The Count's blog

World Club Beach Championships 2011: The tournament part III

2011-11-08T12:43:00.013-05:00

And wake up to a changed world! So, the temperature had been dropping maybe one degree a day the entire week, there had not been a lick of wind to this point and the ocean had been 100% placid, maybe 2 feet of depth for at least 50-100 yards. Well, wake up Saturday morning, and 1) it is very overcast, 2) VERY windy, and 3) almost cool (well, not really, but at least no longer scorching). Our final isn't until 3 or 4PM (they were trying to push the game out to 4) so we take advantage to head out to the beach for a swim. Well, lo and behold, there is a HUGE surf, the water is now above our heads at times, and we actually body surf for close to an hour! Just an incredible weather change. And it was more than welcome! We ended up being the first of 3 finals starting at 4PM, followed by mixed then Open. The wind stayed around into our finals game, basically the first game all week where wind had any effect on the game. We were pretty excited as it was going to make the 'German' offense that much harder to execute by the Austrians.

An observation regarding the arena. Unlike the regular fields, the arena field actually had a hard surface under the sand, so the running surface was much harder than regular sand, which actually made for a much faster running surface. We had first noticed this during our Canada showcase game, but figured that it had been adrenaline that had made the difference before finding out after our final about this base surface. Regardless, we've got our blues on (like them much better than the whites for actual big games) and the Austrians are in white. Do our warm-ups, and win the flip for almost the first time all week. And we do the genius thing (which had been unthinkable all week) and take the downwind side while Austria obviously chooses to receive. Remember there is no halftime in these shortened games. One turnover later, we are up 1-0 on a Ryan Balch to Kelly Swiryn strike. They score downwind and then it is my turn to call my first O line.

One thing I have neglected to mention to this point is that in our 'leadership' discussions, we had settled on a starting offense of myself and Ricky Eikstadt from Surly as handlers, and Jim Parinella, with Trey and Billy Maroon from Southpaw as receivers. Naturally, all 5 of us are Grand Masters eligible which made it all the sweeter. So first O point, going downwind, I throw the goal to Jim Parinella. Quick aside, I figure that I have thrown more goals (much less passes!) to Jim than any other tandem in ultimate history (22 years on the same club team, probably 16 years on the same summer league team, almost always on the field at the same time, figure it out). So just add another one to the record books baby! Austria responds to tie it at 2-2. Another downwind O point and I end up throwing a long forehand to a wide open Ricky for another O goal (yes, it's true, a long forehand). Then the wheels come off for Austria. The D starts to dominate, running off 4 straight goals to bring the score to 7-2. Austria scores to make it 7-3, we are going downwind again, and I throw another goal to Jim. Austria scores to make it 8-4. O point downwind. Clearly I'm feeling my oats having thrown the first 3 O goals as I uncork a huge hammer into the endzone to Ricky who 'drops' it (well, he got a hand on it laying out, but clearly my turnover!). We get the turnover back then Jim steals my stat by throwing the goal to Trey.

Another game observation. Austria had been VERY successful in our first pool play game playing a poach D, making us go back and forth across the field by poaching off of the handlers into the lane. I had one of their main guys covering me at the beginning of the finals, and he was continuing to do the same thing. We took advantage this time, and after a few points, he started covering me like a glove. I joked with him about poaching some more but he was having none of it! We are up 9-4, D breaks a couple of more times before Austria answers and then the final O point for the game. On our first possession we turn it over. We get it back, and then Trey fires a forehand to Jim in the corner of the endzone for the gamewinner, only Jim isn't expecting it and it is a little off center and he misses it (I'll let him work it out with Trey whose turn it is). However, foul call and we get it back. This time Trey dumps it to me. A call or two later, they tap the disc in and I fire a quickie break forehand for the game-winner over the shoulder of Trey's defender. 12-5 world champions baby!

So, one week of beach ultimate in the books. 11-1 record, gold medal, and an interesting stat. If you'll note from the link below, I was ranked 58th in Masters in goals thrown and caught, and unfortunately Reggi Hansen from Currier Island stole my thunder by throwing 17 goals with no goals caught, but I threw 16 goals with zero goals caught! One of 3 people that had 3 or more goals thrown/caught that had zero goals caught. Apparently the plexiglass shield kept me out of the endzone again, although I remember being blown off on at least 3 separate occasions open for a goal, but it works out better this way anyway :) And now some pictures

Setting up the offense

Throwing the game-winner immediately after check-in.

Ran out of fingers in 2007. On the third toe now.
Or one hand if you just count Worlds which I think Jim is doing.

The team

GM starting offense

Lots of medals there.

Biggest fan

Yeah baby!

World Club Beach Championships 2011: The tournament part II

2011-10-05T23:41:00.009-04:00

I believe I caught breakfast that day, but it is all becoming a blur in retrospect (thanks Luke for making me do this before I forget EVERYTHING!). Ah, right, there was a Canadian women's game at 11AM, so I'm sure I ate before that… The schedule for the week was basically play my games, eat, watch the Canuck chicks if they were playing, eat, party/dance/drink, sleep, repeat.

On the way to the fields

We play GB on the regular showcase field and crush them 13-1. Now we knew why the French had beaten them that badly. Not too much to say except that this was the first game that we had to wear our sand socks. The sand was BRUTALLY hot in the midday sun. Sort of inconvenient wearing them, but you couldn't play without them. I threw two more goals this game, handler goals to Ricky and Scott Hills. The O turned it over twice this game but got it back both times. By this time the US men's team had lost a game and I believe US mixed might have also. Our next game is at 7PM against Austria who is 5-1, having lost to France on double game point. I'm sure this contributed to a little bit of cockiness coming into the game, and they played on fire. They played a very poachy defense which was all the more embarrassing considering the lack of wind (NO wind at all any day to this point). And they were playing the German offense which was the usual throw THEN cut. And without wind, very hard to stop. Up to this point, the O line had turned it over 22 times in all of its game but had only been scored on once, against the Germans (in 5 tries). The Austrians scored on the O twice (the score reporter is not showing stats correctly) and we scored on them twice. Not only did I end up positive statless on this game, I had my first two turnovers of the tournament. We broke them twice also, but they held on to grit out the 10-9 victory. This probably ended up being the best thing that could have happened to us. If we had scored on D to win 10-9, we would have seen it more as a blip and 'we can play better', but this ended up giving us the focus we needed the rest of the week, as I'm sure it did to all of the US losers in the other divisions (only mixed didn't lose a game all week). After dinner, we headed down to the main arena to watch the US women play against Japan. They recovered from a DGP loss to Great Britain in the morning game to dominate, beating Japan 13-3. We checked out the tourney party afterwards at the bar next door. It was an open sided/covered bar, and instead of a DJ, they had a VJ, which was interesting. Danced for a bit, then headed back down to the beach party before heading home for an earlier night after the previous night's debauchery. Another favorable schedule for Thursday, Day 4, games at 12 and 4.

4th straight hot day with no wind. Even though I don't play until noon, up early to eat breakfast and then watch the Canadian women play Japan and stay undefeated, beating them 13-7. They are crushing their seed at this point (initially seeded 6th), setting up a huge match against the US during the afternoon for first in the pool. Oh yeah, and we played. Our warm-ups continue to get shorter, especially in the mid-day sun. We are playing Switzerland, who is 3-4 at this point. We dispatch them easily, winning 13-4 and I stay largely off the stat board, only throwing a goal to Trey to make it 7-1. I only call an O line 4 times so pretty mishmash and don't play a lot of points, which is fine with me for the midday heat. Get out of the sun and eat lunch, then hang out until our 4PM game against Spain. At this point, Spain is 7-1 with only a loss to Austria in the first round. After our loss to Austria yesterday, we take this seriously and give them the business, crushing them 13-6. Yet another game where I am statless (unlike Statler and Waldorf) but at least turnover free. To this point, I still have only the two turnovers on the week against Austria although granted that was in the one game we lost. The quick victory allows me to go catch the showdown between US and Canada women. While well fought, the US pulls away little by little, only getting broken once at 9-5 before winning 10-6. If everything holds after this 3-way tie, Canada will be playing Great Britain in the semifinals (who Canada beat 9-7 on day 1). Oh, and the Grandmasters team suffers their first loss in the late game against Austria, also losing on double game point. So only mixed is undefeated at this point.

Tonight was trading night, and unlike 2008, I had brought nothing from my stock, but walked around looking at all the loot, didn't buy anything, partied some more, then early night. Cuz I know I'm partying late the following night (um…).

