RSS Post FeedDayton Bike Polo
Today I finally made my way over to southeast Dayton's Walnut Hills Park for the weekly bike polo game. I had read about it on their MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/daaaytonohiobikepolo. I had also seen a flier at Pacchia Cafe advertising a bike advocacy meeting beforehand, and being a planner that occasionally gets to work on bike issues, I thought it would be a good to check it out.
When I arrived at the park I realized that these boys really aren't the type to sit in a circle and have an orderly, facilitated meeting about the issues affecting their cycling safety. They seemed to have skipped the meeting entirely, and a dozen or so were agressively playing in what seemed to be an abandoned hockey rink (?). If you're not familiar with the game, it's just like regular polo with mallets and goals, only you have to maneuver on a bike instead of a horse. All the players were male today, heavily tatooed, riding mostly fixed-gear bikes with no brakes (you have to rely on leg muscle strength to back-pedal).
I did manage to get some good informal bike activist conversation going among the many spectators while enjoying hot cocoa. If you're interested in checking it out for yourself, they play every Sunday at high noon on the north side of the park (not the side you see from Wayne).
