Yesterday Pete was going full bore at the goal to defend an against an attack. Slammed on his brake, he heard a PING(which was his cable snapping), he crashed his tire straight into our heavy metal goals, he was thrown over his bars and cracked his head on the ground. Broke a huge piece right off the temple area of his helmet.

If he wasn’t wearing his helmet he’d probably be in the hospital right now but instead he was able to laugh it off and coast his fucked up bike home to his family with nothing more than a sprained wrist.

Please consider wearing a helmet if you don’t now. No matter how great of a cyclist you are there is always mechanical failure to worry about.

He hit the goal so hard that he bent his steel fork backwards into a negative rake.

UPDATE: Pete ended up with two broken bones in his hand. Here’s wishing a quick and easy healing process.

Minneapolis put in a group order with MKE Bicycle Co for some of their aircraft grade polo shafts.

Thanks to Hewitt and the crew at Ben’s Cycle for getting us our order so fast!

Here’s a video of the World Champion Beaver Boys from Milwaukee from November 2009. It contains highlights from the 7th Midwest Bike Polo Championships in Columbia, MO. Where the Beaver Boys once again faced Chicago’s Machine Politics for the title of best in the Midwest. That time it was Chicago who showered a merciless rain of shots on target.

It chronicles the arrest of 11 poloists and subsequent their deal with the city for permanent courts of their own.

Yet another now classic film from Mr. Do.

The #1 Bike Polo Team in the World

Congrats to the Beaver Boys from Milwaukee on keeping the title of best in the world at home in North America. They defeated Machine Politics(picture below) from Chicago for the title. The three day championship took place in Berlin this year with over 90 teams fighting for a chance just to make it Sunday and the double elimination bracket.

This was a repeat of the championship game of Midwest 6 and 7. I’m so proud of our Midwest teams right now I could burst.

#2 in the world ain't nothing to sneeze at either

Photos from MWBPC8 by Christopher Berg Photography

UPDATE:

http://tinyurl.com/whbpc2010-finals – The double elimination championship bracket from the Hardcourt Bike Polo World Championships in Berlin.

The World Hardcourt Bike Polo Championships are underway in Berlin, Germany. Two days of qualifiers all lead to a round of 32 on Sunday. Full list of teams can be found here.

Up to date info is promised at the Official tournament site as well as the thread on the League of Bike Polo. Here’s hoping for an all North American podium with a strong showing from the Midwest.

Minneapolis’ own Mr. Do comes up with another stunning video piece. This is a short teaser from the 2010 North American Bike Polo Championships in Madison, WI.

Send you comments and or bribes for him to dig up flattering footage to MrDo@mplsbikepolo.com

Grass bikeball at Calhoun

What: Grass “bikeball” polo and hardcourt bike polo pickup games and Grill-out

Where: McRae Park in South Minneapolis

When: Sunday August 8th from 1pm until we get tired.

Who: Minneapolis Bike Polo and the Calhoun Bikeball Club and you!

What to do: Bring yourself, your friends and something to grill. There will be mallets and balls for both games. Games will be going on all afternoon.

Related article: Grass and Hardcourt Polo Day

Heads up to Duluth, Menominee, Mason City, Madison and the rest of the Midwest.

We are having a grill out, hang out, bike ball AND bike polo Sunday shindig. August 8th. It’ll be a pretty laid back affair.

What is bike ball you ask? Well bike ball is what a group of cyclists in Minneapolis have been playing for 15-20 years.

Its a variation of grass polo that uses a large ball and wiffle bats. The web site bikeball.com is currently down. But its coming back and the archive is available here. A few have come and played hardcourt with us and loved it. This is our chance to play their game and learn a few new tricks.

Phoenix will be so proud of us.

Our home court is located in a park with a large manicured football field. Perfect for bike ball.

The idea is that whatever game you want to play it’ll be there and we will hopefully gain converts to both sides.

Drop a comment on this post with questions or drop us an email, info@mplsbikepolo.com

UPDATE: We plan to start around 1pm. Bring some food to share or grill and lets have a real good time.

On Thursday one of our players was involved in a bad crash which resulted in a very serious wound.

Ramon and Matt were fighting for the ball against the back boards when their wheels caught causing both players to be thrown from their bikes. Matt went down first and Ramon was dismounting over his bars and struggling to find his feet underneath him. It looked like he was going to make it out of the crash safely when he let out a cry of pain.

We knew it was bad if it was able to make Ramon cry out, he’s a tough and gritty player. We at first assumed he had subluxed his shoulder or twisted his ankle until we saw the blood.

When dismounting his bike he stepped directly onto Matt’s brake lever. The brake lever pushed through his shoe, into his foot and stopped just before exiting the top of his foot. This wasn’t a sharp brake lever or out of the ordinary in any way. This was a stock full sized brake lever. The lever, upon inspection, had not one drop of blood or gore after piercing his foot.

We carried him over to a bench to asses the situation as thick deeply red clots of blood splashed to the ground. We cut off his shoe and applied bandannas as bandages. The bleeding stopped quickly and against our better judgement we brought Ramon home to be checked over by a nurse friend of his.

