Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 You ready? Good morning. Fort McMurray, wood, Buffalo, and the rest of the world. You've tuned in to the Mac Sydney morning show. I am your host Elliot Pierre, and we're going to start the show off the same way we start every episode off with a moment of gratitude. I know you could be doing a million other things with your time. So the fact that you're spending with us truly does mean the world to me. So thank you on that note, Tana hit him with,
Speaker 1 00:00:21 Oh, she caught me, loves near listen to the next city morning show
Speaker 0 00:00:25 <inaudible> and we're back. I'm excited about today's episode because I don't know anything about this gentlemen. He's doing some pretty cool things in town though. Tanner hit him with the coffee table. We're looking at some Frisbees there. Um, so as everybody knows, I don't introduce my guests because they can do a better job of that than then, then I can. So on that note, gentlemen, sir, can you please introduce yourself to the people?
Speaker 2 00:00:51 Well, thanks for having me Elliot, my name's Kyle Warren, I'm the president of the wood Buffalo disc golf association. It's a mouthful. I know that's where you can find us on Facebook as Fort McMurray, disc golfers. That's easier. So on that note, we like to call these things discs that's our a game sport is, uh, played with disks. So they're, they're regulated by the professional disc golf association, which is a nationally recognized company entity that, uh, regulates the disc. So they're all around like nine inches. Um, they have, uh, a flight plate. That'll be a speed from one to 14. It's kind of arbitrary, but we all talk in flight numbers. So maybe can you toss me one of these desks here?
Speaker 2 00:01:38 It's got some weight to, right? You don't want to just throw this like a, like a Walmart desk it's there. I will say you don't want to spill your drink. You're balancing a drink on your discs, you juice. And if you tilted your disk enough that it, your juice, where to slide off, that's too much of an angle. So you don't really have the majority of the time if you're trying to learn to throw flat and straight. And that's why I always give beginners for steps. And so yes, disc golfer speak in these numbers here. I don't know if you can see that on any of these cameras, but one of your cameras might pick it up that one. Okay. Yeah. So there's four flight numbers here. Um, basically just describes how fast it goes, how much it lifts its glide and then turn and fade, which are Gulf terms as well. So how much he wants to go to your back on the fast turn at that fast flight at the beginning, it's spinning a lot. And then how much he wants to feed towards where your chest is facing at the end. Okay. As it slows down it's rotation. Cool. So that's a little, little bit of basics on disc golf anyway. So
Speaker 0 00:02:40 I got so many questions. I don't even know what we're saying. There's
Speaker 2 00:02:43 A lot. I'm like how long has you show?
Speaker 0 00:02:45 Right. So my first question is, cause I think most people would be interested in this. I'm not saying it's the best question to start off on, but it's my first one where in town, can you do this
Speaker 2 00:02:54 Great question? Yeah. So lion's park is our kind of little gym, a disc golf course downtown. I installed that course in November, 2017 with the help of the rotary club oil sands rotary club. I'm in two rotary clubs. One of my hats is my disc golf hat. One of them. Yeah. I'm hopelessly addicted. And uh, so yeah, we play on Thursday nights at 7:00 PM at Lyons. And uh, then we have our youth league, which is ages six to 18 on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM, Atlanta as well.
Speaker 0 00:03:27 So that's where the parks that
Speaker 2 00:03:28 That's where the courts, the main one, that's kind of our, our favorite little gym downtown. It's just so easy for everyone to get to right. Downtown. Right. And, uh, and it's a well-maintained, uh, park like the parks and rec guys, a big shout out to those guys and they're on WB for letting me yeah. Approving me to throw that in there. It's a, it's a shared use area. So yeah, you gotta kind of first rule of disc golf is you don't throw when there's someone visible on the fairway players are park goers and stuff like that. Okay. So second
Speaker 0 00:03:57 What's the whole, where's this
Speaker 2 00:03:59 Landing. Okay. So we have a basket. Um, actually we pulled up a picture or something, but uh, maybe Tanner, I don't know if there's a, it's like a metal band around the top and a, usually like two or three inches. So when you hit that, it's like dank and like, yeah, that's the worst sound sculptures and there's three sets of chains. What you want them. Right. You Ching, that's a good sound. It drops into a wire basket kind of thing. So it's all about two and a half, three feet wide. I've seen these down there. That's how you hold it up. And it's about four feet tall. Okay. So yeah, you might've seen them around the park and now we have a bunch out at rotary links as well, which is the other course I designed a couple of years ago, not to say it's theirs, that's a professional architect design the course, but I play some baskets at night.
