Construction Daze

Improvise!

Only one playable court

Mound of gravel on the left

Kerry

Teaching in the grass

So many people- so little room!

Barb and Ryan

Barb w/ Ryan, Barbara, and Kerry

Jessica and Nick

Wouldn't you know it? We knew that the deconstruction phase of the Miller Park renovation project would be in full swing and expected that we would have to move our weekly Sunday play to the baseball field at the top of the hill.  Good plan, right?  Not so much.  When it rains for three straight days during the week, the baseball field looks to be more suited to mud wrestling or four-wheeling than to petanque.

So.  The Parks & Rec people were kind enough to leave us at least one court in semi-playable condition.  With a little raking and smoothing, we removed enough of the loose top dressing to get down to a reasonably firm surface.  Maybe if we got a small turnout of players we'd be able to take turns and make do with just the one court.  So.  What happens?  We got one of our best turnouts of the year so far!  I counted 23 people.  For one court?

So.  We had to improvise.  We were able to draw lines, in a rather creative fashion, that allowed us to make two fairly normal length courts out of our one.  Take a look at the first picture above.What we did was play each round, then play the next round in the same direction as the first so that one of our two courts always played East to West while the other always played West to East.  It actually worked pretty well and, by taking turns, everyone had fun.

We were glad to have several first-time players turn out.  Barbara Kennamer from Kernersville made the trip over and played for the first time.  Kerry returned for only about his second time to play.  Pat Kiser brought her grandson Ryan for his first exposure and he was very enthusiastic and is excited about coming again.  One of Nelson's art students came and did some sketchwork while his companion, Jessica, tried her hand at the game.

Here's the scenario:

Jessica and I were playing three boules each against Fred, Terry, and Barb Arbuckle's two boules each.  Jessica was doing very well for a first-time player and I was doing okay too, but we still found ourselves down 12 to 9 going into the final end.  The other team had the point on the ground-- within about two centimeters of the jack-- when we found ourselves down to our last boule.  Jessica's boule.  So, I asked her to try pointing-- she had been our pointer for the entire game-- more firmly than usual at the opponents' point boule. 

You guessed it.  She not only moved the point away, but she moved it far enough to give us four points!  A final-boule-walkoff-win in her very first game!  Amazing.