National Doubles Champions coming to Winston-Salem

The FPUSA blog posted an article about the recent National Doubles tournament held in Sarasota, Florida. The winners of the Men's Doubles are pictured at right. They are:

Gilles Canesse and Jean Jacques Rouillon (second place), Juan Garcia and Mamary Coulibaly (Champions), and David and Salem Bloom (third place). The winning team of Juan/Mamary are signed up to compete in our first tournament in Winston-Salem on May 17th. So you may have a chance to play against (beat?) the National Doubles Champions if you sign up now!

Parisian Promenade

There is an upcoming event that several of the Carolina Petanque group plan to attend. It is to be held in Greensboro's Bicentennial Gardens on Sunday, May 4, 2008. The name of the festival is Parisian Promenade. According to the gotriadscene.com website, it is to:

"Celebrate the arrival of spring by enjoying the sights, scenes, sounds and smells of a spring afternoon in Paris. Parisian Promenade will feature painters, photographers, fresh-cut flower bouquets, live musical performances, a children’s area (featuring art activities, balloon sculpting, and Tic Tac Toe), French food demonstrations, Poodle Parade and much more. It is a terrific opportunity to see a brilliant display of the garden in full bloom -- nature's artistry at its finest. This is a cooperative project between Greensboro Beautiful and the Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department and is sponsored by Doris and Stanley Tanger."

Here are a few pictures from last year's affair. (Courtesy of Philippe's Petanque America blog archives.) As you can see, it was a lot of fun. Once again we plan to have a small table displaying petanque equipment and show the crowds the basics of how to play our game. We had a lot of interest last year and would like to recruit anyone who might want to play and/or join our club.

Why not plan to bring the family and come on out and join us? We look forward to seeing you!

First tournament upcoming on 5/17

http://petanqueamericaopen.blogspot.com/2008/05/carolinas-open-may-17.html

Just in case some of you may not be aware, we're having a good response to our request for early registrations for the May 17th tournament at Miller Park. So far we have five teams coming down from Virginia and one coming up from Florida! I'm assuming that many of you plan to play as well? Just to make it official, send an e-mail to CarolinaPetanque@yahoo.com and I'll add you to the list. It looks as though we'll have no trouble getting at least sixteen (maybe more) doubles teams. We want to make a good impression with our hospitality and, we hope, our play!

I'll let you know more of the specifics as time goes by. As it stands now, we hope to provide some sort of lunch and maybe do a group outing for supper. Ideas?

Gary

Holidays in the Carolinas

Several of us enjoyed playing in Lexington, NC, just a couple of days before Christmas. It was a little cool, but we had a nice propane heater, a chimenea with a fire log, and Christmas spirits to keep us warm.

Christmas Day petanque!

Terry and Sue had Michel, Shirley, Gary, and a few of their neighbors over for dinner on Christmas Day. They have a home on High Rock Lake near Lexington. In addition to the main house, they have a really huge recreation room with an indoor racquet ball court. So, since racquet ball is a little (okay, a lot) more strenuous than we were willing to tackle after the great meal, we broke out the soft petanque boules and had a go. It was loads of fun. See for yourself.

From Miller Park

And here are a few more taken in October 2007. These were at our Miller Park (Winston-Salem, NC) terrain. Beautiful fall day in the Carolinas! The little princess in pink is Marin, the (almost) two year old granddaughter of Gary and Shirley. By the way, Mario from Florida was our other most welcome guest that day. He is good!

Good times remembered

I was going through some of my pictures recently and discovered a few related to petanque in the Carolinas that have not been published before. Here are some from October of 2007 that show a place our friends Bobby and Peggy have at Carolina Beach on the coast of North Carolina. They have a beautiful little beach cottage right on the intracoastal waterway. And a really cool place to play petanque!