The professor was out this weekend doing field work with his biogeography class. They went to a frisbee golf course. The plan was to measure the density of the California Poppy as a function of distance from the goal peg (or whatever the disc golfers call it). It was a gorgeous weekend. He was describing this to me and how they use specialized disks/frisbees to play with and they aim at some post with a steel net around it that catches the disc. Sounds like a variation on horseshoes. I did not go along – I stayed back in the lab to work.
That night I had a dream in which I was on a course that was designed to accommodate frisbee golfers and, er…, golf-ball golfers at the same time. Which is to say, it was entirely possible that a foursome could play the course where some members of the foursome threw disks and other members of the same foursome hit golf balls with golf clubs. They had different targets for each kind of play on every hole. Except it wasn’t your typical putting green with a flag in a cup for the golf-ball hitters. Instead, the targets for the golf balls were elaborate contraptions, sorta like giant pinball machine mechanisms. You hit the ball into them and they bounced around and got picked up by robotic mechanisms and randomly shuffled about. There was a long sequence in the dream of walking into one of these mechanisms (they were that large!) and following the golf ball that Dad had just hit into it. Watching the bouncy pillows and steel chutes and spinning disks – all with multicolored lights and bells and chimes. It was fascinating.
The golf courses were also designed with large concrete and steel structures sorta like on miniature golf courses – except very much larger in scale. You could hit the golf ball with the full force of a driving shot off a tee box and have it land hundreds of yards down the fairway into a chute that channeled the ball down a large slope, through tunnels and have it ejected somewhere along the fairway. Then walk up to the ball, which had advanced by 200 – 300 yards and take out your 5 iron and whack it into a hill with concrete chutes and waterfalls and have the ball roll through some random chute and end up farther down the fairway.
It was all fun. It was also nice to see Dad in the dream. He was in fine form, thoroughly enjoying the golfing – as he always did when he was in his golfing heyday. I was just watching. The other 3 people in Dad’s foursome were doing the disk golf. They had no identities but all were clearly a foursome that enjoyed playing together. I was fascinated by the golf ball mechanisms and the feelings were all fun and curious and exploratory.
I also was happy to have a dream that was triggered by, or involved content inspired by, something that happened or that I heard of that day.