Speaker 2 00:04:50 So that's a, and we got, we got a big tournament coming up at the end of the month here, August 28, 29. Okay. Very excited for that. So we got, uh, I think about 20 locals or something like that signed up so far. Nice. Trying to join some guys from Edmonton. Uh, tons of local sponsors. There's a Mitchell's cafe is going to be catering our sandwiches at lions park on Sunday. Nice. And, uh, you get a bunch of stuff in your players pack 10 to 15% off, uh, 57 north, uh, shut up to those guys. They're putting together a little care package. Um, they all have CTP prizes, so they'll each have their own little hole on the course. And, uh, the guy that has the closest flag at your desk closest to the basket on some kind of shorter hole, uh, that day we'll get a, either like lunch for two at Mitchell's, for example, or a care package with gift cards and 57 north swag and stuff like that.
Speaker 0 00:05:46 Um, how did you get into this? Like I like, it's fascinating to me. You're like, I love, how do you get into it?
Speaker 2 00:05:53 Uh, about 10 years ago I started throwing disks around Rundle park in Edmonton. I'm from Edmonton originally. And, um, yeah, that would have been about right before I moved up to Fort Mac, starting to play out there. So I was getting pretty into it a couple of years before I moved here and then, uh, or flying in and out at first and eventually moved here. And then, um, yeah, so, um, that was, um, something I was looking around and I noticed that rotary club of Fort McMurray oil sands is, uh, it was doing a project already. And, uh, so I got involved with that and that was, we donated 12 baskets to Vista Ridge. That was the first course that was a 2016 or something like that. I want to say. Okay. Okay. And, uh, yeah, so they they've been using, they set up kind of, I'd say they're permanently out as nine baskets now. So I actually got three of those back and we're, we're going to be installing them at rotary links and expanding up there cause they plan to be a 18 hole golf course by next year. Okay. Yeah. So we're, uh, expanding that a little bit and, or getting to tinker and, and like refine our layouts that we had over the last, uh, two years here. So, okay. It's coming together and I'm really excited to show it off for the tournament at the end of the month oil sands open to you started.
Speaker 0 00:07:12 So I've just, I have so many questions. Okay. So now you've started it. You've got these two, well, three areas, I guess, that you could go, you got lions park, Vista Ridge rotary links, right? So you said something in regards to, um, it's like on certain dates, Wednesdays and
Speaker 2 00:07:33 There's days, Wednesdays youth league at 7:00 PM. And then Thursdays is the, or the adults, but anyone, any skill level can show
Speaker 0 00:07:41 Golf. You make a tee time and you can do this anytime. Right. So is this like, how does that work on those certain dates? Are you doing?
Speaker 2 00:07:48 Yeah, so like as a tournament director, when I set up people at lion's park, when we're running a tournament, we would do, what's called a shotgun start. So you have, you see on your app now things are a little more COVID friendly, but before it was like, you can see anyone, you had to go directly over to your home and everything was done over your phone basically. And a small group of people and, uh, but yeah, super social distancing friendly. So, I mean, it's gotten really popular over the pandemic actually. That's cool, man. So lions, I'd send you to your, your tee pad to answer your question rotary. It's a golf course. So we have to make tea times and we send people, sticker people at send. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:08:25 And so at rotary, this is not effecting the Gulf. That's too.
Speaker 2 00:08:30 That's a good question. So yeah, we have to, we demand, uh, we make it mandatory that you have to be a member with our clubs because there's going to be a list of things that you should know before we go to an actual golf course, being a disc golfer. That's super rare. I think we're only one of four or five courses that have, you can ride a golf cart around and throw desks in Canada. I think we're the only one in Alberta. Yeah. So that's, yeah, it's pretty special. It's cool. Like that lots of disc golf courses are free. Like 90, at least 90% of the courses are free. So it's kind of a different situation where you're sending people out to a professional golf course. There's obviously like a address etiquette and golf etiquette and things like that. So we want to make sure guys aren't just like stripping down and jumping in the pond <inaudible> to get that disc
Speaker 0 00:09:16 Back. So, so what's the cost of this then?
Speaker 2 00:09:20 A 2 0 2 rotary it's 14 for nine holes and 20 bucks for 18. And
Speaker 0 00:09:25 If you show up at that's, uh,
Speaker 2 00:09:29 That's uh, actually a good point. Uh, we usually have like later in the day, so we usually book like maybe 7:00 PM or something like that. Okay. Once the golf crowd kind of dies down, cause they're paying more for their rounds, they get priority. We don't use the green. So we don't really pay like green. Like,
Speaker 0 00:09:46 And if you're showing up on Wednesday, Thursday down at lion's park, what's the cost for that same thing
Speaker 2 00:09:52 Membership. So that's 20 bucks a year. Yeah. Yeah. Super low cost to get into a $5 drop-ins or if you're committed, like the handful of guys that we have showing up every week, they pay 50 bucks and it's, that's your best 10 rounds. So then you're not exceeding that, that 10, 10 round payment basically. That's right. And then yeah, you can throw, I think I'm probably at like approaching 20 rounds. I've thrown away a lot of crappy scores. I started off real bad at the beginning of the season. Everyone's like, we're going to beat catalyst and then
Speaker 0 00:10:24 That's so cool, man. Yeah. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 00:10:28 Yeah. It's a, it's a super fun sport. Um, I'm very addicted. I got sponsored this year. This is my sponsor disk store.com. Shout out to those guys in Nebraska, Omaha, Nebraska, as a sponsor.
