Birmingham Bike Polo (Wednesday nights / Sundays - info in the thread)

Or maybe 5pm would be better for me. BMX sesh at 2 then polo & pizza afterwards.

can't imagine me being married? i'm 100%, high-grade, chemical-strength marriage material...

the courts we play at are lit, so that's not an issue, and i think 2pm splits the day up too much.

can't imagine me being married? i'm 100%, high-grade, chemical-strength marriage material...
It's only because subconsciously I associate marriage with boring 30-something squares, not 'cool' young people who ride fixies, play polo and work in bike shops. Which is daft really

the courts we play at are lit, so that's not an issue, and i think 2pm splits the day up too much.

true, true. but 5pm might remove possibility of going to sunday night gigs... then again... it allows time for pre-polo aldi shopping and bmx sesh's, and if im gonna be playing just for an hour or two from 5 then i can go straight to a gig from polo

i think i'm cool enough not to warrant inverted commas

Got my own drill + bits - good mallets to follow. Still the outrageous price of £5 (MasterShredder has dibs on one) only 2 left of current batch. Will get some more sticks soon.

hey undib me one for now, i wanna see if i prefer the bigger head or a smaller head style mallet over the next few weeks. ta

hahaha

I want to play lots too but think its still a bit early for two sessions a week - only because i'd rather play one busy game a week than two average games.

got a drill - send me your poles and old innertubes and i'll make you some mallets.

peeps should buy some more balls, or if people are willing to split the cost, ill get em.

What the FUCK? Marriage?!

and she's been to more bike polo than you!

photos I took on Sunday 20th.
please credit me if the photos are used commercially. Thanks, Daniel Gaze, Birmingham fixed gear.
woop, hope you like.

Nice pics where did you develop them?

What sorta balls do you use? Tennis balls? And what do you use the innertubes for?

i got them done at a developers in Rea St. really quick and cheap. they did them the next day for me, whereas jessops said 2 weeks. was only like £9 as well, was very pleased.

im back in nottingham now so i wont be able to make the week day polo events as my lectures dont finish until 5. But i may be able to come back for the weekend games, hopefully.

Red franklin street hockey balls?

there is no clearer evidence of pastry lover's continued absence from polo than his tennis ball guess. tennis balls are so april 2009....

poor turnouts are my biggest hang-up. it would be shit if we just split the available people into two groups. my aim in posting this thread is to gauge how many people are at least theoretically playing twice per week. of course, it's a different thing typing words onto a keyboard than it is riding for 10-30 minutes in the dark and cold to whip a ball around a basketball court, but it's worth asking.

i think if we're going to put out a flyer and try to recruit more people, the most important thing is to cement when we play. we probably can't avoid having different locations (calthorpe/highgate/sparkhill/nia) but we can at least have a regular schedule.

anecdotally i'd say we have about 3-4 'die-hard polo losers', 4-6 'semi-regulars' and a few more occasional visitors/newbies like that rasta guy and his mate whose names i totally forgot - i want to say bunnie or bertie, and vince. but i know they're not right.... in theory, if those 3-4 diehard polo losers can tap into a few semi-regulars and a few occasional visitors/newbies, we'd be okay for twice-weekly games...

it's also worth baring in mind that a proportion of those days will be wet and it's unknown how many people will ride in the wet to the NIA to play.

Sundays are a winner for me, and i'm super keen to get some polo played.
Count this newbie in!

sundays would be great! weekdays are fucking shit for me especially now that im having driving lessons :S if i was to start playing that is...

I made a hip hop song about Palm one time, that's how pleased I was with their service. Only Mariama Attah has heard it.

What can I say about Jessops...

...the store manager lied to me about why they made an enlargement of one of my photos 2 stops too light, so that the black background in the image was actually grey. She basically said it was my fault for taking a photo with a black background, nothing to do with the person operating the print machine, and no they wouldn't be giving me a refund or replacement...

...today, a few hours after checking online that they have a certain cable in stock in that particular store:

Me: Have you got a pc sync cable for a Metz 45 CL 4?

Him: What camera is it for?

Me: Err... it's the standard 6 pin Metz cable with the male pc connector at one end.

Him, sounding aggravated: Yeah but WHAT CAMERA do you want to connect it to?!

Me: Any camera, it's... (again I tried to explain that it was the standard pc sync cable that comes with Metz flashes, but he interrupts...)

Him, interrupting and sounding even more aggravated: Well you need... (he goes on to describe a completely different cable)

No wonder they're struggling to stay in business.

Driving lessons? Banned.

i think a flyer (physical and electronic) is definitely a way to get more people into this.

hell last friday i was in selly oak and these girls came up to me (thinking they were interested in me but no), turns out they wanted to check out my bike and a couple of them were keen track cyclists. they were students, i told them about this place and polo but they were on a night out and had never heard of calthorpe park. if i had a flyer that transfer of info may have been more successful.

thats it, i'm doing a shitty flyer! not a purposedly shitty flyer, it'll just be that way due to my lack of skills. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Also, Fin - you should start birminghambikepolo.wordpress.com and then buy the domain name birminghambikepolo.com to redirect to it - then you, Dan and whoever else can regularly post stuff on there like times and locations of games, mallets for sale, photos, reports from polo contests etc.

edit: I've just registered that blog name just in case Sod's Law came into effect and someone from Birmingham, Alabama decided to start a bike polo blog. So Fin, if you want it just sign up to wordpress and I'll transfer the account over to you.

can you get a .com to redirect to http://www.londonfgss.com/forum26.html, the bham sub forum, say bhamfgss.com or bhamfixedgear.com or something? be good for flyers, etc

ok this took me up 30minutes on paint, someone must be able to do something easily better.

nice work mastershredder.

i reckon we should have a pretty 'texty' flip-side, with information about suggested bikes, mallets, balls, padding, rules, possible other locations, a link to this forum, maybe an email address/some contact info.

if we're going to try out new courts in sparkhill/highgate, we need to tell people!

you can get a domain name to redirect anywhere.

yeah i wasn't sure what else to put down that was concrete detail...anyway hope thats inspired folks to make a better one.

p.s. we playing this sunday??

I'm involved in the British Heart Foundation Coventry Bike Ride on Sunday, cycling behind the last man/woman, to make sure everyone is safe. Depending on what times people finish, i may be able to get back to Brum for 5pm.

re: this sunday.

yes, we're playing. hyper allah confirmed he's up for it and he's the impresario. so:

5pm - calthorpe park. (i'll repost in a separate thread so more people see it)

Sorry for the short notice:

This is kind of a test-run to see if people can make it on Sundays...

Meet at 5pm at our usual location, calthorpe park. HOWEVER, if you think you may be more than 20 minutes late, PM me for my number because we may relocate to the rumoured lushness of sparkhill or highgate to try out different courts.

New players actively encouraged - if you're lurking on here and interested in playing please be assured that none of us are very good and all of us are friendly.

This meet is weather-dependent. if it's raining, don't bother coming...