Happy New Year Chicago Petanque Club!
Here in our state-of-the-art, high-tech, covert facility, cleverly disguised as a ramshackle shack atop an aerial lift bridge over the Chicago River, we keep meticulous records about the club, along with loads of foreign currency, a variety of passports and some extra boules. We do actually monitor the pulse of the club via satellite feed from atop the bridge! I thought I’d share the numbers with you, just to show how healthy and active we are!
We usually try to have games on Thursday evenings or Saturdays. During a 24 week period in 2010 between April 1st and September 19th, there were 45 Thursdays and Saturdays; I didn’t include Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day in the figure as we usually don’t organize games on holiday weekends.
Of those 45 potential meetings, we actually played 17 times; 7 Saturday outings averaging 11 people, but having up to 15. Four of those outings involved food such as BBQs or picnics. Ten of the outings were on other days, mostly Thursdays at McGuane Park, where we averaged 8 players per outing!
So we play 38% of the time! That’s a good number considering that (according to Tom Skilling the weatherman) “it rains once every three days in Chicago during the summer, and it rains substantially (a ¼ inch or more) once every eight days.”
So basically, if there are 3 opportunities to play; we play once, get rained out once and don’t play once, probably because the terrain is still wet from the last time it rained or we’re planning a big Saturday affair so we don’t hold a Thursday game.
Yes, we’ve lost some membership over the past 3 years as many of our European and expat members have returned to the old country without finding a replacement for themselves first! However, we will soldier on, continue to monitor weather conditions, and organize games and outing into 2011…and beyond!!!!
See you in the spring!
Ian
C.P.C. 