To create the perfect weekend juxtaposition, on Sunday afternoon after getting all riled up at Roller Derby, I went to watch Polo with a couple friends in Greenwich. It was really unique.
Polo in Greenwich and Roller Derby in Holyoke are pretty much complete polar opposites. On one side we have women with fishnets and tattoos bashing into one another, and on the other side we have men on horses striking a small ball with a long mallet. And if it’s not evident by the players themselves, it’s evident by the spectators.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
I’d never been to see anything like Polo before. Crystal happened to be going with some peers and, since you pay by the car load, it only made sense to fill it up. They had an extra seat, and I grabbed it.
Horses are awesome.
It was actually pretty intense. The horses were very very fast. And when the players raced by, going near 30 miles per hour, the ground thundered. It actually rumbled.
Polo fields are huge. You can fit nine football fields onto a polo field. So it’s a bit hard to get a feel of all the action. I think each team only has four players out on the field at a time. And they nail that ball like it’s going out of style. I was pretty impressed.
At ‘halftime’ they invite the crowds to come out onto the field to stomp divets in the grass. Here’s a picture of me putting a big chunk of grass back in its place.
Know your place grass. Know your place.
The polo match lasted a couple hours. We showed up a bit late, but still got to see plenty of horse riding action. It was a fun trip to wealthy-ville.
I dare say, Pete and Crystal, you look dashing. Just dashing.
Thanks for inviting me Pete&Crystal!!
(feel free to check out some of Pete’s photos here.)
you look like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, except prettier.
Really? If anything, Mike D looks a lot more like Kirstie Alley.
Especially with that facial expression.
Yes! Similarities abound.
Roller Derby, Polo, ….
Is orienteering gonna be next?
What’s wrong with Orienteering? I like Orienteering. It’s a lost art with all this GPS technology abounding.
Actually Patrick is big big big into orienteering. I think he secretly wants me to take up said lost art.
Eh, I wouldn’t say “secretly want to take up”. More like “publicly want to try once.”
Things you have going for you:
— you’re fit
— you’re an engineer, which means:
—— you have good spatial reasoning skills
—— you like solving problems
—— you like improving efficiency
— you like playing those “figure out how to exit a room” puzzles
— you live in the “O zone” with a lot of orienteering opportunities
I don’t expect you to take up orienteering as your niche sport (that’s what rock climbing and kung fu is for), but I think that you’d have a good time if you tried it.