Hard Plastic and Steel Tips

T-minus seven weeks to the Des Moines Marathon. The countdown is on!

Saturday’s training run felt great; a nice, peaceful run through downtown and the ghetto by Drake University. 12.5 miles at a 7:40 pace. And it’s a good thing I was moving along, because we ended up having a busy weekend.

But rather go into that, I have a question for everyone: since when did Ladder Golf go from one ladder to two? I ask because when I went to Google the blueprints to make my own (there’s no way I’m going to pay $50 for something plastic when I can build it for $14 out of PVC), there was site-after-site outlining how to make two of them. When the heck did this happen? When I first learned how to play Ladder Golf (or Bolo Golf or Ladder Toss or whatever you want to call it) a few years ago, there was just one ladder. A player from each opposing team stood on either side of it, 20ish feet away. While two players tossed golf ball bolos, the other two would stand dangerously close to the ladder, drinking beer and heckling the players tossing balls. And the ladder was small and hard as hell to get a bolo to land on. Now, it would seem, that not only are there two ladders, they’ve grown to be twice as big as the original ladder I learned on. And what’s with the “golf balls” that come with the new game? They’re not golf balls; they’re more like soft chew toys for a puppy. Where’s the danger in that? Geez, can the make this game any easier or lazier!?! I mean, c’mon, it’s already one of the best “laziest games” ever, but having one ladder on each end the size of Buicks seems a bit much. Might as well call it “Even the Most Chemically Inconvenienced Person Could Hit the Ladder with the Nerf Golf Balls”.

As of now, I’m boycotting the latest double-ladder version of Ladder Golf. I say bring back the harder, more likely to get struck by a golf ball, version! It’s the whole Lawn Darts game all over again. Remember when those things were made out of hard plastic with steel tips? Injury was always mere seconds away at any given time when you played that game. That was the best part of the game; knowing that at any time you could be impaled in the foot by a dart. Man, those were the good old days. And then “they” deemed it too dangerous and came out with the Diet Coke version of the game with bean bag weighted tips and soft, bendy plastic for the body of the dart. What’s next, Styrofoam horse shoes? It’s bad enough that everything these days has smooth, plastic edges and with on kung fu grip (remember when Tonka trucks had sharp, steel corners?), but don’t mess with lazy, beer-drinking lawn games. Let the boycott begin!