Recent Phenomenon
In recent days, Robert has developed some new habits and revealed a new passion. Ever since moving here he has found ways of entertaining himself that, to some, might come as a surprise. To others, like long-time friend Varge Gardner, these are right in line with the oddity of Robert’s personality.
Upon landing in Wales, Robert has been eating exclusively with his left hand, that is to say the fork no longer is utilized by his dominant right hand. Varge, who during the time in which he lived in San Francisco would go weeks at a time testing the limits of his weaker left hand, would find this interesting. But if you think it’s just kind of weird, that’s to be expected.
Varge and Robert's friendship goes back some time, and during that time they have both taken interest in various sports and pseudo-sports featured on late-night television like hurling and table tennis. But Robert has found a new sport that has peaked his interest. Darts. Very competitive, world-class darts. If I’ve lost you, it’s the sport you play in bars, but this version is played in front of hundreds, if not thousands of screaming fans. Quite simply it’s a spectacle. The “Lakeside World Darts Championship” has been featured on television recently and has proved that is worth a look.
To give you a visual: Men with an amount of gold somewhere in the range of…lets just say ‘a lot’ of gold, mostly in ears and on fingers (not on the fingers of the throwing hand of course), are dressed in bowling-type shirts bearing their names or nicknames like “The Matchstick,” “The Viking” (pictured, above), “The Power,” and “Bravedart.” They take to the stage in front of drunken, adoring fans to battle it out in games of 501. There are even mullets and plenty of tattoos as well. Not very exciting, you say? If you know the dart board, imagine these players throwing 3 darts and all of them hitting the very small triple-20 area on the board. Amazing! The broadcasts include an announcer adding up each round of throws, who in the event of the aforementioned 3 triple-20’s, screams “one hundred and eighty!!!,” along with color commentary analysis and a crowd going wild under a flood of strobe lights. Sometimes you’ll even see a “nine-darter” (see the video of Raymond “Barney” von Barneveld's below) where the player scores a 501 with only nine darts!
For Robert, its just ridiculous enough, he only wishes all the broadcasts were in Dutch and that Varge were here to share in the joy. Check it out, whoa!: