Hey, just wondering if anybody is interested in hitting the Thunderdome for morning practice/pickup games.

Let's do this!

The Chicago NACCC Polo Tournament is upon us. In cooporation with the Chicago NACCC, Chicago Bike Polo is throwing a tournament. Registration for the event is $30.00 per person, $90.00 for a team. More...

It is not completed yet, but very soon we will have housing info, court dimensions, and the full schedule for the weekend. Just so you know, Friday night we are planning a two-on-two, winner-stays-on, friendly tournament and Monday we are planning on breakfast and a league/rules forum. Get off those other two days so we can hang out a bit more.

group

Originally uploaded by ben.hunter

Here is a great photo of friendlies with milwaukee last weekend. It is pretty awesome to have a city that is about an hour away to play polo with and i think that because of them all our skill gets better. Their is no other teams i cheer harder for at tournaments or want to beat more when i play against them. Here is too milwaukee.

i am interested setting up a polo league between milwaukee and madison and chicago.

each city would travel once a month and host once a month, or we could all go to milwaukee once a month and make them host. there is a thread on the bikepolo.ca site talking about the leauge and confrences bull shit what not

but lets hear some thoughts on teams possibilities.

game style i like the oldschool 3 games to 3 . it would have to be a little organized but i figure we could have some good teams players interested i can imagine

ben
jonny
jill
lief
bird
mel
sam
jam
max
and thats not anywhere close to every one. so what would teams be lets hear thoughts

There's a new website in pololand.

www.bikepolo.ca

you can go ahead and make an account, post to the forums, join the various clubs, that have their own individual pages, post your bike, trash-talk, etc.

www.madbikepolo.org has kinda served as the midwest hub but i think it's time that it goes back to a madbikepolo blog. discussion of midwest tourneys can take place on the new site.

I can only laugh

Originally uploaded by jonny.hunter

So, between hardcourtbikepolo.com and madbikepol.org we have had a lot of discussions about how the sport needs to move forward. It seems that things will change at a tournament level and that at a daily level bike polo will stay the same. It seems a lot is being made of our final game in T.O. between Doug and the Darlrymple's, the fact is that even though things were intense and broke down, we still played it out and as i move on from it less and less of it bothers me. I view all them favorably and i consider Doug a good friend and even though i took a nice elbow to the face from Paul, he is one of the most respectable folks i have ever seen on the court.

One of the reasons that Madbikepolo made such a concerted effort to bring three teams to Toronto was that we were saying goodbye to one of our own. Kevin, has been playing polo in Madison for 4 years and was there at the start. He has been invaluable to the sport in Madison. It is without doubt that he was our best player and a committed organizer and voice that will be missed greatly.

Ben, Kevin and I have played in 6 tournaments together now and placed on the podium at all of them. It is sad to see us probably have to separate for at least the next 6 months but it will be tough even then to get us back together for tourney play. It has been a real pleasure to play with kevin so often and i feel honored to have competed against him here in madison so often. He will be greatly missed and the void he leaves here will never be filled.

One advantage to working out in the sticks (aside from getting to walk along a geode and fossil filled creekside at lunchtime) is that the plumbing supply stores out there carry ABS pipe and fittings. I just completed this little beauty: 2 1/4" diameter, 5 3/4" long, closed ends, "trap"-style shuffle surface, recessed shaft cross bolt, it's everything I was trying to accomplish with much more complicated/expensive designs, materials, and manufacturing processes.

more to come soon ...

just for the record.

I have a string of thoughts from the past few days

* tourneys should be run by committee, it is too much for one or two people to take on and it sucks for one or two individuals to have to make split decisions, that often times due to lack of sleep, general chaos, stress, and ignorance, they are not qualified to make. leaving players and teams pissed at someone whose fault its really not...

* polo and messenger races need to be their own separate thing. if the happen to coincide at the same time fine, but neither should make concessions to the other, way to many people don't give a shit about polo, and i don't give a shit about races, unless joe wins.