Speaker 0 00:10:41 You get, they give you free
Speaker 2 00:10:42 Stuff like this. So I got my, my name on the back.
Speaker 0 00:10:45 Nice. You can see that. That's awesome. Flexible.
Speaker 2 00:10:51 And uh, yeah. So, uh, they're they've got me a bunch of jerseys. They helped us out for the tournament. I still haven't listed all of our sponsors. We have a lot of sponsors. Yeah. So those guys, yeah. That they are their distributors. So they have cool stuff. Like they make us set jerseys for our team are wood, Buffalo, disc golf jerseys.
Speaker 0 00:11:09 No, there is numerous, uh, disc golf courses throughout Canada and the world like you you've mentioned. Yeah. So are there like tournaments that you could go to outside of Fort McMurray? Like if you get yeah. Yeah. Like you've got skills at this. You've been doing it a long time. Like practice makes perfect. So you go compete another
Speaker 2 00:11:25 That's right. Yeah. I'll travel around Alberta mostly and hit up tournaments. And uh, we have like a big tournament directors. Like my buddy Wally down in Edmonton runs a lot of like the Northwoods tour last year, last year, we were a part of that. I think next year we should be in that tour again. And uh, with the announcement of a, of a huge course getting built in, in Fort Mac and like really high budget, high level, like, uh, got to meet the course, Darryl banks a couple of weeks ago from Inova Canada. He came up. That was pretty cool to pick his brain and get some ideas on course design and heal. So he's working with the RWB on that. It's uh, it's by it's in Stony Creek by the, um, limestone link, it goes up to Canadian brew house, uh, you know, the park aid going into their Stony Creek.
Speaker 2 00:12:14 So that, that road that leads up to their cool, that whole little forest area there. That's going to be all cleared up to this giant court. It's not huge, but I mean, it's going to be a really, really big for, for disc golf in Fort Mac. Cause that's awesome. It'll have, it'll add 18 baskets, at least 18 baskets, 18 holes. That's right. Uh, variations of layout long and short and uh, and then have like youth and like accessibility friendly kind of in the center with like little less altitude changes, less chance of losing your discs deep in the woods. Cool. Very cool.
Speaker 0 00:12:49 Yeah. All right, man. We're at the part of the show. This is Tanner segment called the Mac CD minute. He's going to ask you some questions. I don't know what he's going to ask. So best of luck to you. Tanner hit him with the maxi.
Speaker 3 00:12:58 Alrighty. Question number one. What is one disc? A golf course. You dream of playing on.
Speaker 2 00:13:06 Oh man. Okay. I've uh, I've heard a lot about, um, what's it called? Uh, I totally forget now tree hill. I want to say something like that in Massachusetts. One of my favorite disc golfers, Simon was, uh, lives out there and uh, yeah, it'd be really cool to run into him. This his, uh, his sponsor disc mania just happened to have one. Cool,
Speaker 3 00:13:30 Cool question. Number two for you. What is your favorite thing about designing your own courses in Fort McMurray?
Speaker 2 00:13:38 Um, I don't want to say bragging rights, but that's pretty cool. Just bringing the community together. I would say like it's a, it's really cool little community you come out on, on Thursdays, you see your, your disk buddies and um, yeah, maybe have a beer and Joseph's there, there's some disks around just colorful plastic circles. My favorite thing.
Speaker 3 00:14:01 Wonderful. Cool. Question number four or three. What, how did it feel to become the rotary president?
Speaker 2 00:14:10 Ooh, yeah. Brings that one up. I like speaking of bragging, that's my, one of my other hats in town here. So a rotary club or McMurry all sands. That was a great experience. I got to go to Germany for the international conference there with my wife and, um, we, we tacked on a little bit of a Europe, Greece, and uh, Amsterdam's got pretty cool thing. That was my first European trip. So yeah. Got totally spoiled. And it's, it's a bit of responsibility, obviously. I, I like to lead the, uh, a real rock, uh, film festival. Some people may recognize me from that. Yeah. And I'm a climber, so I mean, yeah. I try to support the community with the things that I like to do. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:14:57 Question number four. What is your favorite jump from your many times? Skydive?