So Friday is our first and only day with a 9AM game. Early wake up (sort of). It is against the Czech Republic who has not done much to this point with a 3-6 record. We obviously take that to heart, as we play the entire roster and do not feel any sort of sense of urgency, winning 11-8. We don't even reach 13 points. Although we do go down 3-1, tied at 4-4, even 9-8 before scoring the last two. I only have one goal thrown to make it 9-7. And still no turnovers. Losing the game would not have affected semifinal matchups, but still, not a good lead-in to the semifinals. Spain is now 8-2 with only their losses to us and the Austrians. We play them at 6PM (nice and cool). But prior to this I watch the Canadian women play Great Britain in the semis in a thrilling game! No one gets more than a 2 point lead, although GB, up 3-2, promptly gives up 3 in a row to go down 3-5. Then the teams trade out until the endgame, where GB breaks back to tie the game at 8, double-game point. Canada turns it over on a high backhand that drops too fast, then GB sails a long pass out of bounds before my girl throws the game winner, a long forehand to Kate Jardine for the victory. Very exciting, and they are going to playing the US, who smokes Germany in the other semi 12-5.

But now it is our turn to play. 6PM game on the 'showcase' field against Spain. Now it is time for true colors to shine through. Of what do I speak? Stats clearly! No turnovers, 3 goals thrown. I start off the scoring with a goal to Trey, then after the D gets 3, throw a goal to Ricky after Spain finally scores, then throw a final goal in garbage time to Tony to make it 12-6. One final break and we punch our ticket to the finals 13-6. More importantly, Austria takes care of business in the other semifinal beating France 11-7 to set up the rematch.

Now it's finals time, even if it isn't ours. Unfortunately we don't have time to shower and eat and watch the GM finals that they win handily, avenging their loss to Austria, but we get there right around the time the start of the mixed masters final, pitting the US against Great Britain. They look out of sorts from the beginning. It doesn't get any better as Great Britain wins the game 11-7. And it doesn't even seem that close. Disappointing loss, especially considering that in pool play, the US had beaten GB twice, 11-9 and 13-9. Whether it was adjustments by one, or a fold by the other, a disappointing loss overall. The final round of the evening is the women's division, US v. Canada. So of course I'm experiencing some emotional conflict. I finally settle on cheering great individual performances from the Canadian women, one in particular, with an overall victory from the US team. So this game was definitely the game of the tournament. Incredibly exciting at all levels. The lead was never more than 2 points, and the teams were tied at 1, 2, 6, 7, and 9. However, Canada never actually had the lead. This culminated in a double game point with the US receiving going downwind (whatever wind there was). A few passes in and they turn it over no more than 20 yards out of their endzone. Canada immediately turns it right back over on a missed dump pass, US moves it down field, then turnover in the Canada endzone. Canada is stuck in the corner, high backhand that can't be corralled, then Rohre Titcomb calls foul on a long inside out crossfield forehand that we still can't tell whether it is real (waiting for the video), then they finally punch it in. 10-9 US. INCREDIBLY exciting game! Time to go support the Canadian women who are actually not that devastated considering the expectations coming into the tournament. 6th seed overall, a team from all over Canada that for the most part had never practiced together as a full time except for a brief afternoon on Lido at the beginning of the week, and even that was missing a few players. I provided a shoulder to cry on nonetheless, cuz that is the kind of guy that I am. And now...

Party time! Head back to the rooms, shower up, and then grab the shuttle to the party which is at the Kursaal dance club quite a distance in the other direction from the Getur complex. Complete with pool, large hot tub, and ridiculously expensive drinks. After partying with the Canadians for some time, after we found out what it was going to cost to actually get a drink, we found out from some people that the thing to do was cross the street to this one bar. We leave the club, head across the street and the bar is packed with ultimate players. I buy a pitcher and we end up closing the bar. Back to the dance club, and then I realized that I am exhausted, it is probably 4 in the morning and I take one of the shuttles back to the dorm. Although I'm about to get back out of the shuttle since there is only one spot going back and she forces me back into the shuttle to go home. Thank god!

Dancing at the Kursaal

You should be dancing too!

Awwwwwww

World Club Beach Championships 2011: The tournament part I

2011-10-04T22:52:00.011-04:00

So the schedule on our first day, Monday, ended up being very favorable to us, although this didn't become clear until a little later in the week. We had 2 games at 10AM and 6PM, against Hungary then Slovakia.

The prior night Jim, Trey, Ricky, JohnJohn and myself had met to discuss what was coming up for the week. It was decided that I would call the offensive subs and Ricky would call the defensive lines even though he was an O starter. You know how it is with the D guys. If you give them anything to think of other than getting the disc, it all falls apart… :) Also on the docket was the return of Alex de Frondeville's Hat. I had actually gotten the hat back just prior to GM nationals and was planning on the appropriate unveiling there, but our early exit in the quarterfinals preempted that. But there was no screwing around this time and I unveiled the hat for our first round game. I have to admit, it did feel good wearing it, like a nice broken in pair of leather shoes. Although JohnJohn and Ricky did have one of the cleverer moves of the pre-tournament, giving me a potential substitute hat, not knowing that I had retrieved my baby. Despite the sporty USA logo, I had to go with old hat...

During the warmup before our first game, we get there pretty early and also realize that this won't sustain itself during the week. Troy Revell put us through an active warmup, then we drilled a little, then ended up with a scrimmage to work on some plays and get the blood flowing (clearly didn't need to get warm with the heat). At one my team switched to D and while chasing Rob Johnson I kicked his foot pretty hard with my left foot. Heard and felt ALL sorts of cracking sounds from my 2nd pinky toe but it looked OK, even though it was pretty sore. While we started the game using D and O lines, we quickly started mixing it up once it was clear Hungary was not going to pose a challenge. I got my first score on the board, throwing a goal to JohnJohn to make it 4-0 (D point of course). Hungary finally scored a point to make it 9-1 and I was able to call an actual O line. I ended throwing a goal to Tony "The Duke" Leonardo and we finished off the game 13-1.

After lunch back at the dorms (typical dorm grub, using tickets we had been handed out at check-in), pasta dish, some sort of mystery meat, vegetable, bread roll, then a bowl of salad with a random dessert. Best meals were when they gave you an extra ticket to get a gelato. Yum! After lunch, I headed back to catch the Canadian women play the Germans. This was one of the games they needed to win to comfortably make the semis. While the play was not the cleanest on either side, they ended up winning double game point 9-8. Caught a lot of their second game against Great Britain at 5PM, who was also seeded above them. They ended up winning that game 9-7.

About mid-afternoon I looked down at my toe only to find that it was now a hideous shade of dark purple. I had to go to a few different spots to hunt down the right first aid people to see. Finally get to the red cross tent and doofus and mcgroofus are sitting there. I show them my discolored toe and ask if they have any tape I can use to buddy tape it to the healthy toe. They say no, and say I should go to the hospital. To which I promptly respond (as we are communicating in their broken English) that this would serve no purpose since the toe is not visibly askew, you can't cast it, so I just need to tape it to another toe so I can get back to the game. They send me somewhere else, who ends up being the massage guy who sends me back to the first aid tent. Finally extract some tape from them and tape up for our next game, this time against France who had destroyed Great Britain 13-1 in their 3PM game. Since GB was the second seed overall in masters, this was some cause of concern. We had shortened our warmup by this time (which was to get shorter and shorter during the week) and started the game on D. We broke to start, then France settled in and traded to 3-3. So I was actually calling O lines during this game, at least at the start. We went from 3-3 to 7-3 and finally closed them out 13-5.

Quick refresher for those who don't know. Beach ultimate is 5 on 5, shorter field, stall 10. The main difference on beach is that it is very difficult to make up ground on someone who is open. So you can throw to someone you would never throw to on grass. We really played up the under game after cutting deep. As we will find out, there was only one team that caused us problems all week.

Dorm dinner, then beach party, reasonably late night, then bed. Oh, and I had played finger for the first time at Paga this year. Well, we broke it out at the beach tent this night and played it in rousing fashion for a few hours, eventually using one of the candle holder boxes because of the number of players! Back at the 'bedroom' this time we had the one fan that made noise not move, but I still slept like crap, so the rest of the week I used an Ambien each night. Kicked myself for not thinking of it earlier, but at least I finally slept well although the room was still brutally hot. We had pretty much the worst room in the entire facility. Faced on the dining area (noise), had sun exposure almost the entire day (heat), and ground floor (noise). Pretty much had nothing going for it. Just walking into teammates room on the other side of the hall was a breath of fresh air. Annoying.

Next day (Day 2/Tuesday) was one of our two 3-game days with rounds at 10AM, 2PM, and then a showcase game on the arena field at 9PM against Canada. First game against Germany and they score out of the chute on O. I throw a handler to handler goal to Ricky to tie it up at 1, we break, trade, then they break to go back up 3-2, then the wheels come off. We go on two straight 4 goal runs, followed by a 3 goal run to end the game 13-5. I have another goal thrown to JohnJohn to make it 3-3. Get out of the heat, lunch, then 2PM game against the Currier Island pickup team. We crush them 13-3, with 3 sets of 4 goal runs. I get my one and only point throwing a goal to Trey at 10-3. Trey was huge for us on O all week. Or at least he amassed a bunch of stats :) But seriously the O played great the entire week, rarely getting broken (until Wednesday).

