World Ice Golf Championship Canceled Again
One athletic competition that has been suffering the consequences of capricious weather in recent years has been the relatively obscure sport of ice golf.
This year’s world ice golf championship, which was scheduled to have been played in Greenland in March, has been called off — as was the 2009 tournament – because the temperature were not, as the organizers say, “Greenlandic”. Greenland is experiencing its warmest winter in over 50 years – making a golf competition on ice too risky for those competing.
The tournament has not been played since 2006 in Uummannaq.
Though a mostly unheralded sport, ice golf does have its loyal devotees, including some top amateurs from the grassier version of the game. In the early years of the noughties, Drambuie sponsored the World Ice Golf Championship.
The tournament, the organizers say, is being postponed until temperatures return to the level Greenland is accustomed to, ie, extremely cold.
Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson Super Bowl Picks
From the totally surreal department …
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Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson, as two of the people most responsible for bringing the world’s financial system to the brink of the disaster and creating a bailout that mostly benefited the already rich and powerful on Wall Street and that will burden future generations with untold debt and all the while an enormous percentage of the population struggles to hold on to jobs (if they have not been lost already) and homes (ditto), it would be remiss of me not to ask you whether the Colts or the Saints are going to win this year’s Super Bowl.
And the American people have such a low regard for the mainstream media because … ?
Gyula’s Renaissance Carnival: The Party Few Are Familiar With
This online journal hates to keep secrets. Thus we shall let you in on one. Gyula is the name of the secret and it is a gem of a town situated 200 kilometers southeast of Budapest, an area which seems virtually uncharted by English speakers, or for that matter speakers of other languages besides Hungarian.
This weekend Herr and Frau Chortler awoke briefly from their winter hibernation – which traditionally lasts from late September to early June – and descended upon the annual Renaissance Carnival in Gyula. You can see photographs of their sojourn here and here.
This most enjoyable affair saw the virtual pair consume copious amounts of the region’s famous sausages, which were in turn washed down by an equally copious amount of local wines and, for Herr Chortler, stronger libations.
Gyula has other events on the 2010 calendar worthy of a visit. Coming up March 19-21 is a sausage festival, April 16-18 one can partake in a palinka (Hungarian brandy) festival, and in the summer – June 29 to July 12 – a Shakespeare festival will be held with this castle as its backdrop.
A Soccer Hedge Fund
According to HedgeCo.net, a new hedge fund has opened that will spend its money only in soccer-related investments.
The London Nominees Football Fund has $40 million in its coffers that it intends to direct towards soccer-related investments: clubs, players, brands and franchises.
Soccer notables Bryan Robson and Carlos Alberto Torres are on board to lend their expertise to the fund.
The report states that: “Up until now, the football industry has been highly specialized and is difficult for the average investor to participate in.”
Mountaineer Determined to Return After Amputation
A Hungarian mountaineer who suffered a horrific accident in the High Tatra Mountains in Slovakia on January 2 that led to the amputation of one of his legs said he is determined to resume climbing by the end of the year.
Zsolt Eross, 41, had his right leg amputated below the knee following the accident in which he and two other climbers became trapped as a result of winter snowstorm.
“My first goal is to take small steps, then walk, then to run and after that to climb,” Eross told the Hungarian newspaper Bors.
Eross is the first Hungarian to climb Mount Everest.