The Almost Misadventure

So, my job is pretty cool. I host a travel show for a local public television station where we go to places in Illinois, Indiana and Missouri and do stories about interesting people, collections, places and groups. My assignment for this weekend was to chronicle a bike polo team. Yes, polo on bicycles. I know, I've never thought about it either.

Anyway, I get to the city where this club meets. It's known as a pretty crime and gang-heavy town so I drive in with all doors locked and pay attention. We always joke about "not getting shot" when we go there, but it can be a real threat so I was on alert, just being dilligent. I had directions to the park (a very nice little neighborhood park) where they play polo. I am following the directions and notice a street I need to take, but it's out of order compared with where I'm supposed to go, but I decide I'll give it a try anyway. I take off down this road and soon begin to realize I'm not probably in the right place, or a very nice neighborhood for that matter. That's about the time I see the man walking down the boulevard with a pipe in his hand, so I turn back to the main road and high-tail it. Needless to say, after going a little further than I thought it would be, I found the right road and made it safely to the park where I met the bike polo club and shot my story.

I guess that's why I am calling this an "almost" misadventure. It definitely turned out to be more of an adventure but it did get interesting for just a minute. And for those of you who are curious about bike polo, it was awesome. It's on a court about 100 x 75 feet or thereabouts and matches last 10 minutes or first to 5 goals and teams are 3-on-3. The people I talked to compared it really to hockey, because it's far less formal than horse polo and very much more "X Gamesy" if you ask me. It's fast-paced, there are wrecks and a whole lot of foul language, but I still enjoyed watching the competitiveness of it all and meeting the extremely nice and accommodating people there. They even spray painted their logo on one of my T-shirts for me. So I guess I'm honorary bike polo-er now, although I'm not sure I would ever be coordinated enough to play!

So that's my latest (mis)adventure. I hope to be back with another one really soon. And I'm going to start adding photos so you may want to page back through some of my blogs to check those out!