San Francisco

So I headed into the city to hang out and get away from the boredom at home. I got there Saturday afternoon and the plan was to go play crazy golf. There was a new course near Dustins place and we were going to check it out. It turned out to be a local art project type of thing and was basically shit as an actual crzy golf course. Maybe it was a good piece of art but somehow I doubt it. Anyway, that left us with not much to do. We figured we needed to do something outside and therefore probably in a park. Frisbee golf, that was the answer. We didn't have any frisbees so we headed to Sports Authority. It turns out there is quite a market in frisbee golf and they have different frisbees for different shots, a driver, mid range, putter and even more. We just started out with the midrange disc and each got one and set off for the park with a few cases of beer. The golfing went well. We just picked a tree and went for that having a few brews on the way. It turns out there was a proper tournament going on over the weekend as well so we kept running into people playing in the tuornament on an actual course. They were usually quite nice but some of them seemed to get quite annoyed that we were just hucking our frisbees around playing for trees when there was a proper tournament going on. We tried to stay out of their way and played on. We ended up running out of beer and light after 18 holes so we headed home. A quick freshen up and we went out for a few drinks. It was a good night out. There were a bunch of people out that I hadn't seen for a while so it was good to catch up with them but it wasn't a crazy night or anything. The next day we had to figure out what to do again. A few ideas were thrown around and frisbee golf was on the list again. We left it to Evan to decide and he went for the golfing (he hadn't been the day before). So we knew the tournament went on for the whole weekend and we also saw the drivers and putters in action so we figured we'd go and get some of those because we blatantly needed the distance of the driver to tee off. It urns out there are a bunch of options. There was a distance driver and a fairway driver. There was also the champion edition which cost and extra $5. We figured we needed the full distance driver and got a putter as well for everyone. We now had a reasonable set of discs and couldn't wait to try the driver. Everyone was guessing what it would be like and how easy it would be to throw it for miles. We got to the park and decided to start further down the park to stay away from the tournament (a decision that would lead us to interesting places as you'll find out). First hole, and how did the driver perform? Not that much differently from the mid-range disc. Well, I wouldn't say we had been ripped off. After a while of throwing the different discs, it became apparent that the driver would go further than the mid-range, you just had to throw it very flat and well to get a noticeable benefit. That was pretty much the key. If you were spooning your throws off into the rough the different discs really didn't do anything for you but if you had good form then the discs did behave differently. Anyway, we didn't really care that much. We just kept picking new trees for the next whole and had a beer in our hands so it was fun regardless. So as I mentioned before we were pretty far down the park towards the ocean and generally exploring around, checking out random parts of the park we had never seen before. We came across a big sports field, I think it had three or four football (soccer) pitchs lined up and we were driving down the side off them because thhey were fenced in. After running a hole down the side of the fields we cut through a fence and got into what looked like a storage area for the park. There were big piles of hay bales, gravel piles and stacks of massive logs all in an area that was supposed to be fenced off with a gate but the fence had holes in it everywhere. It looked like a cool place for a hole. I climbed up a gravel pile and was starting to look around when I got the impression there were some people around. After taking a look around I noticed a small group of guys off in the pile of logs. I didn't want to stare but as I flashed my eyes around I noticed that on guy was on his knees and didn't have a shirt on. It all looked a bit dodgy. As they saw us climbing up the gravel pile they sort of shuffled around to hide behind the logs and eventually split up and wandered around a bit. Everyone else climbed up the gravel pile and was saying "This looks like a great place for a hole. Lets go from here to the post over there." But after seeing the boys in in the logs I figured it probably wasn't such a good place for a game and it was probably best to leave the boys alone in the logs so I said "I think we should play on and go somewhere else." At which point Dustin caught my eye and turned around to see the guys in the logs and quickly agreed with me "Yup, were not playing here. Lets move on." I'm not sure exactly what was going on but I'm pretty sure that the logs were a place for gay dudes to show up and get gay with each other. So if you're in the city around 6ish on a Sunday night and fancy a bit of gay sex go check out the logs in Golden Gate Park. We decided to move on and played another few holes until it got dark. Well we kept playing in the dark until Ly lost his driver. Then we went home, grabed some food and played Mario Kart into the morning. So the frisbee golf was pretty good. I've got a set of discs and just need to convince people in England thats its a good laugh now. I figure Hyde park would be good for a round. It also got us out and around Golden Gate Park and introduced us to areas we never knew existed and certainly opened our eyes a bit.

Anyway, its mid week now and guess what? I've been turned in to general slave labour for my dad. He's doing a lot of work around the pool redoing the paving slabs so we rented a big old pnuematic hammer and broke up a bunch of the old slabs on Monday and I think the new paving stones arive today so I'll no doubt be recruited into laying those. I suppose it does help ease the boredom by giving me something to do but it would be nice to feel like I had a choice and to actually have more than five minutes advance warning. Oh well, the weekend is coming up soon so I should be able to escape then.