Leslie, in requisite mini-golf garb, poses before the party begins. Note the new venue; we moved in to our house on 24th Street in January 1996.
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Catherine and John Burke's "Bicycle Madness" took over the driveway and front sidewalk.
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The world-travel-themed "Bicycle Madness" included a spinning bicycle wheel (not shown here) and sundry props and artifacts from destinations around the globe.
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Guest Max Barr gets framed inside an oversized National Geographic magazine cover after playing "Bicycle Madness."
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Robert and Laurie Kanes, Les Stickles and Judit Muller's "The Birth Canal." The hole creators had threatened to include a frozen placenta in the finished design; mercifully, they relented.
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Ann McNamee emerges, apparently unscathed, from "The Birth Canal."
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Claire Curtin, John Loose, Jennie McDonald, and Dan Miller constructed the kid-friendly Dinosaurland." Herbivores only, thank you; no carnivores need apply.
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Scientists note that we really have no idea what color dinosaurs really were. But this yellow-and-white-polkadot stegasaurus ramp posits an interesting theory.
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Jean Cheng and Melissa Riofrio's "City Driving" -- an exquisitely constructed vehicular challenge. To play, four golfers took different roads to reach the cup.
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Speed limit was posted as 55 miles per hour, but enforcement was lax.
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This was in the days before cell phones were ubiquitous, so the "city drivers" actually talked to one another, face to face.
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"Comet Hai-Karate," by The Tent of Mystery (in reality, Mark Appel), launched golf balls up a ramp and into outer space .. or at least into the cup.
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Leslie Crawford and Steve Fox's "Kitty Litter" -- a two-floor effort started upstairs, with a putt into the giant cat's mouth...
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... and finshed up downstairs in the hole, inside a box of kitty litter. Not to worry: Those are actually Baby Ruth bars, though Roberta Furger (shown here with Steve) seems unconvinced.
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Robert Lauriston's "Golf-o-Mat 2000" was a breakthrough -- the first totally conceptual hole (no actual golf balls were used) in the four-year history of the event.
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To play Golf-o-Matt 2000, the golfer enter a curtained off room and hole designer Lauriston projected a painting on a screen. Note the golf ball in the lower left. In this case, your first shot left you on in the rough.
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Subsequent putts might send your ball into a water trap (left), out of bounds (right), onto the fairway, or eventually into the cup. Tally your strokes and that's your score.
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Maeve Forster (age seven) designed "The Little Mermaid" -- our first kid-built hole. Because it was a surprise entry (Maeve and her father, John, simply showed up with it), it was not on the scorecard. But here it is, in all its glory.
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Cary Hammer, Nadine Browning (shown here with her sister, Lorraine, in the back) went big-time with "Miniature Golfer."
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To play "Miniature Golfer," you enter the "Enshrinkerator" and then traverse a hallway, where everything gets progressively larger. Once you step out of the hall, you realize you've shrunk. Note the giant windmill.
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The putter and golf ball are similarly jumbo. Upon completion of hole, the player exits the installation and is magically restored to regular size.
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Bud Peen's "The Big One '89" re-created the Loma Prieta earthquake in our backyard.
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Befitting an earthquake-inspired installation, "The Big One '89" shook, rattled, and rolled, but mercifully held together throughout the proceedings.
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In the midst of the mad-cow scare, Kate Godfrey and Gene Heller created "Elsie's Revenge." Sure, Elsie looks friendly, but what about all those cow skulls in the background?
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"The Morgue," by Annette Goodfriend and Kirk Steers celebrated the life and mourned the very recent death of Don Clayton, the inventor of "Putt-Putt Golf."
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That's Clayton's body. Golfers joined the hole in mid-autopsy.
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A macabre construction bathed in black light, "The Morgue" was voted best in show, beating out a strong field of contenders.
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Susan Fry (left), Cadir Lee, Michael Bayle (right), and Declan Fox created "Blind Obedience." Pop a balloon and follow the mini-golf-themed instructions contained therein to get the ball into the hole below.
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Every mini-golf course needs a windmill. And this one is no exception. Though this particular windmill bears an uncanny resemblance to San Francisco's Transamerica Tower.
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Best Hole Design winners Annette Goodfriend and Kirk Steers show off their hard-won trophy -- a Gumby.
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The scorecard. Tim Luddy's "Putter Duck," our first-ever on-screen computer creation, is sadly not shown here. But as the scorecard indicates, it was very much present at the event.
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Want more pix? Click here for "Crawfox Mini-Golf: A Brief History in Words and Pictures" -- a look at 11 years of mini-golf madness
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