The Beginning.

I’d like to start off with a bit of a back-story, but going forward, I promise this blog will be filled with exciting and helpful information and videos that I hope will inspire disc golfers everywhere to follow their dreams!
I’m a girl from a small college town in Wisconsin – River Falls to be exact.  A small town with lots of cows and quite luckily a small 9-hole “mid-range course”.  For those of you that don’t know, Wisconsin is East of Minnesota whose popular city is Minneapolis (I grew up 45 minutes from here).  I've found in my recent travels that very few people know anything about Wisconsin, except for the cheese which really is the most important part.  Now that we have that geography lesson down, Wisconsin is a cold cold place in the winter and a hot hot humid one in the summer.  It’s honestly a pretty tough place to live, though it can be beautiful, it’s not the place for me. 

In November of 2013 I moved to the beautiful land of Portland, Oregon.  I’d never been to the West coast but I have this extremely adventurous side to myself that needs to see and discover new places.  Oregon is wonderful, but it’s not the last place I intend to live.  I have a list of cities I’d like to long-term visit and I have every intention to check them off in the next few years.  I’ll likely add a few during this journey as well.  I guess this is where disc golf comes in.  I've been playing for three and a half years (or so) now.  I’m addicted. I was addicted within days of my first real round of golf and I hope to always be involved in the sport in one way or another.

My Goals:
To tour professionally in 2016
To be debt free (with the exception of my RV which I’m considering “Rent”)
To grow my business
And most importantly to inspire disc golfers (especially women) to follow their dreams.

How did I get to where I am today?

Disc Golf World Championships (Worlds):
This event will come into play dozens of times throughout this blog, I’m sure, as it completely changed my life.  Two major things happened here.
1st I watched the pro women play and I got excited like a little school girl seeing their favorite boy band for the first time.  A fire was ignited in me. That is what I wanted to do. I’d make it work. I’d figure it out, but I was going to be a professional disc golfer.
2nd My spirit animal (this is actually a person, disc golfer and a close friend of mine) and I discussed the “grip sacs” that I had been making for years, and so the idea for my business Whale Sacs was born.

Whale Sacs:
My business was born off of a simple idea and a lot of work and has since helped pay for tournament fees and travel.  Being that this is still the beginning and Whale Sacs isn't even a year old yet, there is still a lot of learning and growing to do.  Whale Sacs takes up a lot of my free time but I get to sew and work with my hands and I get to sell them to Disc Golfers, I really can’t complain about what it is even now. And I’m very excited to see what it can become.

My RV:
Still to be given a name, my RV is my new place of residence, currently parked at a friends house.  This is also very new and I have a LOT of learning to do.  I have wanted to move into an RV for about 2 and a half years now – as soon as I decided to move out of Wisconsin, but it didn't fully fit into my plan until this spring.  So, here I am, only a month into the big purchase and I don’t have any regrets so far!  The RV will allow me to travel to my tournaments next year while saving me a ton of money for years to come.

This blog came about because I have gained a wealth of knowledge on a lot of interesting subjects in the last few years.  I have gotten a lot of questions about the hows and the whys and I feel it’s important to share this information hopefully further than just my fellow Portland disc golfers.  I think it’s important to be an example for the people I have met that think they can’t make a life in disc golf work for them.  I disagree, friends.  I think it CAN work.  It might not be easy, but if you set your mind and soul to it, I think we can all achieve it.
 
I intend to make this partially a video blog with hopefully a weekly video post about one of these subjects.  If you have input or want to know anything about…well, anything, just shoot me a message and we’ll chat.

Until next time,

Tina