Saturday, June 30, 2007

DG Review/Rant: Campton Hills Park (St. Charles, IL)

Last weekend, my disc golf buddy Mark and I took on a new 9-hole course, Campton Hills Park in nearby St. Charles (roughly 60 miles west of Chicago).

The course was different than others we’d played before, with heavily wooded, narrow fairways, steep ravines, and chipmunks exploring fallen timber. In fact, out on #6 one of the critters crept up to me, and accepted a bit of cookie I’d brought as a snack…before then viciously biting my thumb, and scurrying under a fern as I cursed his bastard kind.

Actually, that’s a lie.

The chipmunks on-site were very cordial, especially for tolerating my actual profanity (as in “God dammit!” or “Ratfuck!”) whenever an oak tree deflected my shot. Truthfully, this intense form of self-expression in disc golf is not uncommon. Players cursing freely after a bad shot (or even a good one) is a key difference between the culture of disc golf and it’s more traditional, white-collar cousin with the Lexus in the driveway.

But I digress. My first impression of Campton Hills was trash. That is, water and beer bottles discarded by players (slash) idiots too lazy to hold onto them. This, despite a refuse bucket being available at every tee pad. Between us, Mark and I picked up a dozen bottles and cans, discarding them properly along the way, as we did the week before at another course in Bartlett, IL (Sunset Park).

Not to come off as self-righteous or a grumpy old man (I’m 38), but it’s no secret that most disc golfers are young, college-age guys. So to these mopes who feel it the mark of a slick, non-conformist rebel to treat your local course like a flophouse, kindly stay the hell in your parents’ basement until you can treat it right.

Edgar The Trash Golem Greets Disc Golfers at the First Tee

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