Now we had to figure out what to do with ourselves until the late game. Much of the rest of the US teams were going to make the trek out to watch us. We got their early although they had problems with the lights for QUITE some time, so for a bit it was unclear that the game was actually going to be played. It was also supposed to be simulcast on the web, but that fell through also. I think we finally got the game going around 10-10:15. By this time, Canada had lost a game against Spain (eventual quarterfinalist) to stand at 3-1, but that didn't matter. We were totally pumped for the game, and although the eventual score didn't reflect the actual intensity of the game for both sides (13-5), it was pretty clear after the first few points that we were not going to lose, breaking them 3 times out of the gate for 3-0. Although on the first or second point Canada had a chance to score 'upwind' but they dropped the disc in the endzone. We never looked back. There is NOTHING like playing in front of a crowded arena! Even if I didn't get any 'stats' in this game... As is typical, we were 5 games in to the tournament and I still had not caught a goal but had thrown for 5 or so. Other than the following Saturday, this was my latest night of the tournament. On the way back to the hotel, a bunch of us stopped at a restaurant for a drink, but once people started ordering food, we headed out to go back to the party (it was probaby 11:30 at this point). Our first game wasn't until 1PM against GB on the showcase field and I took full advantage, staying out until somewhere between 4 and 5AM.

One side observation. Ostensibly the tournament dorms had wifi in them, and they had provided us a code to use, but I'm not sure I have EVER been that frustrated trying to use the internet. You would open your browser, it would connect to the login page, you would enter the user and password, it would connect, you would try something, and the connect page refreshed every 30 seconds or so, and then you would be disconnected. This could literally go on for 30 minutes or more. Then at one point, you would finally connect and stay connected. There was no rhyme or reason to it, and it made things VERY frustrating all week!

One other side observation. For most of the week whenever I was at the fields, whatever team jersey I was not wearing would typically get worn under my hat to protect my neck. Looked sort of goofy, but we were in bright hot sun for a week!

World Club Beach Championships 2011: The leadup

2011-10-03T12:42:00.006-04:00

So I haven't blogged since November 2009. Looking through my blogger profile, I have about 4 drafts from stuff over the last couple of years but I just couldn't finish them off. Luke Smith was on me to blog about beach worlds, so as a birthday present to him (yesterday), here it is. A blog entry in 3 parts...

This all started on a lark I think back in the late fall. I can't remember when USA Ultimate put out the request for applications, but I received an email about the online application process. If I hadn't gone to Paganello for the last two years (with plans for going in 2011 also) I would probably never have thought of doing it, but having had some recent success over there (one finals loss, two open victories), I emailed with Jim and we applied. However, who am I kidding? When I filled out the application, I had close to zero intentions of attending. But 1) the application was free, and 2) it would feel good to be selected if it got to that point. I applied for both the masters and grand masters division. I didn't bother with Open although I have been playing Open at Paganello. The application was actually sort of onerous, probably 5 or 6 pages of fill-ins, paragraphs asking the same question 5 different ways. At one point, I wanted to answer one of the questions "You know who I am" but I didn't take that plunge, although I found out later that Jim had actually answered one of the questions that way. Meh.

I didn't think about it anymore after that until mid-March when I got an email from John Sandahl from Surly (JohnJohn) asking where he could reach me. I give him my number and he gives me a buzz. Apparently he and Ricky Eikstadt were doing the selection for the Masters team and he wanted to know what my thoughts were on playing with the masters team. My first thought was mostly, ugh, really? There aren't a bunch of studly 33 yr olds that are want to rock the team? After that initial frisson, I said sure, although in the back of my mind I was still thinking about my exit plan but at least I could say I was selected. Talked to Jim, and he had gotten the same call and was feeling the same way. However, after a couple of more days, I changed my mind. I have been fortunate enough in my career to attend a number of World Championships, especially the WUGC versions where each division had a single representative from each attending country ('96, '98, '00, '08 Masters), and each time it was a tremendous feeling playing for the US, cheering various U-S-A cheers, knowing that you were THE representive for your country. Didn't really take much more thought after that and I followed up my yes vote with actual plans to buy tickets. A couple of weeks later, after JohnJohn and Ricky had rounded up commitments from all the players (and the other divisions), USAU put out a press release, linked below

http://www.usaultimate.org/news/64-athletes-named-to-world-championships-of-beach-ultimate-team/

First step was to actually clear the decks for the trip. With the potential Verizon strike looming, I had to get VP approval to make any vacation plans in August (I think this is the third time I have had a worlds in August that I have needed to get approval for to attend because of strike preparations). That took a little work writing it up appropriately (it was nice having the USAU press release to provide the web link for). Always a little funky trying to explain to the corporate world about Frisbee tournaments, regardless of whether it is a world championships. While ultimate is getting much better known, in a large company like Verizon, not quite so. However, there was no pushback and I got my approval.

The team set up an email group and we started to talk. Plans were made to try and go to two beach tournaments. Unfortunately there were only coed divisions at these tournaments, and the timing was also such that I was not going to be able to attend either one. A good chunk of the team was able to attend one or both tournaments, playing with fellow US women. Chicago Sandblast in early July during the GM nationals (which I was already attending with DoG), and then Wildwood beginning August, which is still on my bucket list. I may have to add Sandblast to the list also now that I'm apparently beach ultimate guy. They had good success in both tournaments, placing in the top 4 or 8 at each one. Clearly it was a function of the awesome women they had picked up since I wasn't there…

Back in May, I had been watching fares for quite some time. I was going to be flying out of NY since I would be at my parents in Rye (who would be cover the kids in my absence). Non-stop fares were sitting at $1300 and ugly one-stop fares were at $1150 through Moscow. The fares were slowly inching up, and then leapt up for a week and didn't move back down. I finally swallowed my gorge and bought a non-stop ticket in late May for $1411 (painful!). Naturally, a few weeks later, all of a sudden fares dropped to $900 round-trip. After poking around for awhile, I was able to rebook my flight there through Paris, and get the same non-stop flight back for a little over $900, with a $250 change fee, and ended up with a $240 credit on Delta (which I have since used for tickets to nationals, which I will attend even if we fail to qualify {had to put that qualifier in there just in case…} ). Annoying, and I guess still proof that the best fares are usually 6-7 weeks before your travel date, even for summer travel.

In the meantime, I went with DoG to the Grand Master national championships in Cincinnati the 2nd weekend of July. We had a few last minute drops from the roster, and ended up losing in the quarterfinals after dropping a pool play game against the eventual winner Scrapple. With our missing players, it is definitely a different tournament, but I imagine it is the same for other teams. Oh well. However, Saturday night at the party I ran into someone that I had hung out with a few years prior at a nationals in Sarasota. We hang out at the party that night, and upon returning home, we conspire to get her added as a last minute addition to the Canadian women's team at Beach worlds. This will provide some context in the subsequent blog posts about why I spent so much time watching the Canadian women's games.

Finally the time had come. The Verizon union did end up going on strike, so I was busy working right up until the moment of departure. I was leaving Friday night, arriving Saturday morning Paris, and then to Venice airport at 2PMish. I had made plans to boat directly to Lido where the masters team was going to meet for a last minute practice early evening. Well, on the ride to JFK airport, as we were going down the 95 towards the Hutch from Rye, on the right we saw pitch black clouds coming. Just as we hit the Hutch, the skies opened up and we were treated to a TREMENDOUS rain and lightning show for the rest of the trip to the airport. I mean truly incredible lightning. My flight was departing at 9:30, and I did my usual thing in preparation. Grabbed a shot of rum at the bar next to the gate prior to boarding, then once I was seated in my window seat (always window seat on the overnights, don't want to get woken up by some clown who needs to go to the bathroom), popped two Ambien (one no longer works unfortunately). Next thing I know, it is the middle of the night and I don't have watch on. Finally I catch a glimpse of someone's TV screen and see a time of 11AM local time (Paris) with an arrival time of another 1.5 hours. Considering my next flight was at 12:30PM I was screwed! I guess I had missed the delayed takeoff in my passed out status. Get off the plane, waste a lot of time in a rebooking line, finally get to an agent who says that I was automatically rebooked on a 6:30PM departure. However, once I confirmed that I had not checked a bag, she was able to get me on the 3:30 departure (which is explanation #2 of why never to check bags if you can avoid it on flights that are not direct). Get into Venice around 5PM, sprint to the boat, catch the direct to Lido, then promptly get wildly lost trying to find the hotel. And carrying two heavy bags. So I punt and go to the far side of the island where the beach is and start walking down the beach trying to find the men's team to see if they are still there. Pass by the Canadian women's team that is running some drills and they say that they had seen the men's team asking about me about 20 minutes ago further down the beach. I continue walking in that direction, and I'm about to give up at the next turnoff as I'm craning to see if I can see any Frisbees further down the beach. Unfortunately 30 seconds later I espy some discs in the distance, so I continue walking down the beach and 15 minutes later I recognize JohnJohn and catch up with the team. Drop my stuff, shirt off, introductions (I know 2 names of the people there), and straight into play walkthroughs. First time running on a beach since Paganello.