Speaker 2 00:15:04 Oh man. Okay. So that's another thing that I love to do. It's, like I said, when I was obviously know each other, I know Tanner <inaudible> these questions. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I've been, I just got my 10 year pin, uh, from the Canadian sports, uh, parachute association. And I've been jumping for like 13, 14 years only have, uh, somewhere between 420 and 450 jumps. I'm not exactly sure. Yeah. But a lot of people over that length of time would have a lot more, but I'm pretty, I've accepted. I'm recreational. I like to go a free flying. It's called just giving a basis towards what I'm trying to think. My favorite joke, but yeah. Um, so we go vertical. So like sit fly. You have to kind of present everything's backwards. If you want to move forward, right. To put your head back to catch wind with your back.
Speaker 2 00:15:58 And my friends are making fun of me. I do this in the partners all the time, explain vertically. And then I've been starting to break into head down. So you're defying shelf or Daffy and your legs are like this or that. It's really complicated. Like any little movement it's like in perceptible in the video, but you can just be cruising. You're going like 300 kilometers an hour, just your body. So like any little hand movement you're like spinning, it makes a big difference. So free flying. That's my discipline. Super fun. And uh, my favorite jump would be probably a helicopter jump at, in Calgary or Innisfail. Yeah. They were called big sky at the time. They're Alberta skydive central now. And uh, they had this cool black helicopter took us up. I think we were maybe like only 6,000 feet or so normally we go to 12 to 14,000 and bigger planes, but, uh, it was just such a cool experience.
Speaker 2 00:16:51 Cause it's like, it was my first time and I was like, Hey, I'm a climber. I want to do a bat. Hang on this helicopter. So I locked my heels in underneath like the landing gear of the helicopter hung upside down with my buddies and they're all dangling off of it. And I was just like, ready, set, go and drop the upside down and get that like floating, feeling your thought you were going to get when you first went skydiving by the planes already going like a hundred kilometers an hour, second, you're flying. As soon as you leave, there's wind on you. But the helicopter there's like down shop too. So there's like dead air plus like air coming down. So there's this area where you just can't float. And as a skydiver, you like are trying to fly as soon as you leave right after I just kind of like spinning in space for a little bit. So it's a super cool feeling. That was, that was really fun. And then a little free flight. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:17:40 And your final question. What is one way Fort McMurray has embraced disc golf that surprises you?
Speaker 2 00:17:47 Um, they, uh, the youth league I'm really proud of this year finally came together again, going to blame the universal problem pending Derek over the last few years. Um, but yeah, so we've been trying and we finally got it going big shout out to, uh, Mitchell and melody, uh, Geisler. They have been pulling in so many kids last last week we had nine kids and I mean like, that's that competes with a good night of us adults showing up on a Thursday. So yeah. Yeah. Really proud of that. I'm glad to see it expanding in the very cool, very cool warming.
Speaker 0 00:18:22 Cool. That's it? Those are the five.
Speaker 2 00:18:26 Those are my five.
Speaker 0 00:18:28 Listen, this just goes to show how much myself and Tanner plan or prepare for these episodes.
Speaker 2 00:18:34 Well, the people that are watching the show are like, probably don't know anything about disc golf to,
Speaker 0 00:18:38 Hey there. Just like, I didn't know. You and Tanner knew each other. I'm just, I'm finding out what the people at home myself,
Speaker 2 00:18:44 If it makes you feel any better, I didn't even know you were coming on as a guest because somebody forgot to add me to.
Speaker 0 00:18:52 So that's funny. That's funny. That's, that's how we roll at the max any morning. Okay. Listen, we're at the end of the 20 minutes, that being said, like I got so many more questions, man. Um, please, please, please, please, please come back again sooner rather than later, we'll book you again before you leave, because
Speaker 2 00:19:11 Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:19:12 For sure. So many questions for you. Um, but before I cut you loose, everybody gets their shameless shout out or plug. So the mic is yours.
Speaker 2 00:19:20 Um, well definitely my wife, she's a at home with our newborn son. He is four weeks old now Elias Eli for short. It's very proud of that. That's why we didn't get to do an interview last month while she was going into labor. Beautiful wife, Jen Warren at home. Thank you for everything you do.
Speaker 0 00:19:40 Oh, no, that's the shout out. That's all points right there. Alright. Well Fort McMurray, wood, Buffalo, and the rest of the world. Thank you very much for tuning into another episode of the Mac city morning show. Really, really do appreciate it. So thank you. Hopefully you're having a nice day and we'll see you tomorrow. Peace.
