Not that I need to...

but I'll post it...

Big Game Sunday Polo, Pizza Party

I know most of the ATXBPSC members are not the biggest football fans, but I also know that after a long afternoon of polo we can scarf down free pizza and beer faster than a bunch of stoned Ninja Rurtles.

If the prospect of lots of home-made gourmet wood-fired pizza is enough to get you within a few meters of a 47" HDTV for the Super Bowl tomorrow night after polo at Eastwoods, Rich has invited everyone to celebrate with him and watch the game at his place.

Full details are on Facebook

From his description:

I will have:
dough and various topping for pizza
A keg of some beer. sorry no home made beer :(
Some appetizers

You can bring:
a special topping for your pizza
a side dish
friends or family

He'll be busy firing up his home made wood fired pizza oven while the rest of us are working up an appetite. I'll be heading out there around 5 or so, the game starts at 7. He lives rather far north, so If people want to carpool, I'm cool with that and can take 4 others without bikes, and drop them off at eastwoods after the party.

See ya'll tomorrow!

bike polo now

I am going up to Eastwoods right now, 3 p.m., and I think some others will already be there, come out if you can!

ATXGBPT2009

Austin Texas Guerrilla Bike Polo Tour 2009 from Robert on Vimeo.

Just got this together and finally remembered to upload it. I am no video editing pro, so shut up if you don't like it... ha.

Also, if anyone wants to play some league games on Saturday, let me know!

The Ruckus Will be Brought Tonight

Anyone who dares to challenge, show up at Eastwoods Park tonight at 5:30pm for some League play. Bring the Ruckus!

Swingin' In The Rain

Ok polo people, I know ya'll have been cooped up inside like me for the past few days because of the rain, and are ready to sweat out those rainy day blues on the court! Don't fear, we'll still be playing even if it's pouring thanks to Tina, who discovered a covered basketball court at Alamo Park (less than 1 mile from our Eastwoods home) that should fit our needs perfectly as a back up if the weather dictates it.

Here's the plan:

5:30 - Pick-Up/League Play at Eastwoods (weather permitting)

If the weather sucks, take Dean Keaton East till it hits Manor, and make your 1st right on Alamo St. We'll be playing polo 1 block up under a nice pretty awning on the corner of Alamo and 22nd: HERE


View Larger Map

another one...

7th Midwest Bike Polo Champeenships from Mr.Do on Vimeo.

thanks for sending this to me Zach!

League Play Update:

I heard from Cyrus about all the crazy games that happened this weekend. I'm excited to get in on the action. If you haven't gotten with your team yet, please do so soon, at least get in contact with them, and get a team name and figure out your schedules so you can coordinate on showing up all together. I heard there were 3 teams all missing one player each. That's sucks, and isn't fair for your team. Don't be scared of your teammates, they are all nice people!

On another note, if you haven't figured it out yet, the schedule isn't going to be something we follow exactly. So, if you show up and the team you will be playing 3 weeks from now on the schedule is there too, and there aren't any other teams around, go ahead and play them. I don't mind if you all call out teams and play early or later, as long as you get the games in. And please, PLEASE, report the scores to Cyrus or myself or post them up in the google doc somewhere where we can see them and post them up on the official score sheet. This way teams will know who they've played and who they need to play, and see who is killing it and who isn't! And at some point I want to start reading about the games from the participants themselves, who played well, who impressed everyone, who scored an awesome shot at the last second, blah blah, you know, I think this will be cool for everyone!

I hope today was good down south, can't wait for my work break on Thursday to come out and watch some polo, and of course Sunday is going to be GRRRREAT!!! See you on the courts!

Pictures from this past weekend in L.A.

Back from L.A.

Your boys and girl are back from Los Angeles' SoCal Winter Polo Picnic. Team Austin, Miguel, Casey and I, didn't play that well against the extreme competition on this side of the country, but we had fun and learned a thing or two.

There were teams from East Van, Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, Pheonix, some from D.C., some from N.Y., and I'm sure from some other places I can't remember right now. We met lots cool and great people. The L.A. crew is super friendly and welcoming, they also play some hella good polo out there. Pheonix brought some 11-12 year olds who f-n rocked, and would put shame to a lot of us here, sorry Austin, these kids are good! LA fought East Van in the Final for a freakin awesome two-game final, but couldn't keep East Van from killing it in the second game! Well done Los Angeles and East Van.





Miguel took a lot of really great pictures this weekend, so be on the look out for those!
Thanks Casey, Miguel, and Annie, I had a good time with y'all!

Polo Visitor!! Birthdays! Farewells!! Sunday!!!

Hey Austin, I want to make sure everyone in town will be coming out on Sunday so we can get in lots of great pick-up and LEAGUE GAMES!!! Also, we have a lot of Aquarians in the club celebrating birthdays right now (Dan, Keith, Jasmine, Me...who else?!), Derek will be celebrating his last day of polo in Austin this Sunday, AND we are going to have a visitor from the polo club in Bloomington, Indiana!! I hope everyone can come out and bring their A-games and make Ashley feel welcome, we met her first in COMO at the Midwest Champeenships, then Jazzy and I got to hang with her and her crew for a solid 24 hours at the St Louis Bike Polo Lock-in.

Ashley will be arriving around midnite on Sat night/Sun morning. Anything fun happening? She will be staying with me and I was thinking it'd be fun to maybe gather at Juan and a Million (or some comparable place) for a celebration brunch- all polo players welcome!!!We can toast to the birthday kids and the out of towner, anyone interested? Otherwise, lets make it kind of a picnic party at pick-up. Bring something to share and eat, or drink...

