I had the privilege of participating in the 11th annual Calhoun Croquet Classic on Saturday. What's the Calhoun Croquet Classic? you ask. Just what it sounds like. A group of people playing croquet on the ice. Brilliant! A true Minnesota sport.

This adventure started out Saturday at around noon. I know Lake Calhoun is fairly big, being just over 3 miles around. But it never seems that big when you're biking or running around it. However, when you are trying to meet up with people in the middle of the lake who you know are drinking and enjoying themselves, it seems to take FOREVER. None of us had the balls to walk clear across the lake at this point in our journey. We could see the target out on the ice, but as we walked around the east side of the lake, they seemed to get farther and farther away. The pre-mixed captain cokes helped a lot with the walk. I bundled up too much though, and the sun was making my 3 pairs of pants, 2 pairs of socks, and 3 shirts really toasty. Thankfully, AM and JO came to our rescue and drove us the rest of the way.



Growing up in Fargo next to the Red River, I was always taught to fear the water and especially the ice. Every year someone went on to what looked like a frozen river only to fall through the ice into the fast moving icy water below. Walking onto the ice on Calhoun was a brave and scary moment for me. It's weird because even though I was told there are 12 inches or more of solid ice below me, I didn't trust it. Surprisingly, after being on the ice for only 15 minutes or so I completely forgot I was even on the lake. I blame the captain cokes for that as well. DC and A even got up the courage to walk across the entire lake!! The pot of gold at the end of their rainbow was a bathroom which served as great motivation to keep going. I tried to catch up to them, but lost motivation and decided maybe the portable bathroom provided for us would suffice.



After making some awesome snow angels KP and I banded together for our bathroom adventure.



The toilet was a bucket with a garbage bag liner inside and a toilet seat on top. We moved it into the tiny portable ice fishing hut with a heater inside. I tried to take a picture of the toilet, but my camera fogged up immediately upon entering the hut, so it didn't exactly turn out. We were greeted by two signs stating simply "WARNING: Use of heaters in this tent may cause DEATH." The signs were right above the heater. Comforting. But I'm not going to lie. The warm bathroom was kind of nice. Tippy, but nice.



The actual croquet was pretty fun too. The guys who organized the event came out early to drill holes in the ice and pound in steel wickets.



Two games of croquet went on simultaneously. The snow proved to be a challenge, but it also helped me get the money shot of the game. My ball rolled through the wicket because of a dip in the snow. YES! Unfortunately I wanted a lot of do-overs since I'm not the best croquet player. I was allowed these do-overs as long as I took appropriate sized shots of whatever bottle of schnapps was closest to me. That's right, the bottles, all plastic, were strewn about all over the playing field. They served as obstacles. If your ball hit a bottle you drank. If you knocked another player's ball into a bottle, they drank. Again, brilliant!

When we were packing up to head to the after-croquet party at Williams ($1 burgers!) someone had the wonderful idea of making snow cones out of schnapps and well... snow. They looked pretty, and I'm sure the amount of alcohol in the schnapps along with the alcohol already in our systems disinfected the lake snow good enough, but they just weren't as good as I had hoped. Ah well. It's not everyday you can say you ate a schapps snow cone on the frozen Lake Calhoun.




The moral of this story, is I will definately add the Calhoun Croquet Classic to my list of yearly events that take place only in Minneapolis. I can't wait for next year!