Oh, I forgot to mention that during GMs on Saturday in two separate games I had landed straight-legged on my right foot, jamming my inside ankle and requiring subs each time. Well, 4 visits to my massage guy had not completely resolved it so I was a little nervous to see how it was going to respond. It had also impacted my training (or lack thereof as a result) regimen. I had just started doing some intervals on the track a couple of weeks before to exercise the ankle, and had had middling results (pushing off to the left was the worst). Fortunately the ankle held up. Quick swim after the drills, and then I was off to try and find my hotel again. Success this time! Shower and then dinner with the canuck women in downtown bustling Lido. Next morning, catch the boat shuttle back to the airport where we mill around for about an hour prior to getting on our (expensive) tournament bus/shuttle to the Getur sports complex. 1.5 hours later, we are dropped off at the sports facility. Apparently our rooms aren't going to be ready until 2PM but we have a chance to look around anyway.

I remember Worlds in Vancouver in 2008. We were on campus, and everybody had their own bedroom, with a shared common space, maybe 4-6 people to a room. For some strange reason I was expecting this kind of setup. Oh boy was I wrong! We were six to a room, and it was 3 beds on a side, no air conditioning, and it was STEAMY! Someone in our room had had the foresight to buy 2 fans prior to getting there. Well, one of the fans that night kept making sounds at one end of its swing, and I do not handle disturbance well, so was not feeling fresh at all on Monday morning.

In the meantime, we had to gather in our podium shirts for the 'walk of nations' as we were going to do a procession by team, alphabetically, from the sports complex all the way to the finals beach arena, which ended up being about a mile+ walk. Very colorful, teams doing local cheers, we're getting stares from the locals who I'm sure are wondering what the *#$&)(* is going on. Get to the stadium, opening ceremonies/speeches, then a showcase game that counts between Italy and the Phillipines. Very exciting game that Italy ends up winning. Then back to the dorms, dinner, party at the beach facility that night, then to sleep (sort of).

Bootcamp

2009-11-14T11:49:00.003-05:00

I signed up for Groupon this spring, which is a daily email with some sort of special in the greater Boston area, whether 70% off at a restaurant, or spa treatments, or something of the ilk. I signed up for one of them, 3 classes of ultimate bootcamp for the price of one ($20) to be used by the end of the year. Basically, it is a 1.5 hour Saturday morning workout at various sites around Boston.

I had done the first two classes during the frisbee season, the Bootcamp Basic class, once in Cambridge and once in Framingham. For both of those classes I was probably the best overall conditioned person there (I know, pretty scary). There were a bunch of people that really were not athletic at all but by the same token it was good to see them actually signed up and out there trying to do stuff. So for my last class I signed up for the Bootcamp Blast in Charlestown, which is an advanced class. The class took place this morning. All week we have had gorgeous weather in Boston, mid-50's or better and sunny. The weather had been looking pretty sketchy for today, and when I rolled out of bed at 8AM this morning and went outside to get the newspaper, it was POURING, with rivers of water cascading down the street. Fortunately it was already just above 50 degrees, but I was NOT thrilled to do the class at all. And I had just finished a 10 day fast (another blog entry) a day early yesterday, eating my first food at lunch on Friday trying to get some energy for the workout.

Quick breakfast of half a buttered pita with shredded cheddar, a banana and a cup of coffee for the drive over. I get to the Paul Revere Park in Charlestown at 9:20, with a GORGEOUS view maybe 100 yards from the Leonard P. Zakim bridge. I am the only car there until some poor sap shows up to walk her dog (it is POURING). Finally a truck shows up and then a guy gets out and walks over to the field carrying a mesh bag filled with fitness goodies. We are ON! I get out of the car sporting all my Patagucci gear (capilene 1 bottoms, Patagonia shorts, cap 1 top, rain shadow jacket). There are two guys there. I get there, introduce myself, and both of the guys are trainers for the class. 24 people are signed up for that morning's class, and I end up being the ONLY person there. So two trainers all for me. We decide that the class will only be an hour instead of an hour and half because it is going to be much more intense with just me.

I'm writing this two hours after the class, and I can still barely lift my arms and I'm still a little nauseous. They KICKED MY ASS! Four laps to warm up, then an active warmup, then lower body work, upper body work, interspersed sprints, pushups, exercise band work. It is incredible how little upper body strength I have. The extra bonus is that they were going to talk to the organizer to get me a bonus class because of what happened, which I don't completely understand, but who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth.

More importantly, they also have something called the ultimate bootcamp which is a 4-week program that meets 4 times a week in the morning and is a far more specific yet varied program. With my childcare schedule of every other week I would have to try and get a modified schedule but I am definitely interested in exploring doing more.

A couple of times I almost felt like making it live up to the name of 'boot' camp, but I was able to make it through. Highly recommended though. I think I'm going to buy a set of the resistance bands so I can work on some stuff on my own time.

Tough year - Nationals 2009

2009-11-05T13:22:00.007-05:00

My 26th year of competitive ultimate is now in the books. When I think back on the season, I realize that while I didn't actually miss any of the tournaments the team went to, this is probably the least 'work' that I have ever done.

Not that I am proud of it. It started with a serious broken throwing hand at the end of May which largely sidelined me for 6 weeks despite actually playing at Boston Masters Invite and the Boston Invite in June. Then got the cast off early to play at and win Grand Masters mid-July. Then, trying to get ready for the fall with a scrimmage while I was in NY, I get a nasty 4 inch scar on my right shin which takes me out for another month although I'm back just in time for Sectionals, if desultorily. Clambake gets mostly rained out resulting in only 3 games all weekend. Regionals is the wakeup call showing us that aren't the top DoG anymore in the Northeast. With our tails between our legs, we shuttle off to Nationals.

Hot, hot, hot. What else can I say? I believe that the TV news was saying that Thursday had set local temperature records in Sarasota. It sure felt like it. You would think that after having dealt with dehydration/calf issues since 2003 that I would have had the routine down by now. But it is always a different surprise every year. First game against GLUM on Thursday I played the whole game on offense and had a good game. But on the very last point of the game we turn it over, they throw a junky/floaty throw to my guy in the endzone, and I go up to try and get the D. I jump off of my left leg and yet it is the right cramp that seizes on the way up. Good times.

The next game against Surly is a write off as we are working on stuff pretty early in that game. I am out the entire first half without really explaining why to the team (I ran subs all weekend for both O and D). In the second half we are going to work on some zone defense so I put myself in on wing. By this time I am hydrating like a mofo and peeing pretty much all the time. Not enough though as my calves start barking some more. I play a few points of D wing then shut it down.

In the final most important game against Boneyard I think I was in for one point of O, we turned it over, got it back, and I actually took myself out on O AFTER we got it back. It just wasn't going to happen today. Of course, this also made it VERY frustrating to watch as we almost got beaten by Boneyard, having to come back and win 17-15 after being down 15-14. This would have effectively eliminated us from contention. Little did I know what was to come...

So off to the beer garden after the game. Too crowded, too long to get a beer, I get and finish one beer, don't feel too hot, and basically pour out most of my second beer. On the way back we stop by the burrito place which has its usual long line of Ironsides players plus some others, although this was the fastest I ever received my food. Back to the hotel and proceeded to beach like a whale for the next few hours watching the Yankees lose to the Phillies in game 1 and drinking water and eating lots of salt. Table salt unfortunately but you go with what you have. I finally pee normally a few times right before an early bedtime, and then the deluge. I must have gotten up at LEAST 10 times during the night to pee. Never seen anything like it.

Calves felt good in the morning. Lots of stretching and running and continued drinking and salt, and I ended up being able to play the entire day. First game against Ball & Chain to 'guarantee' a quarterfinal berth. They hadn't won a game yet, and it showed. We were able to move to a convincing and not stressful victory, setting up our final pool play game against Trouble Past. As Jim mentioned in his blog, we were pretty psyched for this game. The D got us two upwind breaks in the first half and after Troubled scored the next upwinder each time, they came down in zone and I promptly threw away a hammer each time, one to each sideline, to give back the break. STILL pissed at myself. TP ended up going up big on us towards the end of the game. Since the O had been playing a lot (and getting scored on) I put the D in for a few O points. The D ended up going on a run from 13-8 or so to 14-12 before losing. Meanwhile, Jim had observed the potential disaster going on the next field over where GLUM was playing Boneyard. If GLUM won, or Boneyard won by anything OTHER than 2 points, we were guaranteed a spot in the quarterfinals. If GLUM lost by 2, there would be a 3-way tie for 3rd with all 3 teams at 0 in the plus minus, moving onto the next tiebreaker which no one knew. Sure enough, GLUM chokes it away and loses 15-13. We run over to the HQ and are quickly adding up scores tot find out that we are tied with GLUM at -2 and Boneyard is -9 or something. GLUM gets the head-to-head so we are 4th in the pool playing Beyondors in the quarters, which we are assuming will be the simulcast game. 20 minutes later, word comes down that we are actually 3rd in the pool ahead of GLUM and are playing Old Sag in the quarters, fortunately still in the showcase game. Jim had screwed up his addition.

