mini golf

Scott Base hosted a mini golf tournament as part of a larger charity telethon event in New Zealand. They invited a handful of personnel from McMurdo to join in the fun; and that is what it was.

The friendly folks at the Kiwi station developed a 12 hole course all over their building, tested it out, set a par for each hole, and let us go. I had a foursome made up of Kai, our Physical Therapist, Bill, the NSF Station Manager, and Gary from the Fire Department. We had a ball! At one point, I laughed so hard, my sides hurt.

One group used a freezer for their construction site; except our ball kept gathering ice like a snowball and the ramp was very difficult to put a frozen ball up into the hole. This photo is fantastic because it caught the ball overshooting its' goal.

Another great hole ended with chipping the ball into a tent. The picture attached is of Bill hitting his ball through the door. I also like this hole because we had a water hazard, a bridge made from an upside-down sled, a pair of carhartts to send our ball through, and if we hit it far enough out of bounds, hitting a can of m&m's, we could eat one.

My favorite hole was probably the last one. A small A-Frame had been constructed and a rotating blade (a.k.a. flame) spun around it imitating the real fire that took place earlier in the season. It was the last hole our foursome played, though and, after three hours, proved to get the best of me. I topped out on that hole with 10 shots.

Other clever ideas involved putting underneath a Hagglund with sandtraps on the other side, and aiming for a toilet seat decked out with lights and whistles at the bottom of a ramp.

All-in-all, it was a long, but fun-filled evening!