The situation didn’t improve after caring for the wound at home so Ramon went to the ER in the morning. They looked it over and found that a piece of the rubber sole had been lodged deep in his foot.

The doctor theorized that the rubber stopped the brake lever from completely piercing his foot. In order to sterilize the wound and remove the rubber they had to cut a hole in the top of his foot. It gives me the willies just thinking about it.

Ramon now has the first documented case of Polo Stigmata. Here’s to a speedy recovery, Ramon.

If ordered a shirt, paid for it and didn’t receive it, or would like to buy a shirt, send me an email and I’ll get it to you somehow. We have a few odd ones left, and are considering a reprint if there’s some interest. I’m printing the posters this weekend and those of you who ordered and paid for them will receive them in the mail. I’ll post the final design and purchase instructions on mplsbikepolo.com after they’re printed. Sorry about not having them ready for the tournament, I was unable to get studio time in the days leading up to the tourney.

At the awards ceremony, I didn’t really have the time to get into the details of how much everyone contributed to our event.

First, a lot of you don’t know Landon very well. He put untold hours into the tournament software we barely used, put up cash to finance the event while we were waiting for registration and sponsorship, and worked with Franklin to get goals and balls. He did almost all the heavy lifting in getting our non-profit set up. He also really helped bring everything together over the last couple of weeks. Of course, he was there all through the tournament running the numbers and partying hardcore.

Dustin, Landon’s brother AKA Mr. Do, coordinated our facilities. He did a shit-ton of work to make the boards, goals, bathrooms and surfaces work. He bought and returned $1200 of lumber at Home Depot, then talked down the guy at another store—getting the plywood for $400. Without his van, tools, cash, attitude and unemployment, the tournament would not have gone off as well. He reffed the shit out of about 1,000 games.

Jerry and Nick basically designed the boards (with committee input, naturally) and wrote the lumber order. John let us destroy his back yard while making and storing the boards. Nick rented a U-haul trailer and provided his personal vehicle to transport the boards. Jerry reffed a lot of games too.

Pretty sure the entire crew contributed to the construction of the boards at some point, but Dustin, Ebbin, Jerry, Jeff, John, Nick, James, Sven and Kat did most of the sawing and screwing. On Friday night, we got a ton of help from out-of-towners to get the boards built on-site expeditiously. On Sunday night we got tons of help striking and transporting the boards, but we want to especially thank the crews from Winnipeg and Ann Arbor who stuck around until the finish.

Ebbin, Jaimie (who couldn’t be at the tournament) and Kat coordinated most of the food preparation, storage and service. This is one of the things I wish I had called out more specifically at the awards ceremony. We got an account at a supplier, and these three, with the help of Sven and non-player Greta, put a great deal of effort into making sure all of our players were well-fed. Their work was supplemented by our food sponsors Pizza Lucé and Bruegger’s Bagels.

Kat handled most of the housing arrangements, matching players up with local hosts. Awesome, everyone had a place to sleep! She also reffed tons of games. Galen at the Oakeshott Institute housed 10 teams at their arms & armor shop inside a church. Thanks to Jonny Hunter for the connection.

Sven and Ebbin did most of the sponsor work, helping to hook us up with cash to run the tourney and prizes for players. The super-awesome Beau Layman created the Minnesota Medals and Most Heart prizes. The contributions of our sponsors cannot be overstated.

John G aka Johnny Freewheel, in addition to working on board design and construction, got us power and sound at the courts through his employer. We wish we could have had it both days, but rain will be rain and it was really nice to not have to run around and yell all day on Sunday too.

Laura, one of our occasional players, worked with her non-profit, the One Small Circle Foundation, to fund MWBPC8 as part of their mission to support micro-communities while teaching students about finance and community support.

In addition to our stellar crew of local poloists, we got some help from some outsiders that don’t quite qualify as sponsors but definitely did their part, whether due to my coercion or out of the goodness of their hearts.

Bob Waitz helped us track down a lot of 2×4s and 2×6s that went into constructing the boards, and helped us transport them from the far suburbs into the city. The lumber itself came from Marty, whose barn was destroyed by a tornado, and the lumber was taking up space on his property. Stu Raymond lightly abused his position to help us get our printed materials (spoke cards, game forms, player packets) ready in time for the tournament, even if the designer (ahem) was running super-late. Greta was at Dunwoody most of the time running errands (read: buying booze for Landon and I), but also cooked a shitload of rice and did almost any task assigned to her. Kristin helped us do some sales and opened up some time for us to work on data management. It was her first bike polo experience!

Dave and Maggie from Tillie’s Bean, in addition to being our coffee sponsor, provided us with additional water vessels, helped us sling raffle tickets, and were an all-around awesome addition the the tourney. Landon and Dustin’s mom Ronnie took a ton of photos, helped us get party beer, and was our raffle drawer. Gene and the whole staff at One On One Bicycle Studio made the insane Saturday party possible, and never seemed to be irritated that a bunch of out-of-towners were ruining their reputation with the neighbors. Jarret and the bar staff at the 501 Club were helpful and accommodating as usual. We also received substantial cash donations from my sister, Letta, and Lucky from St. Louis.