Now THIS is what we had been waiting for the entire tournament. A good game. This is what happens when you have close to your entire roster for one tournament before Nationals. The first two days are effectively full-day practices. 5 games under our belt and into the quarterfinals against a familiar opponent. The offense finally hit its stride, turning it over 2 times the entire game, both in the second half, and only getting broken once. Unfortunately the D didn't come along for the ride and only got two breaks, making the game MUCH closer than it should have been with that kind of offensive officiency as we won 15-13 in a nail-biter. I had a very good game getting the disc a bunch and no turnovers, with a highlight reel throw at 13-12. I had the disc on the far left sideline outside the endzone being forced forehand. About 4 seconds into the stall I see Jim staring at me being forced away. He immediately cuts straight upfield and away for the hammer. There are no poachers so I immediately uncork a high 'blade' that hits him in stride with no chance for the defense to make it 14-12. Robin Stewart from Bodhi apparently was on the sideline with a teammate watching the play and he told his friend something along the lines of 'I couldn't imagine ever thinking of throwing that'. I'm sure that thought was mostly because of the situation, tight game at end of nationals quarters because he definitely throws stuff I would NEVER think of throwing. Regardless, caught, SAG scores again, 14-13, and then we close out the game 15-13. On to the (unexpected at the beginning of the tournament) semis against Surly.

For probably the last 12 years going into Nationals I have pretty much always remarked to Jim that I thought DoG had the tougher pool. It started to get amusing after a while, but at least for 2007 and 2009 I know I'm right. In 2007 all 4 teams from our pool made the semifinals and this year 3 out of 4 made the semis and 2 made the finals. We were looking forward to a different game with Surly. The first game had not been close as we were still getting our sea legs under us. And we had a burst of confidence coming of our quarterfinal win and a whole night to revel in it. I had admonished the team to be at the fields MUCH earlier than last years 10AM debacle against Mileage, and while better, the team STILL showed up later than they did for POOL play games the first two days that were an hour earlier. WTF!?!?!? Oh well. DoG had started on D almost all of the pool play games (by design) but I lost the flip for both shirts AND pull, so we received going downwind to start. Two quick breaks later we are down by two. Those were the last breaks that the O gave up until the very last point of the game. This was another difficult game to watch as the D was getting numerous turnovers/opportunities to get these breaks back but didn't finally convert one until late in the second half. Surly was now going to have to work it upwind. Our sideline had been psyched and into the game the whole time but now ramped it up a notch. Unfortunately Surly was able to work it upwind for the score to make it 14-12 (or 13-11). Now the O going upwind, and we finally turn it over for the first time since early in the first half. Surly scores to end our Cinderella run.

After doing the requisite handshake thing we went over to watch the Troubled Past/Beyondors game to learn to our shock that Troubled was up 11-9. Despite Beyondors best efforts, Troubled Past held on to get the other finals bid, making the originally heralded DoG/Beyondors quarterfinal now the betty bowl to get the 3rd worlds bid. By this time, both teams were sucking fumes. Beyondors had had a bunch of people drop because of the heat. We were mostly at full strength but exhausted. The game was close throughout although Beyondors took a slight lead early and maintained that lead for most of the game before finally running it out to get the 'bronze' medal (which they don't have at natties). You could stick a fork in me by the end of this game. Talk about a long weekend in the blistering heat. And thus began the 'celebrating'.

First stop was to catch the end of Ironsides/Chain. It was 9-6 when I got there and Ironsides had their chances. I think they got the disc on D almost every time from there through the end of the game and yet were unable to convert enough chances to come back. It was very frustrating to watch. I still feel like there has to be a middle ground between the grip it and rip it school and the conservative school. Neither team played that game here. Then I watched much of the masters final in the blazing sun while quaffing warm cans of something or another. Surly also had their chances but just had too many turnovers to overcome their troubled past... And San Francisco men win a division for the first time in a long time for the 2nd straight year. Who knew?

Then off to catch the final sunset, swim in the water, have the blisters on the bottom of my feet get sand and salt in them and cause me great pain the rest of the night, watch some of my teammates play Koob on the beach (a little different with the sand), off to Siesta Key to the Daiquiri Deck, close the Deck, off to the beach to watch the moon and water and sit around the bonfire with some Canadians, then get back to the room in time to switch with the early morning crew that has just woken up to catch an early airport flight. Up at 9:30, clean up, then off to the Orlando Airport for a 2PM flight home. Missed the DoG alumni winning a national championship, ie., Rob Barrett and Josh Ziperstein.

We exceeded expectations, especially given how we got smoked by GLUM in the finals at Regionals and again couldn't put it together against them in the first game of nationals. We definitely grew as a team during the tournament though. I know OLD SAG was bummed they had to play us as the 3rd seed out of our pool. I don't think I have ever lost to those guys. For whatever reason, we always play well (enough) against them. Quarters 2 years ago was also an epic battle. And once we made the semis, we had our chances. Running O and D subs for an entire tournament is not the preferred job. I lose my voice by the end of the first day trying to get people to hear me call them in. I need a town cryer next to me to parrot my calls. I'll have to invest next year.

Oh, and more excitement after John Bar tackled Jimmy P. at the beach early Sunday morning. But Jim tells us all about it over at his blog entry. Hopefully he will be OK post surgery and able to get back out on the field.

Goin' back, goin' back, goin' back to na-tio-nals...

2009-10-12T16:26:00.002-04:00

VERY few people will get the reference, but that is an adaptation of one of the Princeton songs I learned as an undergraduate. It is actually Nassau Hall instead of nationals, but I digress...

Competed in my 22nd consecutive regional championship recently, all in the northeast region. I am 20 for 22 in advancing to nationals, I guess 23 for 26 if you include college, missing out in 1988 with Wild Veal from NYC and 1991 with Earth Atomizer (and senior year at Princeton), the little engine that couldn't that year...
This was an interesting season. Above & Beyond had folded after last years failure to make nationals for the first time in MANY years. GLUM was gearing up again, but we had zero tournament results to assess their game. Adam Zagoria was putting together a new NY team which was reputed to be a younger team than before, which is always a dangerous recipe in masters.
We had the crappy 6 team/2 bid tournament schedule, which pits the 1st seed against the 3rd seed then the 2nd seed in the first two games of the day. Considering the necessity of coming in top two to have the best chance of advancing, it is a brutal schedule. But according to Jim, it is done this way so that the 'critical' 4-5 game can come at the right time, somewhere towards the end of the first day. Whatever...

We were able to eliminate the 4th round bye because there were available fields so we had 4 straight on Saturday. I knew in advance that I was going to have my kids at the fields all day so I was relieved, after initially gloomy weather predictions for saturday that the weather was going to hold for the weekend. For those of use who were around LAST weekend in the cold and the rain, thank GOD regionals wasn't that weekend, both for the actual play and what I would have had to do regarding my children.

We started against the new A&B, titled Westchester Summer League All-Stars. They were a little slim and ended up not putting up a huge challenge, losing to us 15-9. That made me feel a little better for the overall chances to advance, but regionals has been weird in the northeast the last few years. We then geared up for a big game against GLUM, who we had been informed had rebuilt for the series, getting a lot of younger players, some old GOAT players including DJ (sp?). We were definitely up for this game. We got to 12-9 before the wheels fell off the offense. We ended up getting capped and receiving at 14-14 next point wins. Another turn by the O and DoG lost its first game at Regionals since 1995.

The rest of the day was not particularly stressful as we handled Mt. Crushmore and Hexember in reasonably straightfoward fashion 15-7/15-5. And based on our game with GLUM, pretty clear that they were going to beat the NY team setting up the rematch in the 1-2 game. My kids had been really good all day so we rushed from the fields and blah blah blah...

Next morning was going to be MUCH colder, and I had already woken them up veryearly just for this. So I punted most of the first game, had a leisurely breakfast and got to the fields around 9:15 and I'm not sure the other team had scored yet. This preparation may not have helped for the GLUM game, but so be it. We got ready for the final and ended up receiving to start the game. At this point the wind was gusting in all directions and pretty strongly. It definitely made for an interesting game. We got broken on the first point, had a chance to bring it to 6-5 and ended up down at the half 8-4, which for you scoring this at home is a whole bunch of breaks. Pretty much nothing we did appeared to work on offense AND defense. At half we decided to open up the rotation to save ourselves for the inevitable 2-3 game against NY. Apparently the previous 3 years the loser of the 1-2 game went on to lose to the winner of the 3-4 game and get eliminated from nationals. It didn't get any better in the second half as GLUM raced out to a 15-7 victory.

