Well we made it to Kansas City

Hey Everyone,

Jason and I made it on to a red eye flight out of Portland last night.
We flew into George Bush International Airport in Houston at 6:10 am and the flight took 4 hours with a 2 hour time change. We flew on Continental and Houston is their main hub. If you have never been to that airport there are like 5 concourses that are connected via a tram. We flew in to concourse E and we had to high tail it over to B concourse to catch our 7:10 am flight to Kansas City. We made it with time to spare but only because we were basically running down the concourses.

We ended up flying on a small jet from Houston to Kansas City operated by ExpressJet Airlines, a partner on Continental. To say the plane was small is an understatement. The overhead bin could barely fit a laptop bag let alone a backpack.

When we got to the airport in Missouri we were pleasantly surprised to see that the weather was not as humid as expected. We made our way to the rental car office and ended up with a Ford Fusion, while at first we were a little disappointed, the car has been really good and we are happy with it.



On the way out of the Airport we ran across a Waffle House so we stopped for breakfast and it felt good to eat some delicious waffles. After breakfast we headed to Shawnee Mission Park to check out the course.





This course is very beautiful and very green. The Kansas City Disc Golf Club has prepped this course very nicely for worlds and just recently added the concrete tee pads. The fairways have two cuts of grass for the rough, and let me just say my first impression was it looks manicured.

Here is a picture looking back up hole 2 from the basket.


The courses here in KC see a great deal of wind due to the plain like environment and Shawnee Mission is no exception, the wind was blowing at 11:30 am and it only got stronger the longer we were there. The course has a little bit of elevation and they have used it well in the design of the course. Several times the course plays down hill only to play back up hill. The layout makes good use of obstacles and the cut fairways make the layout feel even tougher due to the long grass that is left uncut. We enjoyed playing here but we were feeling the effects of the flight and minimal amount of sleep so we did not play very well. We both had some great shots though and we are looking forward to playing here during the Worlds Event. This course has about 9 legitimate birdie opportunities for the average to advanced golfer. Some of the longer holes have significant amount of wind to mess with tee shots and could produce many bogies. We will probably play here again before the event to get a good feel for the course, conditions and our abilities.

We then headed back to Missouri to check out the Host Hotel and to see if we could check in. Neither of us could remember when check in starts nor exactly where the hotel was so we hunted around a little bit and found our way. We were not able to check in today but we did get a good look at downtown and some of the areas where many of the field events would take place. After our little escapade we headed back to Kansas to check out WyCo park. We were going to play the course and the club was having a league night at the course so we decided to play. Unfortunately league starts at 6pm and it was only 3pm, so we took a nap in the car. Well I totally crashed at least and Jason kind of nodded off an on. We then managed to get it together and head in to town for some food and energy so we could play another round. WyCo is a great course that plays very long, it has a great deal of wind and risk reward elements to the course. Shooting a 54 here is amazing and can be done but there is a need to grab a few birdies on the front nine because it is inevitable that the long back nine will get you sooner or later. Jason and I really like playing here and we wish we were going to play it more than once during the worlds event. At the end of our league round we were treated to firefly's lighting up our fairway as we putted out. I tried to get some pictures of the light show but it was hard to catch. It was a treat to see it though and will probably go on my list of top ten things seen disc golfing. Jason ended shooting a 61 and I ended up with a 60. We both made silly mistakes and believe we both can shoot this course in the mid 50's later this week.

After league we headed south to find out hotel back over by Shawnee Mission within the town of Lenexa. After a long long day and many cool holes of golf played we are calling it a night and looking forward to Jeff joining us tomorrow in Kansas City, Water Works here we come. I hope to have my albums up online later this week for you guys to check out!

Sitting around the hotel room we were discussing some of the best shoot of the day and we came up with:

My first drive on hole 14 at Shawnee Mission 404 feet slight down hill with a Glow Orc missed the ace by a foot or so.

Jason's upshot on hole 14 at Wyco across the pond nearly put it in for a duece with a Rogue Blue of Course.

My second drive on hole 18 at Shawnee Mission, Firebird looks like it hits the ace but if cuts through the back chains and lands behind the basket.

Jason's 30 foot downhill into the wind putt on hole 6 WyCo, with OB behind the basket nails it.