Tag Archives: sports

Axe Throwing Is the New Darts

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Lots of bars have darts leagues. But increasingly, a number of establishments are devoted to throwing axes at wooden targets instead. Beer is served there. What could possibly go wrong?

My experience with axe-throwing is admittedly limited. I have watch Forged in Fire, where they sometimes make axes and test the weapons’ strength and sharpness by throwing them at targets. But that’s on TV and not being done in my immediate vicinity. (Full disclosure: I have thrown knives as part of a martial arts class. No beer was involved. But I digress.)

I don’t know if this is just a Thing in the Midwest (and Canada, where it started), but here in my hometown, plans are being made for an axe-throwing bar to be built. I would have braved the danger and checked it out myself, but it is only in the planning stages and I’m too lazy to drive to the one a couple of counties over. My derring-do has geographical limits.

Wild Axe Throwing (an inauspicious name if ever there was one) will be built approximately two miles from my house, in a retail area that features restaurants, car dealers, and the like. “My main goal is to provide entertainment to the city that I love,” says one of the owners.

Here’s how a local paper described the attraction: “The urban axe-throwing fun starts with an ‘axepert’ providing an introductory safety lesson, then guests aiming a two-pound axe toward a bulls-eye 14 feet away in several rounds of competitive games in a quest for the ‘Lumber Lord’ title, an honor that gets stamped in ink anywhere on the winner’s body.” Presumably, one can then retire to the nearest tattoo studio and have the symbol of victory made permanent, if one wishes. (Reputable tattoo businesses will not work on anyone who has been drinking, so the Lumber Lord might have to wait until the next day.)

What is the point of all this, aside from the fact that axe-throwing is just good, clean, All-American (or Canadian) fun? Some people claim that neurochemicals like adrenaline, serotonin, dopamines, and endorphins flood your brain and body when you throw axes. Adrenaline hikes up the fight-or-flight response and endorphins help mitigate sensations of pain. Throw in alcohol and a sharp weapon and I’d just as soon not stand too close.

The activity is touted as a family fun outing and also “an option for birthday and bachelorette parties.” Call me old-fashioned, but I miss the days when bachelorette parties featured hunky “policemen” who ripped off their clothes to music. Another suggestion is that axe throwing would make a fine corporate team building activity. Let’s just say that this could go badly wrong if someone had just been passed over for promotion.

Although it seems to resemble darts in some bizarre respects, there are also reasons to compare axe throwing to bowling. For one, axe throwers are in lanes separated from one another. (Being hit by a neighboring bowler’s ball is seldom a problem, but the axes weigh only two pounds and are thrown with rather more fervor than 16-pound balls are rolled.) Plus there is a state league and even a world organization.

And where does the alcohol come into it? Again, much like bowling, each throwing lane will have its own table and the establishment that will be two miles away will offer a small assortment of beer and wine. The beer I sort of understand, but I can’t really imagine a date beginning, “Hey, honey, let’s go out for a little wine and some axe throwing.”

Bowling isn’t shown on TV much anymore but I think it only a matter of time until axe throwing is. But it’s pretty sad when one has nostalgia for darts and bowling, not to mention laser tag and paintball, as actual sporting events.

I don’t know. Maybe if I try it, I’ll like it. The throwing knives thing was pretty fun.

I Arched Before Arching Was Cool

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Sorry, Katniss Everdeen. Sorry, Merida Whatever-your-last-name-was.

You may be role models for today’s girls who, it is said, are taking up archery in record numbers.(1) But I was there first.

It all started in a 5,000-watt radio station in Fresno, California…. No wait, it didn’t. That was Ted Baxter.(2) Rewind. Push play.

It all started down the street from our house, where one of our neighbors set up an archery target by his garage, stood at the end of his driveway, and practiced his Errol Flynn Zen.

All the neighbor kids gathered round. After all, it was way more interesting than watching the other neighborhood dads mow their lawns or build concrete birdbaths.

When I showed interested, my father, who approved of all things martial (if not artsy), bought me a kid’s bow.

And what a bow it was! What’s called a traditional longbow (though a very, very short one). It was made of pink and white fiberglass, swirled in a candy mint pattern, with a red grip and arrow rest. It was a girlie bow, but it was a real, honest-to-goodness functioning one.

I spent many happy hours taking potshots at a gun target(3) taped to he side of the garage(4). And walking back and forth to collect the arrows. This is what passed for exercise in my youth, and is more than I get these days.

Dad got me accessories too, like the arm guard and the shooting glove. The arm guard is an absolute necessity. Just whang the inside of your left arm with the bowstring once because you weren’t holding the bow properly, and you’ll know what I mean. At least six inches of burning, stinging scrape-bruise. If you don’t have an arm guard, keep lots of ice packs handy.

I .

Fast forward a decade or so, and there I was at college, in the field for my second time through a class in Intermediate Archery. (There was no Advanced Archery, so I had to keep cycling through Intermediate to make my required number of gym credits.(5))

“Who has never shot a bow before?” the instructor shouted.

I raised my hand. She rolled her eyes.

There had been a fair amount of eye-rolling on her part. One day I showed up for class wearing a forest green wool cape and a matching Robin Hood hat.(6) I did not bring the pink bow, as it would have clashed hideously. (I would still have my candy-ass pink bow today, except that over the years, the fiberglass shredded.) The school had better bows, in sensible colors.

On rainy days we stayed inside and learned to fletch. (Fletching means putting the feathers on the arrow’s rear end (the non-pointy end, right in front of the nock, which is the little notch that the bowstring fits into). (Isn’t vocabulary fun!)

We even learned to make “frou-frou” arrows(7), which a 1958 Boy’s Life magazine says have “air brakes.” What they really had were big, fluffy, silly-looking feathers. The advantage of frou-frou arrows was that they would fly a certain distance, then stop abruptly, point directly down, and impale themselves in the ground. The perpendicular shaft and fancy feathers made the arrows easy to find when you missed the target. Which we did. Often. We didn’t have those fancy modern bows with bowsights and scopes and assorted sniper-rifle attachments in those days. Which is definitely a good thing, or I might have become an arrow-sniper instead of a writer/editor.

And if that didn’t work out for some reason, at least I could always survive in a post-apocalyptic dystopia or cartoon Scotland. Who else do you know that can say that?

(1) Record numbers are not necessarily big numbers, you understand.
(2) Bonus points for identifying this reference. Double points if you don’t have to Google.
(3) We could have bought archery targets, but honestly, there were a lot of gun targets lying around our garage, just waiting for holes to be made in them.
(4) Later in life, my husband practiced with shuriken by sailing them at the side of our garage. He broke a window.
(5) In those days, universities could still force you to take gym. We had to take at least four semesters, and by the end of it, you had better know how to swim, unless you already knew how to swim and tested out of it. This was actually a reasonable requirement, since sliding downhill on cafeteria trays was a popular recreational activity, and at the bottom of the hill was a large lake.
(6) My mother made them for me. She had a definite whimsical side. Once she made me a camouflage flannel nightgown (neck-to-toes style). I wore it to the office Halloween party and claimed I was dressed as “Granny Rambo.”
(7) I am not making this up. There really are such things and they really are, or at least were, called that. Modern archers may have decided to butch up the name.

Time Flies Like an Arrow

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…and fruit flies like a banana.

But right now I have a different kind of arrows on my mind – the kind you shoot from a bow.

Thanks to Brave and The Hunger Games, archery is gaining a reputation as an acceptable pursuit for young women. And I say yay to that!

(Let’s be clear here. I’m talking about shooting arrows at non-living targets. Ted Nugent can have the bow-hunting, as far as I’m concerned.)

It would be wrong to say that archery is my favorite sport. It is, in fact, if not the only sport I like, pretty close to it.

I was introduced to archery pretty early. A man who lived down the street set up a target in front of his garage and shot at it from the end of his driveway. The neighborhood kids, including me, gathered to watch. It was way more interesting than watching someone’s dad practicing putting.

My father, being a proponent of target shooting (with firearms in his case), approved and supported my interest. In fact, he bought me a bow and some arrows.

It was a child’s bow. In point of fact, a girl-child’s bow. Pink-swirled fiberglass like a candy cane, with a red handle. And though pink was never my favorite color, I loved it.

I practiced with it and actually improved. I acquired accessories: a shooting glove and an arm guard. (The arm guard is to keep you from whanging your delicate inner arm with the bowstring. Doing this will result in intense pain, bright redness, and ice packs. And then you get an arm guard and make sure your arm is bent just a little at the elbow.)

My mother, who was given to sewing and whimsy, made me (at my request) a forest green wool cape and jaunty matching hat. No, no pictures exist.

When I got to college, I discovered that students were required to take four semesters of gym. One of them had to be swimming, which I faked my way through, but among the other offerings was Intermediate Archery. There was also Beginning, but no Advanced. So I took Intermediate. Twice.

It was lots of fun. On rainy days we stayed inside and learned to make arrows – one, a fancy kind that would fly a certain distance then suddenly turn straight down with its point embedded in the ground so you could find it easily by the colored streamer-like fletching (feathers).

If you know me, you know what came next. I had my mother send me the cape and the hat, and wore them to class. The teacher, who after two semesters was used to me, just rolled her eyes and said not a word.

But for one brief hour, I was Robin Hood.