Not to go out of order or give away the end, but we'll have the rematch against GLUM first thing Thursday morning at natties. I would rather not have regionals rematches and figure it would have been pretty easy to rejigger to separate the two teams, but oh well.

Back to Regionals, NY had also beaten Mt. Crushmore handily, setting up the NY-Boston betty bowl. I hadn't been in a betty bowl since 1991 with Earth Atomizer against Graffiti. Nothing fun about a single elimination loser missses nationals. Now THIS game had the energy we were missing against GLUM. We jumped out to a 6-0 lead against NY and had it to go 7-0. Half was eventually 8-1 receiving the second half. Well, it is hard to keep up that kind of intensity with a score like that. While they didn't make it a game per se, we ended up winning 15-8 and it was a little closer than that at one point during the half.

So I remember having this exercise every year with Jim that when the pools were posted for nationals, I thought we had the tougher pool (at least back in the day of two pools, 12 or 14 teams). It didn't always end up true, but I think this year we have the tougher pool again, at least in terms of depth. Talking to O'Dowd, looks like a lot of teams have gotten younger and reloaded for the bid to Worlds. I will neither confirm nor deny whether we did also, but it is almost a pleasure going into the tournament with such a low seed. For once the other teams will have the bullseye and we can play with a chip on our shoulder. Looking forward to it.

Grand Master Nationals 2009

2009-08-29T12:11:00.006-04:00

I had to go back to the score reporter to refresh my memory on the details. That's what happens when you take this long a break to report on #8. I guess the bigger question is if winning masters nationals is a -1, then winning grand masters must reset me to zero. So, more details on my zeroth national championship (shout out to Isaac Asimove and the zeroth law...).

A whole bunch of people descended onto the plush fields of the Dicks Sporting Goods complex in Denver the weekend of July 11-12. I don't know if any other teams had problems getting in but I assume they must have. Most of us arrived Friday night and Denver was getting hammered with microbursts. After we circled for a bit they diverted us to Fort Collins when we started running low on gas. We hung out on the runway for awhile while we got refueled. We were running against the clock because the control tower at Fort Collins closed at 10PM. Jeff Brown told me to listen in on one of the radio channels that was plugged into the pilot's channel. At 9:53 the control tower chimes in, saying "can you guys be ready to take off in 5". The pilots answer yes and we get everyone seated VERY quickly, take off, 20 minutes later we are in Denver airport. I was staying at a buddies of mine Friday night 45 minutes outside of Denver in Longmont. We had been talking on cellphones trying to coordinate whether he should hang out waiting or whether I should go with the team. He ends up waiting for probably 2.5 hours (and napping) before I arrive and head to his place. The key here was that 1) our pool didn't have a first round game, and 2) we had a first round bye, making our first game at noon! Of course, we had 4 straight after that, but it was well worth it. After a leisurely morning checking out their barn, 2 horses, and having some awesome home-cooked eggs benedict, it was off to the fields. We get there around 11:15 and go set up. And it was a HOT one out there. At that point I had had the cast off my right hand for about 8 days and had done very little, including not throwing the frisbee a single time. During warmups I threw my first forehands and it HURT! I had already popped 4 ibus early morning and was planning to keep the ibuprofen bath all weekend, with lots of water of course. The backhand was largely unaffected although it was also pretty tentative.

We had heard from other people that morning that the 3rd seed in our pool was grossly underseeded and they confirmed it by crushing the 2nd seed, Old Glory (OLD SAG) 12-6. Old Glory was a team that definitely came in planning to play for the championship. Given this warning, we actually started out pretty effectively against them (Yomo Fog Oho). However, it was a VERY chippy game as neither team was willing to give up anything, knowing that this was quite likely for the pool championship (and theoretically easier path in the morning). We largely traded throughout the first half and into the second before finally getting a few breaks at the end to pull away 13-7. The game was much closer than the score indicated. Yomo was going to be a tough out.

The next two games were against Thirst'N'Howl and Austin Antique Road Show Players. Nothing remarkable about these games. 13-6 and 13-7. During the 2nd game my calves started to seize up with the heat and lack of water. I took the second half and the 3rd game off and got a few massages and stretched the *&#$)@(*#U$*(I out of them to try and prep for the last round against Philly. Fortunately for the last round of the day the clouds had come in and it cooled off significantly. I also switched from the defense to the offense, figuring that it would be easier on my calves when I was the one choosing when to sprint as opposed to having to react to an offensive player. It worked out well as I was able to play through the entire game. We had made the calculations to figure out how many points we had to score to 1) advance, and then 2) win the pool, but as always you don't want to lose the final game going into elimination. This was yet another tough game against these guys (they are never easy) and we didn't pull away until the end yet again, winning 12-9 to send Old Glory to the consolation bracket.

Tonight I was going to be spending on the floor at the hotel. I opened up shop with Zaz and Simon, setting up my therma-rest in the corner of their room. After the shower, headed down to the banquet hall to check out the party. Found enough eats for dinner and some free beer. It was a pretty mellow crowd unfortunately so packed it in around 11:30 after catching up with people I hadn't seen yet. Nothing to write home about.

Next morning Simon and I go on a quest for breakfast (and Zaz's sugared treats). Then off to the fields for a 10:15 quarterfinal against the Ozark Hillbillies from Arkansas, who had smashed their #18 seed to go 3-1 and qualify for the semifinals including a 10-9 thriller against Boneyard's Boneyard for the last round of the day to advance. Unfortunately I think we probably were looking past this game a little bit, but that didn't last long. We could not stop these guys as they scored probably 9 of their first 10 points on hucks, most of them to the bearded dude. And they only turned it over once or twice during that run while we gave them numerous opportunities to score against our offense but nobody broke. We finally broke through the last point of the first half to break them upwind. We broke again on the last point of the game to win 12-9, never having gone upwind receiving the pull. It took the bearded guy actually dropping a huck goal for us to score. I stayed on the offensive squad for the first two games of the day although the hitch was usually Marshall Goff as his hand was doing much better than mine...

Meanwhile in the other bracket the second team from our pool, Yomo, had smashed Confluence, the second seed over all, 13-7. We had expected Confluence and Surly to battle it out in the semis (and hopefully face us in the finals) so it was surprising to see them go down so hard. Surly had an easy quarter winning 12-6 to set up the semi against Yomo. We had Big Sky, 10-9 winners over Southern Comfort. This game was a repeat of the quarterfinals as the game was ridiculously close for the entire game until we pulled away at the end again. The same thing happened as Big Sky scored at will on deep shots.

After our game was over I quickly ran two fields over to check out the other semi. I saw 13-5 and asked who was winning expecting to hear Surly. Imagine my shock when they said Yomo was winning. And Yomo scored the last two points on defense to crush Surly 15-5 and set up a rematch for the championship.

This game started as a replay of our first round game. Intense, a little chippy, and with a little back and forth. It was moderately windy although both teams were playing man for the first half. Can't remember who took half but it was a one point half and then I think we tied it coming out of half 8-8. They scored on offense to make it 9-8 and then the wheels fell off. They scored the next two points on d to take an 11-8 lead, AND DoG now going upwind. At this point the game was not over but I was definitely feeling a little bit like going through the motions. We scored on offense to make it 11-9. I stayed for the next point of D as middle middle and we threw on the (dreaded) 2-3-2. They worked it around for a LOT of passes before turning it over in their half of field. A few passes later we had made it 11-10. Naturally, thinking that was the best idea since sliced bread we put on the zone again but this time they shredded it easily downwind and scored to make it 12-10. Offense comes on and scores to make it 12-11. We play man this time, get a turnover and we score upwind to make it 12-12. Exciting stuff! Throw on the dreaded zone again, and in fewer passes they actually turn it over on a dump going towards their endzone. Quick few passes and we are up 13-12. Who knew? They score downwind to make it 13-13 and it is now universe point (yes, the only REAL time universe point is applicable, finals of national championship) and we are going downwind. They pull, we slowly move it down the forehand sideline and then Coop sees Simon cutting completely across the endzone and throws a longish forehand to the forehand corner. Simon, one of the fastest guys on our team, and his defender are stride for stride before Simon catches it right on the sideline in the goal and then proceeds to take out the observer, the UPA sign, and a photographer (or some combination thereof) for the game. 14-13 DoG! #8 (or #0)! My personal highlight in this game was probably that I stayed in the game from 11-8 through the bitter end, playing the final 8 points on offense and defense.

This whole time we were trying to make our 7:15 flights out of Denver. But naturally the Hawaiian women's team had to boat race us. Unfortunately Jeff Brown was on our team and was a heavy weight in the middle of the race. I think the video of the race is on Youtube which I leave to the reader as an exercise to find. If you find it you will note that Simon and I each take roughly 3 second while Jeff takes roughly 9 seconds for a cup. Ugh! I tried valiantly to make up the time as the anchor but missed by about a half second. Meh.

