Saturday at Campus Martius Park

Sixty degrees, clear skies, and a park full of gravel pathways - perfect ingredients for an afternoon of boule.

James H., Cheryl D., Kitty J., Mike D., Dan C. and Jeff W. assembled for 6 games worth of competitive boule triplettes.

Princess Celia hunted out cochonnets, while James logged on via the club's WiFi connected laptop to check the weather patterns for Michigan.

In the coming weeks leading up to the Guinness World Record Attempt (LINK) we will be assembling the teams and getting the arrangements made for the event. Stay tuned!

UPDATE -- Royal Oak Piste

I stopped by the Royal Oak terrain again yesterday afternoon to check out the condition of the playing surface, and also in the hope that there would be others there playing pétanque. For the most part, I think the terrain is ready to go. It's a lot firmer than my last visit a couple of weeks back, and my rolling shots rolled a lot further instead of digging in. The only exception was the northeast quadrant, which was improved but still seemed a little soft in spots.

As for my hope that other people would be there... well, unfortunately, I was disappointed. I'm hoping that'll change this Sunday.

Nino with a Petanque Score Nickname

An associte of ours, Nino, was stuck mid-floors (4th & 5th) inside an elevator for over two hours during a transformer blow-out. With alarms sounding and PA systems warning people not to use the elevators, Nino had to wait - and wait - and wait some more until firemen and police chopped through cinderblock, and then pryed open the steel ceiling of the elevator cab, to rescue Nino who was covered in a rainstorm of dust and debris.

To honor our brave friend who had to suffer this ordeal, we will forever refer to a score of 4/5 (or 5/4) as a Nino.

Detroit Petanque Club - Saturday

The weather has finally changed for the better, and though we only had a doublette for this Saturday, we played plenty of challenging (close) games.

Today (Monday) is supposed to hit 67 degrees! Come on over to Campus Martius Park during weekday lunchtimes (12-1pm) to play a game or two!

2 DAY Midwest Tournament CHICAGO

MARK YOUR CALENDAR. 2008 Midwest Petanque Tournament in CHICAGO. Exciting TWO DAY event. Sat. June 7th and Sun. June 8th. For more information visit www.chicagopetanque.com

Royal Oak Piste -- Almost There

Brigitte and I stopped by the Royal Oak piste this afternoon with our boules to check out the playing conditions. After such a long, snowy winter, I was expecting it to be still somewhat muddy, but the surface was surprisingly dry enough to walk on without leaving significant footprints. When we played, however, we saw that there was still too much moisture beneath the surface to allow the boules to carry. Anything other than a strict roll tended to dig in or even create a boule crater, depending on the angle of the shot. Great for plombées but not so great for any other type of shot (except for the tir au fer, of course). We'll see next week. It's been a long winter.