21 year-old Nikko Locastro wins the US Disc Golf Championship. Here’s some film of Nikko nailing the drives and putt to earn a birdie 3 on hole 11 on the final day, as well as interviews with Nate Doss, Dave Feldberg, and Nikko. Just outstanding.

We’ve returned from the West Coast safe and sound, and what a wonderful trip it was.

We had a splendid time at Sorenson’s Resort, just south of South Lake Tahoe and right up the road from Kirkwood, with lots of family. We spent a great day snowboarding, a couple more doing some cross country skiing in fresh snow, played lots of Scrabble, ate a bunch, and enjoyed several early happy hours. We even spent some quality time in a hot tub, listening to a fork of the Carson River below, while the snow fell in big fat flakes all around us. Glorious 8000 foot fat dry snowflakes.

We headed back to the coast and relaxed for the rest of last week. I played a bunch of disc golf at the world-class DeLaveaga, the kids and grandparents got to spend a bunch of time together, we hung out with friends (though not enough of ‘em and not for nearly long enough), sank a pitcher or two at Zeitgeist, and had delicious chile verde burritos in Santa Cruz. The weather was awesome, and the mountains, typically bright, sandy brown with patches of sun-bleached green scrub, were covered in lush dark green foliage. It’ll be fuel by summer, but it’s lovely in spring. I also saw more people in Santa Cruz on bikes than I see commuting in D.C. on a typical day.

But perhaps that will change now that we’re into the meat of Spring. In our absence, the wildly fluctuating 67-degrees-this-week-17-the-next weather has settled into a partly cloudy 50’s and 60’s with nourishing light rains. I was pretty sure that coming back after 12 days off the bikes would be kinda rough, but it hasn’t been. Perhaps it was the cross country at high altitude, or hiking around the course all week, or maybe we just needed a rest, but I’ve been feeling strong pushing Nigel’s cranks around town so far this week.

So it’s back to work, and the bikes need a spring cleaning, and the market season’s about to begin, and it’s just weeks until the warmth yields to heat and we move family headquarters to the community pool for the summer. There’s a lot of planning to be done, tough choices to be made, actions to be taken, bales to be lifted and barges to tote. Winter’s over, the cherry trees are blooming, and we’re ready to rock.

It’s good to be home, anything important happen while I was gone?

(Pictures from the trip after the jump, enjoy!)

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You may or may not know that I’m an avid disc golfer (now that you do, you may or may not like how that makes you feel). I caught the bug when we moved back to Southern California and a couple friends from Ventura took me up to Lake Casitas to check out the course. The lake is, of course, a stunning place to be whether you’re throwing, boating, camping, or even flying model airplanes. But the course, man that course just got in my blood. I dived into the sport without restraint.

There’s a lot to love about the game. Courses are typically mixes of forest and field on rolling terrain, the experience of watching a well thrown disc in flight is sublime, and the sweet sound of a solid putt crashing into chains is habit-forming and delicious. One of the things I love most about the game, though, is the community.

The folks I came to know from Lake Casitas are, almost without exception, some of the greatest people I’ve had the privilege to know in my life. I became an avid player that first year, up at Lake Casitas, because I loved playing the game, and no small part of my joy derived from playing with such great people. Even at the pro level, I think you’d be hard pressed to find another sport where the top tier players are just such goddam nice people. It may not be that way forever, but right now it’s a young sport. So even though the purses for the big tournaments are growing, no one does it to get rich, they do it for the joy and the camaraderie.

Anyway, I took last year off from playing and turned my attention to other projects. I’m starting to play again, a little here and there, and peeking at news about what’s happening on the scene. One of the neat things I just discovered is that SoCal local Paul McBeth, who I think was around 15 or 16 when I left California, and was obviously a pretty special talent and a great kid, has become a top-ten player. Wow.

And then I ran into this video on the PDGA site, highlights from the final round of The Memorial, which is an early season National Tour event. Val Jenkins is dominating the top tier of the Women’s Open Division at the game’s highest level, but you’d never know what a stupendous bad-ass she is from her interviews. And check out the emotion, the pure joy pouring out of 20 year-old Nikko Locastro as he drains a 35 putt to win the tournament.

It’s the greatest feeling I could ever imagine. That’s it. I loved it, every minute of it. I had a lot of fun out there. God love ya, Nikko, that shit just makes my heart glow.

The sport’s in a real sweet spot right now. The number of courses tripled between 1995 and 2005, and has more than doubled again in just the last four years to over 3000 courses, and most of them are still free to play. The professional organization is now big enough to provide some quality support to the sport, but it’s not so big that the people are lost in it. Lot’s of folks in the community want to see the purses grow large enough to support more pros making a living farther down the rankings, myself included. But I’m not at all worried about whether the ratio of money to passion is becoming unhealthy for growing the kind of community disc golf has enjoyed thus far, those sorts of concerns are still a long way off.

[Update]: Found this video from Disc Golf Monthly of last month’s Rockburn Ice Bowl. It was a really fun tournament (my first since 2007) and cold as hell. It snowed sideways for a few holes in the middle of the round, and the chili was delicious. I played Intermediate Am, came in 3rd with a 64, and donated my share back to the food bank. Not a bad showing, and, as Mr. Locastro put it so aptly, I had a lot of fun out there.