The book on the Lumberjack Open was closed and placed on the shelf. We spent another day at Dave's house and hit the road. It had been exactly 1 year since the 9/11 attacks and tensions were high. We drove to Avery's house in Ohio and spent a day there on our way to the Eric Yetter Memorial in PA. As I've said before... Tinnicum Park is one of the better courses on the East coast and our friends in Frenchtown are some of the coolest. We stayed with Horrible Pete and had our backs walked on by his 90 pound girlfriend Katie. The tournament went well. When it was over we parked the Winnie on a friend's property in town and Worm drove us to the New Jersey airport in Cameron Rauenhorst's car the next day.

Coming up is the nuttiest part of four years of being on tour. From New Jersey we flew into Detroit. From Detroit it was a 17-hour non-stop flight over Alaska and on to Japan. A whole lot of gin & tonics took the edge off a long trip but it was still... well... long. We arrived in Japan and (thanks to detailed instructions sent to me from Sam Ferrans) booked a 3 hour cross country bus ride. The bus dropped us off at a hotel somewhere in Japan. From there I learned how to use a Japanese pay phone and called up Sam who picked us up and took us over to a little pill box motel for one night. We practiced the course the next day and carried our stuff a few blocks down the street to the tournament hotel, which was very posh. The rates were pretty good and Avery and I shared a room while Dave and Cameron shared another. The hotel staff was too sharp to let us get away with 4 people in one room. Breakfasts were free with a choice of Japanese or American cuisine. We tried it all... in fact with Ferrans, Dunnipace, and others acting as tour guides and with Innova buying us dinners on most nights, we tried a lot of Japanese food. Let me tell you... it was all delicious. Even the stuff that didn't look too appetizing was great.

The course for the Japan Open was in a lovely park where Hero Disc Inc. had set up a temporary course. The park was busy but there were spotters and crowd control personnel all over the place. We had to use 150 class discs, which was something new to all of us. I had an ace in practice but unfortunately that was my highlight of the tournament. There was one hole that played about 370 feet over an OB parking lot against a headwind. I tin cupped the hole during the first round and took a 13. This put me out of the cash as the tournament only paid about 18% of the field. Dave and Avery would finish 4th and 5th respectively with Dave getting to play in the Final Nine. Steve Rico ended up winning the tournament over Climo on the second to last hole of the finals. John Ahart also took over 3rd place from Dave on the same hole. It was a weird pin placement (about 9 inches from OB water) that made the difference.

After the tournament we had to do some financial wizardry to pay the hotel bill, which included a lot of minibar and pay TV charges from one of the rooms. We had two more days before our flight left and ended up staying in a tiny apartment where the JPDGA commissioner and another Japanese disc golfer lived. I'm excluding names because I don't want to mess them up. One of the guys we were staying with turned out to speak english and had a couple days off so he showed us around Tokyo for the next two days. Dave, Avery, and Cameron shopped 'til they dropped. Cam even got a Japanese tattoo. I sort of followed around for two days and begged for change so I could eat. Our hosts dropped us off at the bus station where we boarded a plane and flew to Los Angeles. Once we got there we met the usual hassles but eventually rented a car for the week and drove over to Bobby Dodges house and played in the SoCal Championships. That tournament was pretty fuzzy. From there Dave's girlfriend, Jamie, and another friend Joy drove down from Lake Tahoe and picked us up (after dropping off the rental car) and drove us all up to Tahoe for a day. Along the way Joy took Avery, Cameron, and myself to some natural hot springs along the way in the mountains. The hot springs were very cool... actually the weather was very cool. It was below freezing but the hot spring pools were in the 106 degree range. We sat in a particular pool until the sun came up and continued on to Tahoe.

Once in Tahoe we had to drive to Reno to rent a car. Then a couple hours back to Tahoe... load up 4 people with all their clothes, souvenirs, discs, etc, and believe it or not we drove 2800 miles back to New Jersey in just 47 hours. What fun. Once we got back I returned the car to Allentown, PA then drove over and spent an hour trying to get the Winnie started and driven back to Frenchtown where the guys were. This completed what must be the most miles traveled by any disc golfers over a 2-1/2 week period.

That's the update for now.

-Todd and Crew

Got a question for Todd and the Winnicrew? Send it here. Be sure to include "2002 Tour" in the subject header.