I am off on Monday too so anyone available for polo Monday, holler at me. If she is still in town on Tuesday, I'm sure Ashley would love to play southside polo if anyone could give her a ride to and from the courts? That can be discussed later. Holler at me with fun plans going on this weekend! mo.grady@gmail.com 797-5483

League Progress Report

Sunday will mark the end of the first official week of league play, and I wanted to do a quick progress report to let everyone know what is going on, and what needs to happen to keep our little experiment on track.

Last night was a wonderful night of polo, a cool humid mist and very little rain. If you stayed away because of the weather, for shame ;) As far as I know the first two league matches were played between Team Mayhem, Inc and the Polo Cholos, with the Cholos coming out on top two games to none. I believe the Cholos also emerged undefeated from their second match against the Polo Hobos. Annie and Mo kept score, and hopefully we'll have some official numbers posted by the time the crew gets back from the LA Polo Picnic this weekend.

I expect we'll see a lot of league matches on Sunday at Eastwoods, so that all the teams stay on top of their schedules. In the interest of making the process of scheduling and coordinating matches easier I put a chart on the shared Google doc. If you are on the email list for the doc, you should have got an email explaining it in further detail. Please take a moment to look it over and fill out the information on there.

Rain Break or No Break, Polo Goes On

rain jacket and pants--check. lights--check. polo mallet--check.

bring the ruckus--CHECK!

I'll be there tonight regardless of rain. People play polo in the rain all over the world. Looks like there even might be a break at 5pm. I'll have the cones and ball ready at 5pm, come play polo and league games!

~Cyrus

Google and bike polo!

If you're wondering how to get in touch with your teammates for the League, you'll have to check your email, assuming you gave me one... if you haven't, then I didn't send you an email giving you access to the google doc with all the info in it. So check your email, open the google doc, find the tabs at the bottom, read the rules, see the schedule, contact your team, play polo!

Hit me up if you don't have this google doc... you shouldn't have to sign in to view it... if you have a problem, let me know!

I also put a new tab in the google doc for re-scheduling, comments, ideas, etc... I've already posted something there for teams 2 and 7. check it out.

We're working out all the communication bugs, please be patient and don't get worked up if you aren't able to get your games done because you can't get a hold of your team... it will all work itself out. The games will get done, fun will be had!

Bike Polo and Democracy

Daniel has raised an issue that I foresee requires our club to collectively solve—the “next game pile”. This is particularly relevant since we will now be mixing in League games during our normal pick up nights. Since we would never want to promote totalitarian or despot decisions, I think we should vote on this as a club. Hooray for democracy!

If you are not familiar with the issue read Daniel’s entertaining post here: http://www.thyneighborsbike.com/?p=2230 Also, read Doug’s (New York) comments to the post.

The Issue: With 30+ players that regularly come out, our club has reached the level where it may be hard to get as many opportunities to play a game as we would like, especially if someone has a time constraint and can’t stay the whole night. The natural evolution is that those who do not get their mallet in after a game has ended, in the traditional throw in format, try and ensure they will be in the following game by creating a “next game” pile. This has the potential of actually decreasing the opportunities for play as Daniel mentions by turning into a series of “next game” piles. If you are in the bathroom, in a conversation, or just spacing out, you may find that there are multiple “next game” piles and you are on the waiting list behind two or three predetermined games. There are two solutions to this problem and I will try and explain the benefits and disadvantages to each.

The first is to keep things as is. Stay attentive, and be the first to throw in your mallet to ensure your mallet is one of the six mallets that land in the throw in pile. As Daniel mentioned, if you can’t do this you shouldn’t be riding a bike, or playing polo for that matter. This is the purest solution, but it has problems. First, it does not ensure that players who just played will not throw their mallets in for the next game. Second, as we all have probably witnessed, more than six mallets can land on the court at once.

The second option is that after a game everyone who wants to play throws in their mallets. If there are six or less, great, we solved the problem. If there are more than six, whoever shuffles the pile first weeds it down to six, throwing out the extras. If you are not selected you throw in on the next game. The problem with this option is something I experienced in Seattle while playing with their club. My mallet, by chance, was not selected three times in a row. At 15+ minutes a game, I sat and watched for along time anxiously waiting to play. Yes, you can solve the problem by making a fuss, but not everyone wants to do that. I surely did not as an “out of towner” playing with a new club. It wasn’t until someone asked me why I wasn’t playing that I felt comfortably explaining that my mallet hadn’t been selected the previous three games. He ensured that mine would be selected in the next throw in. This gets messy however and has to potential for the shuffler selecting who they want to play in the next game.

The solution is what Doug mentioned. Those who are shuffled out of the six are automatically set aside for the next game. So if two are not chosen, they are ensured to play in the next game and the four mallets that are selected from the next throw in pile are added to the two to create the next game. In a sense this is a hybrid of the regular throw in and the “next game” pile. As Doug mentioned, this works best if everyone agrees that you cannot play two games in a row if there are more than six people out at the courts.

That creates three options. I propose that we vote as a club on the three, decide on one, and implement that option. In the comments section on the blog cast your vote and let’s sort out this problem so we can “have our cake and eat it too”, or maybe that’s “eat our cookies (or scones) and play polo as well”.

Option 1: Regular Throw In

Option 2: Next Game Pile

Option 3: Hybrid