Saturday night I was out playing disk golf with my son and we were throwing the disk towards a basket right behind a couple taller trees. The basket was just over two hundred feet away and I threw my Mamba disk at the basket trying to curve around the trees. I typically throw right hand forehand and if I threw it correctly it would pass just to the left of the trees and fade back towards the basket. I’ve overthrown the basket with this disk and also wedged disks in the tree, so I was trying not to throw too high or hard.
I released the disk a lot lower than I wanted so it fell short this time. My son yelled, “Throw it higher!”
I grabbed my Archangel disk and thought about throwing it higher. Usually I try to keep the throws low because getting it stuck in the tree is a real pain. This wasn’t my favorite disk - it had a habit of flipping over to the left and spiking into the ground when I threw it and I was still learning how to throw it correctly. It also didn’t fly as far as the Mamba.
So I threw it pretty high, hard, and to the right of the tree and for once instead of spiking into the ground and rolling, it lofted up very nicely and seemed to be on a good line for the basket. If you throw it too far to the right of the tree it ends up in a bush so you have to be pretty much on target. It didn’t curve to right as much as I would have liked and ended up heading right into the tree and wedging in the branches.
“Oh man, I’ve stuck the Archangel in the tree,” I said. We hunted around for the empty beer bottle we had used to get a disk down the last time I threw one in the tree. My son tossed the bottle up at the disk in the tree a few times and kept missing it.
All of a sudden he exclaimed, “Ouch, I just got stung.”
It first I didn’t believe him, it was getting dark and I did not see or hear any bees around. There didn’t look like there was anything in the bottle. I thought maybe something had fallen off the tree and hit him. I looked really close and nothing seemed swollen on his chest.
So I picked the bottle up and and threw it at the disk. All of a sudden I felt a sting on my left hand and there was another bee swarming around my head. I ran away a bit and the bee left me alone. My son wanted to keep throwing the bottle at the disk but I wanted to leave. I figured if someone else found the disk they could have it.
The next morning I came back with a short branch that I thought would be easier to throw at the disk. I very cautiously threw the branch up in the tree but I’m not a very good throw and I could tell it would take me many tries to get it down. The bees were still in the area, so I was being very careful not to get them upset.
I thought maybe the hive was up in the tree but looking around in the daylight I found it down in the ground at the base of the tree.
Empty beer bottle, branch and if you look real close you might find the disk – click for viewing full screen
The branch was dropping really close to the hive entrance and I was scared that the bees would get upset again at some point. So I changed my recovery plan and found a long branch that could reach up to where the disk was. I stood just on the other side of the tree from the hive, up on top of an old stump and reached up gently with the branch. Needless to say I was a bit nervous about what the bees would think of me, especially if I lost my footing on the stump and fell down in front of the hive.
Finally, victory was mine and the Archangel disk fell down with a thud – right in front of the hive. I looked at it and started laughing.
The bees looked at it with a strange query, “What in the heck has fallen from the Heavens?” :-D
Almost in grasp, the Archangel disk sat by the bee hive entrance – click for viewing full screen
I backed off and cautiously waited a bit to see their reaction. After awhile I casually wandered by and picked up the disk, and luckily non of the bees followed me. I said, “It is a XT Archangel disk by Innova. I doesn’t usually fly all that well for me, but I recommend hunching over like a Gargoyle when you throw it and almost knuckle-dragging the front end of the disk on the tee pad on release. With any luck it will turn up and fly.”
With that, I happily wandered around the park throwing the newly recovered Archangel disk around.
Sunday’s silly theological question: When recovering an Archangel from a tree, should one use an empty beer bottle or a tree branch?
The exact location of the bee hive should remain a secrete. Please don’t tell anyone, the bees are normally pretty good natured and I would rather the park maintenance people didn’t exterminate the hive. (It might be nice to have a warning sign though, but I fear that if I told anyone about it they would not put up a sign but choose to kill the bees.)
Thanks for reading! I always value your support and comments. The pictures were taken by me with my Galaxy S9+.
