Polo minus the horse poop

I’ve known about the clandestine bike polo league the meets at the Waterfront every Wednesday for a while now. Well, it’s probably not all that clandestine if I know about it. Anyway, I’ve wanted to write about said bike polo group for a while now, but they play on Wednesdays, which is completely inconvenient for me. My Wednesdays are devoted solely to the pursuit of reality television, specifically on the Bravo network. Who wants to get outside and enjoy the fresh air when you can be cooped up in your tiny apartment watching fashionistas duke it out on your 13-inch television set?

Thankfully for me and my strict television-watching schedule, bike polo met on Tuesday this week due to the fact that we now live in India and the monsoons were kind enough to let up for just one day. I got the e-mail from the organizers that bike polo was on at the roller hockey rink on the Waterfront, so after work the GF and I cruised down on our matching Surly Cross Checks (so dorky) to check it out. And by check it out I mean pedal right by the rink when we saw only two people fiddling around with homemade mallets. The last thing I want to do is stand out as a newbie, so we biked halfway up the bike path, practicing our bunny hops on skinny tires as we rode.

The fact that there were only two people there at the designated time- 6 p.m.- wasn’t really a shock to me. I assumed that the bike polo players were operating on HT- hipster time- and thus would really get going around 7:30 p.m. I understand the minorty group sense of time only too well. There’s CPT, which has long been documented and cited by cultural critics of color, and there’s the more recent, and quasi-coopted GPT, which stands for Gay People Time and does not have a nifty Wikipedia entry of its own. I know a number of people to subscribe to both of these ideas and are frequently tardy for important things l ike job interviews, weddings and parole hearings.

Understanding that the bike polo players were on HT, we rolled up to the rink around 6:30 p.m. As we slowed to watch the polo match in progress, a nice hipster named Aaron called out and asked if we wanted to play. Little did they know that was my whole reason for being there. That and I wanted to nab a couple of free afterwork PBRs. After a brief tutorial- don’t crash into anyone, don’t hit anyone with the mallet, ding the bell if you dab- the GF and I were out on the rink ready to score some flipping goals. But one thing set us apart from our bike polo contemporaries- our helmets. Yes, we looked like losers, but safety first. The last thing I need in my life is to sustain a traumatic brain injury during a friendly hipster bike polo match.

So off we went. The mallets, made of old ski poles and some PVC piping, were unwieldy. I had to hold onto my mallet with my right hand while I steered with my left. You’d think I had just take the training wheels off hours before. Trying to hit a ball on the ground with a mallet head the size of a soup can while you’re focusing on pedaling, braking and not tumbling to the ground is harder than it looks. I whiffed at least a dozen times before I actually made contact. The GF was much more proficient than I, which remains a source of great consternation for me.

I have to say that bike polo could be my new favorite non-Olympic cycling sport. I like the fact that your bike skills can be marginal (like mine) and your mallet skills can be less than spectacular (like mine) and you can still have a swell time. During our match, we vied against fixies and dirt jumpers and chunky downhill bikes and even a unicycle, so really any bike will do. When I scored for the first (and only) time, I nearly dropped to my knees and started crying (I’m getting ready for the Olympics). It was so exciting.

And the hipster factor wasn’t even really an issue. Yes, there were cool fixed gear bikes there and a couple of rad tattoos and of course the ironic 40 bottle in a paper bag, but it was a definitely a welcoming vibe. After about an hour of heated competition, the GF and I put down our mallets and said goodbye to our cool new friends. Who knows- bike polo might be enough to unseat me from my tapestry couch on Bravo television nights.