Oh yeah, and while we were in the security line, with Simon getting us into the supposedly shorter first class security line, Damon was going through his bag and pulled out a can of beer which obviously wasn't going to make it through the line. We sort of looked around and then I did a biter, shotgunned it, and casually tossed it into the garbage...

This was an interesting tournament victory and team. While we had components of old and new DoG on it (weird to think of masters players from DoG that didn't play with DoG back in the day as new DoG), we also had dug deep into Boston history to fill out the roster just to get it up to 20. A lot of the older DoGs (Mooney, Greff, John Bar, Lenny, et al) were unable or unwilling to attend, so we ended up with a number of people that hadn't even played real tournaments in the last 5 years, much less never played with DoG, including Richie Robinson, Mike Jaff, Vinnie Shelton, Bennett Goldberg. And Rob Barrett who had emailed us a few months earlier to express interest as he was turning 40, never responded to any further emails or cell phone messages ever again. We finally got Arnold Sanchez his long awaited National Championship, although I expect not in his preferred division.

As for the GM division? I really can't say. It was nice to win the first one and add to the DoG coffers. At 11-8, if we had lost, I would have said nice try and then probably poo pooed the division. However, when we scored on double game point, it still felt awesome. When the team brought it in I shared with them that a national title is still a national title regardless of the division, and it did still feel awesome! Whether this division deserves a spot in the UPA pantheon I can't comment on. Although I expect that once some team starts racking 4 or 5 national championships in this division and moves people up the overall title list..., I expect that I will complain :) Regardless, it was very well run, great site (since the rains held off).

and the shin ain't listening...

2009-08-27T19:40:00.005-04:00

Well let's see. Last time I came off a major injury (broken throwing hand), I won a national championship. Granted, it was Grand Master nationals but the UPA is counting it so I have to also. I need to get to that in another post. However, more immediately, now I am hoping that precedent holds true for the fall season.

I was staying with my kids at my parents in Rye for 2 weeks and I decided to get some ultimate exercise in. I hooked up to play some pickup in Pelham last Sunday which ended up being more running around than quality ultimate, but still good conditioning. I then talked my way into a scrimmage with the new NY masters team run by Adam Zagoria that was going to play Tuesday night at a field in Riverside off the West Side Highway. Of course, Arnold Sanchez warned me after the fact that he always skipped those games because of the field.

I found out late that afternoon that cleats weren't allowed, only turf shoes. I don't even own any, but I brought both cleats and sneakers just in case. I drive to New Rochelle to Sanj Khanna's house, drop off my car and he drives us in. Get to the field, other people look at my cleats and say no, so I put on the sneakers and start warming up. A little running, a little throwing, and then off to stretch my calves. I'm doing the right soleus on the end of a bleacher wearing my sneakers. Normally I'm wearing cleats and the cleats grab onto the edge of the seat. I'm a little more leery with the sneakers for slipping off so I'm not pushing quite as hard. As I'm finishing up I go for one final push and the sneaker slips off and I drive my shin with my full body weight behind it into the bleacher. Unfortunately it catches the corner instead of the side and rakes my shin. I quickly pull up the leg and there is a 4 inch gouge along the shin bone immediately dripping gobs of blood. And I can see the bone along the gash (look at your shin and see how frickin' close it is to the skin...). Canada Rob is right next to me and immediately says 'Uh, I have to walk away'. I grab the two flaps of skin and quickly press them together to try and stanch the flow. Sanj hands me a wad of napkins that I press against it, then we tape it down tightly with athletic tape around the leg. We hobble to the car (a LONG walk) and then decide to drive back to a New Rochelle hospital instead of taking our chances at a long wait in NYC. Fortunately he knows the backroads and we get to Sound Shore Medical Center in less than 30 minutes at the height of rush hour. We get there at 7:10, in a room at 7:30, and out at 8:20. The doctor spent at least 45 minutes with the wound, cleaning it out, shooting local anesthetic all around the wound, stitching up the inside and the outside. Sort of cool watching him do the outside as he had the stitches pull the skin together.

So, leg elevated for the next 4 days, stitches out in 10 (can't get it wet in the meantime), running in 2 weeks, play ultimate in 4, which would get me back basically the weekend of Sectionals. He said the skin there heals REALLY slowly. If it still looks ugly at Sectionals I'll play with a shin guard. Funny, these are the injuries I would have expected to incur when I was a much younger player. Meh...

Talk to the hand...

2009-06-28T22:52:00.003-04:00

Wednesday July 1st was a special day. It was on that day that I finally got this (*&)(@#*$(*@# cast off my right forearm/wrist/hand. That was a large contributor to the lack of action on this blog for the last 2 months, especially during the actual frisbee season.

Back on Friday, May 29th, I was up in Revere MA right off the main drag playing in the USS showcase series in a coed game. I believe we were in the process of getting our butts kicked in the first half when I caught the disk in the near left side of the field. I had a guy covering me who had been sprinting all over the field all night, clearly trying to make an impression on someone (apparently he was trying out for Ironsides). I was being forced forehand, and Jeff Graham was breaking deep. Naturally instead of trying to force a long flick I promptly broke his mark for the long backhand and he tried to kick block me. To make a long story short, HUGE windup, hand to cleat, instant agony/numbness/swelling, and an injury sub. And a perfect long backhand that Jeff didn't come down with. Try and wring out my hand for the rest of the half, the deficit gets worse, and I think I finally go back in around 14-4 on offense. I catch a pass (awkwardly pancaked, naturally) and turn and throw a little break mark high backhand for a goal. Yeah, it hurts. We go on a run to make it semi-respectable at 14-7 before losing. Everyone heads off to the People's Republik in Cambridge for a few brew-ha-has after the game so I join them, get a bag of ice, and the swelling finally goes down and I'm feeling almost human (but still worried). When I get home, page my doctor to find out if they have office hours anywhere on Saturday. Find a walk-in clinic, show up at 9, x-rayed half hour later, guy calls me in and says "Well, I don't think we have to wait for the radiologist". The 4th (1st? The one serving the index finger) metacarpal was completely broken all the way through. Slightly offset, and the ortho guy that finally looked at it didn't think it would require surgery, but that I should be back in a week to get a new cast and more x-rays to make sure. They gave me a nice fiberglass cast, and I was off with my first broken bone since a broken left wrist at UPA nationals in DC in 1990 (I was the guy taken off in an ambulance for the old people that might remember). 4th broken bone overall, including 2 left fingers. All courtesy of frisbee.

As you can see from the cast, fortunately I had some use of my right fingers which is key given my position in the software industry. While awkward and somewhat slower, I was able to continue typing with two hands. There were other interesting experiences including learning to do my business lefty. While I was initially worried, it ended up not being too difficult. But a whole lot of new neural pathways were burned over the last 5 weeks. The week after this happened was Masters Easterns in Devens. I was going to miss Saturday as I had a wedding down on the Cape in Falmouth. We were going to drive back that night and I was planning to head out to the fields on Sunday to check out some of our tryouts. I get out to the fields Sunday morning and we have all of 12 people including me. Ugh. I was planning to maybe play one point in each game just so I could say I 'won' the tournament. I ended up playing almost every other point, although I only ever went in on defense. Remembering back in the mid-'80s when Bobby Rydell had a broken right hand at the Ultimate Affair and he played holding a tennis ball in his right hand to force him to use his left, I ended up carrying around a pair of socks in my right hand to make sure I didn't instinctively try to use it for something. I was successful in that respect. On the day, I ended up with one D on a swing pass (lefty) 3 goals caught, and one pass thrown. The offense was stalling and had this opportunity to make a 30 yard upfield catch. Finally I cut, was thrown too, caught the disc then turned around to throw a lefty backhand to Coop. It was offline but he was able to adjust. I was kicking myself afterwards because I had thrown it lefty but with the righty pivot so it had been incredibly awkward.

We only ended up playing two games, semis against Scotch from Nova Scotia. Right before the pull, the captain came over and asked us to take the game seriously because that was the only way they were going to learn and get better. Unfortunately that resulted in a bagel, 15-0, but fun was had by all nonetheless. In the post-game huddle, they chose me to drink some nasty formulation they had brought. Stupid cast...

This brought up the finals against Old Glory, portions of OLD SAG from Philly, half of which was practicing for the Grand Master national championships in a month. DoG had beaten them during pool play 15-9 or 11 in a game that hadn't been very close. It was much closer this time around as the score remained largely tied through the first half. DoG finally pulled away in the second half and won by the same score as the pool play game, but it definitely didn't feel that comfortable. Another masters tournament victory in the books. Jim Parinella was busy winning the Cazenovia tournament in upstate NY with Ironsides at the time, so there wasn't any sort of +1 going on.

The following week I went in for a new cast and x-rays, and the bone was still lining up well so no surgery was going to required. At this time I informed my doctor about the GM nationals starting exactly six weeks after I broke my hand. We talked about when we might take the cast off, the fact that the hand would not be healed yet so would be more vulnerable to rebreaking. I was also going to be heading to France for a family wedding the weekend of July 4th and I wanted to get the cast off before then, so we scheduled the removal for Wednesday July 1st, the day before I left for France. Meanwhile I got a fancy new black cast after eschewing the pink and glow-in-the-dark ones.

