Am I the only person that didn't know what "disc golf" is?
Bryson and I discovered it today the hard way. We were doing our walk at the nearby Aquatic Park which we just recently started visiting. It's a quaint park along a man-made lagoon, and it's much quieter than any nearby parks, which we couldn't quite figure out why (until today, that is).
Beautiful Aquatic Park between Berkeley and Emeryville along I-80
Soon after we got into the park, out of nowhere, whack!! A frisbee at the speed of a bullet almost drilled Bryson in his head and rolled right over my foot.
I looked up and saw 2 middle-age men in a distance frantically waving at us, whom I stared down a bit thinking "you almost killed my dog with your damn frisbee". When I picked it up and thought I'd return it to them with a little lecture about frisbee safety, they waved even more frantically and yelled "No, no! Don't touch it! Just leave it!!" with a very serious look on their face. I just thought "what, weirdos, you don't think I'm stealing your crappy piece of plastic, are you? How rude..." So I threw their frisbee down and walked off, slightly irritated and somewhat puzzled.
And as we walked deeper into the park, I started noticing men throwing frisbees everywhere, but none of them seem to be throwing it to anyone in particular. They're just flying across the park like little UFOs hovering over our heads and landing randomly in the middle of a grassy lawn. We also noticed these chained baskets standing on numbered posts all over the park that these men seem to be very interested in (I used to think these baskets are assigned to the nearby picnic tables so people can put their food in out of the way of gophers and other rodents... I know, it's weird, but I just couldn't come up with a better explanation)
Even after I got home I couldn't stop thinking about what these people could have been doing... Are they transporting drugs in the frisbees? Is this ritual of a secret society I didn't know about?? I know it would bother me till the day I die if I don't find out, so I did what everyone else would do: did a search on wikipedia. And in 5 seconds, it all became clear! The frisbee, the park, the chain basket, there is a perfectly logical explanation! The reassuring description on wikipedia tells me that this is no secret ritual, but rather components of a sport called "disc golf". It even has a picture with a disc-golfer depicted in action below:
So that's it! As I read on the description of the sport of disc golf, I feel strangely relieved. It's all very simple, it's like a game of golf played with a frisbee instead of a ball. Aquatic Park, in effect, is like a giant frisbee golf course, where the chain baskets scattered around are like the 18 holes on a regular golf course. The goal is to throw your frisbee from hole to hole (or basket to basket), with the fewest number of strokes (or throws) earning the highest scores.
Now it all makes sense... Why there aren't a lot of dog-walkers in this park, what these chain baskets are for, and why the frisbee-throwing men were so upset at me when I tried to lend a helping hand by returning the frisbee. Ha! Mystery solved. And you do learn something new every day, thanks to Wikipedia! (I should get some commission from them)
