Ice Golf
kevincox.ca
kevincox.ca
Happiness isn't having what you want. It's wanting what you have.
Growing up on the far South Side of Chicago, we didn't have a frozen lake handy, but there was this odd phenomenon where some lots were permanently vacant, usually belonging to the houses next to them. I guess land was cheap at one point. Now if I go there on StreetView, they all have houses.
Anyway, these vacant lots were always sunken below street level, and many of the adjacent owners would flood them in winter so the neighborhood kids could skate on them. Imagine doing that in the current litigation-heavy climate.
I don't remember anyone golfing on them, though. We did play hockey. If the puck went into the snow, you'd "take it out" like in basketball.
According to [1] the quote is by Garth Brooks.
I wonder which one is right.
[0] - https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/461438-happiness-is-not-hav...
[1] - https://taddasfitness.com/blog/100932/Happiness-isn-t-having...
> It's not having what you want
> It's wanting what you've got
It always amazed me that such a powerful idea could be conveyed in two lines of a pop song, so it makes a lot of sense that it came from elsewhere.
(that was a joke, if it wasn't obvious.)
Plenty of folks still set up neighborhood rinks just like this here in New England!
The made up golf game I play with my nieces over the summer is to pick out a bunch of trees around yard as “holes”. Hitting the tree with the ball means sinking it. Lots of fun.
When I was overseas we had a course made by spraying oil on sand to create greens and fairways. That was ironically more environmentally friendly than anything used by the PGA.
Like this, but ours was so dry that the entire thing used oil.
https://golf.com/travel/inside-sand-green-golf-rough-rudimen...
Other fun sports to try on frozen lakes are ice boating and kite surfing with a snowboard. Lots of fun.
If I’m skating on my rink, I’m going to be pretty confident. I know the thickness of the ice and I know the contours of the lake bottom to know how to manage it. If I’m skating across the lake, then I’m either carrying a hockey stick or I’ve got my little ice picks in my sleeves.
In areas that get colder - like Minnesota, it’s pretty normal to be able to drive on the ice. In high school we got pulled over by the police for towing a sled behind the car on a frozen lake. It turns out that towing the sled was legal, but we needed to have something to prevent the sled from slipping under the car.
There’s also ways that you can take classes to learn how to drive on ice better. About a decade ago, I took a class with the local Audi owners club where they taught people how to drive on ice. You had to supply your own car (Audi or not) and acknowledge that your insurance does not cover you when driving on a lake. But aside from that it was a ton of fun and skill building. It’s still freaky when your car starts spinning, but its a lot less freaky when you’re on open ice and you know that you’re not going to hit anything.
And driving on ice isn’t some sort of edge case. For the residents of Angle Inlet, the 22 mile long winter ice road across Lake of the Woods[0] was literally a lifeline during the US/Canadian border closure because, for the most part, the residents had no other way to get to the rest of the United States.
[0]: https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/minnnesota-northwe...
Fun fact: I caused this to be shown at our Thursday Movie Night at Google. It turned out that on our DVD setup, everything looked black and you couldn't see anything. I took a lot of shit for that one.
I ride a Rokon motorcycle with studded tires on our lake.
Golf sounds like fun.
Do you have more info?
Is this the official webpage? https://chillyopen.wayzatachamber.com/
It covers some of the history of the Chilly Open, has interviews with participants, etc
> “Koozies, best known for keeping your beer warm.”