too! And this time I actually have legitimate mallets to play with.


Alright, ups and downs...ups and downs.

Up. Polo is still happening three days a week and lots of people are still showing up! Good times had by all.

Down. Someone fucking stole all our boards... probably the IU grounds crew or something, but still, no one steals the fucking basketball hoop when people aren't shooting around...




Up. Tons of new mallets!!! Between the como orange pipe and some local yellow that I, uh, found, we've all stocked up on quality skipole/gaspipe mallets. I even found an old golf bag for $1.50 at the local thrift store! Hella helpful.




Down. Bumps and bruises. like Ryan YellowBike taking a breather here after a wreck. At least the play stopped and you can see his fellow players are offering him a hand... Overall things have been pretty good- a few sprained wrists and sore knees, but no serious injuries whatsoever. People, that is. Bikes are another story... we had another taco'd wheel tonight- Francis' rear got bent not just once but twice. An unintentional t-bone, but still my truck had to ferry his polo bike home.




Up. New bikes, new players! In front you can see my "ross gran tour" that is being slowly converted into a dedicated polo bike. Round behind it is my good friend (and new player) Ryan's freewheel singlespeed that he's been playing on recently. That bike actually used to belong to fellow polocat Evan, though he "payed it forward" once he got his new Leader batmobike. Lots more polo-only bikes showing up.




Up. Kids in Indy seem to be playing polo again!

Down. We drove up to play with them and not enough people showed up, so they left.... 30 minutes before we arrived :(





Up. Indy has tons of space to play.

Down. Not very accommodating surface and sides for polo.

Apparently this is where they play, 11th & Pennsylvania below the highway. It's wide and flat, but not a lot of barriers to stop the ball. With some boards or a freestanding court the location could be a pretty decent location, but in a city the size of Indianapolis I'm sure there are better locations.

Regardless, I have high hopes for Indiana bike polo now that us and indy have finally gotten in contact. This is what I love about polo- not only do you make new friends in every city, but they're new friends who really want to play polo! And this time we won't have to travel so far...





Oh nine is quickly coming to close. I know we probably won't be playing much over the holidays, but once the new year is here it's a whole new ballgame!

As long as that game is bike polo.

-W.