Fast forward 3 weeks to the Boston Invite. I haven't even picked up a frisbee in the interim and I'm still sporting the cast. We have a small army for this tournament as it is the final tournament of the spring. My hand is feeling a little better although I wasn't initially planning on playing that much, and again only defense. I even had made up a spreadsheet to try and keep track of subs since we would have so many, having gone through permutations various lineups, man, zone, etc. That lasted a game and a half. Spreadsheets suck. I guess that is what the assistants are for. We were seeded 12th overall, 2nd in an elite pool behind Wiretap and ahead of Forge and Colt .45, who we had beaten at WMO. First game of the morning at 9AM against Colt, and this is the big one. We held seed winning 15-10. They never really threatened. It will be interesting to see where Korber goes now that he was cut from Ironsides. Meanwhile in the other game Forge had upset Wiretap to take #1 seed. Our next game was against Forge. We went up 4-2 only to completely unravel while they scored something like 5 straight. They ended up winning 15-11 but this definitely felt like a winnable game. Final round of the day against Wiretap to try and crossover against the Elite pool. If we lose, we have to play down. The game is similar to Forge. We go up early and then lose 15-11 in yet another seemingly winnable game. Of course, I have the benefit of hindsight in all of this to know that we could definitely have won either of those games (although probably not both). This sets up a crossover with Chuckwagon from the Elite II pool. We go up big, maybe 5-0 before the games are all stopped on account of lightning. After waiting around for a half hour, Chuckwagon says that they want to go do a barbecue. We forcibly extract an admission of a forfeit so that we don't have to be back first thing in the morning, then it is off to Portsmouth NH for the evening.

Back in the morning for a 9:30 game with a schedule shift. To show the parity, 3 of the four elite crossovers had been won at double game point with two of the Elite teams moving up (including Forge). Pike had lost their crossover by one to Sons of Liberty. Our first game was against Pike who are 5 years from their semifinal appearance at nationals (or so). For us, this was the game of the spring season. This was replete with huge plays, defensive runs, sideline involvement, you name it. We gave Pike an early lead only to come back and take half 8-5 or 8-6 with a big defensive run. We had another defensive run in the second half and then held on to eke out the victory 15-13. While Pike is definitely not the team they were, this was a HUGE statement victory for us, letting us know that we could still play with the reasonably big boys (for at least one game). At least for this tournament I didn't have to throw lefty, although I only had at most a 10 yard backhand throw. I was maybe 4-5, with my sole turnover a low-release backhand, which sounds even more idiotic now considering that I had no oomph in my righty backhand with the cast on. I remember I tried one forehand during warmups and it immediately hooked left and almost hit someone.

So DoG closed out a reasonably successful spring, although if we had lost that Pike game I think the complexion would have been much different. I got the cast off the Wednesday after the Boston invite, left for France, came back, left for Denver for GM nationals with DoG, but that is another story...

Oh yeah, and I guess I'm against kick blocks now. If I remember correctly they don't allow them in Europe? Or maybe that was only at Paganello, where I accidentally tried one once, and after the faceful of sand that came up, I understand the restriction.

White Mountain Open 2009 - something something something breach

2009-05-20T14:26:00.005-04:00

Wow, I have to go back in time to find out how many times I have blogged about the White Mountain Open. Looks like it was fewer times than I expected. We have 2005, 2007 and 2008. I'm assuming that DoG iced 2006 because of concerns about the competitive level and maybe it was the same weekend as the NJ invite.

Ironside was originally going to split up into 4 teams and Bodhi was already sending 2 teams, so it was promising to be one of the more deeper and more competitive WMO's since probably the beginning. However, Ironsides eventually backed out, leaving Bodhi a and b as the two top seeds with Phoenix 3, Colt .45 4 and DoG (masters) 5, in 4 pools so we were matched up with Colt .45. For yet another year we were gifted a first round bye (can I tell you how much I love those for these commuting tourneys). This enabled me to set my alarm for 7AM Sat morning, nice leisurely breakfast, made myself a nice lunch and then hit the road at 8AM, stopped by the ex's to drop off the kids karate clothes and say hi to the kids, then off to Dartmouth and got there around 10:15.

This was going to be a slightly different WMO, as 1) we were going to have a rather large team, and 2) much of that team was composed of players that had never played with DoG before. Apparently A&B has imploded or decided to disband so all of a sudden there are a lot of players available to look at. This prompted an internal review that resulted in me concluding pretty much the same thing, that if I failed to qualify for nationals it would be VERY hard to get it up for the following year so I completely understand how it may have happened. Regardless, we had about 10 old DoG and 7 newbies, with a number of people doing one day only visits so we averaged around 15 players a day, a veritable army for this early season tournament.

Our first game was against Magma from Montreal. Unfortunately they were unable to provide much of a test as we soundly beat them 13-4. We had a pretty long break between games before playing Space Jam-X from I have no idea. This was a VERY young team, and they played a bit like it. Another blowout and then we had Colt .45 for the pool. They were missing Korber who is trying out for Ironsides but Match was there running the show. He and I matched up quite a bit during the game and I know he was somewhat frustrated at a number of long throws that went off his fingertips (no, not because I d'ed them per se, but I was right there on a lot of them). I was able to rally the troops before the game to get them to focus on this being a big game, everyone involved, no sitting during points, help on the sidelines, and it made a difference as we pulled away to a 13-10 victory. This set up a crossover game against Bodhi-B who had blown through all of their competition so far, with the top scoring team getting 5 points against them. Thus, our goal was set...

We traded to start before giving 2 quick turns to make it 3-1 Bodhi. We traded for most of the rest of the half, with both teams getting breaks to make it 7-4. We eventually got to 9-7 before they took the last 4 to make it 13-7. I have always been of the opinion in games like this where you are the underdog that it is all about the offense. The other team will give you opportunities you just have to take advantage. If you can minimize your mistakes on offense, you are in the game. Unfortunately, this isn't the DoG teams of old that really knows how to cherish the disc. But that is why we are here at these early season tournaments.

However, winning the pool did give us the benefit of yet another first round bye on Sunday. After some carousing in Hanover with Dennis and Simon, it was off to bed for a full night's sleep. 'Buffet' breakfast at the Super 8, and then at the fields 30 minutes before round 1 against Savage Strike in the pre-quarters. Again, they were unable to mount a charge against us, falling lots to very little. This doomed us going into the next game. I remember asking Taylor Richey on the sideline as we were getting ready to play Brooklyn whether we should be worried. He replied that if we played our game, no. Unfortunately, we didn't. We started on D, they scored. The O proceeded to give up the next 2 for a 3-0 lead. Timeout called, quick troop rally. We tied it up at 5-5, then gave up half 7-5. Receiving to start the second half, yet another break for them. We made one more push in the second half but then frittered it away and they ended up pulling away and winning 13-8. That was a huge downer of a game, especially (when after checking the score reporter) they got crushed by Bodhi-A 13-2. We would have put up a FAR better fight against that Bodhi squad. Yeesh!

So begins another season of official team ultimate. After the most preseason tournaments I have ever attended, specifically Kaimana and Paganello, it is a little weird to be back in the masters division, although this wasn't a masters tournament. The next stop is Masters Easterns the weekend of June 6-7 in Fort Devens. The tryout process will continue as we get to hopefully find some hungry masters players out there that want to play some good ultimate. Until then...

Paganello - Day 2, 3, 4 (and 5)

2009-04-17T14:35:00.014-04:00

As could be expected in retrospect, I was unable to do a daily reenactment of my first Paganello. It all started to run together towards the end. Suffice it to say, losing in the finals was frustrating although considering what we had done that entire weekend, not entirely deserved.

On Friday we won our original pool, never really being challenged past 5-5 of any game. This got us into a 6-team power pool, Pool P. Our last game the previous night had been the last round at 7PM and it was COLD!. Almost needed to play in socks. We gritted through it, then went out even bigger than the previous night. Unfortunately the first round was at 10AM this morning instead of after 12. Everyone shuffled down to make the morning buffet before getting out to the fields no more than 15-20 minutes before gametime. Our first game was against Hattiwatit a finnish team who had lost at double game point to Friselis from France the day before. This game started out VERY close as we traded to 5-5 before we pulled away to a far more comfortable 13-7 victory. After a lunch break including a trip back to the hotel to try and nap, we had a second game at 2ish against Bigez, I think from Germany. This game was not close at all, and I'm not sure why. We won 14-3 and we were up maybe 7 or 8 to 1. This set up a shorter break before our 5PM game against UTI in the stadium field. This was the first tournament where the stadium field was SO ridiculously different in size from every other field. The main field was almost twice as large in both length and width as the non stadium fields. And we were playing a young, large, and hungry team which didn't help things. The game was neck and neck the whole way with us finally pulling at 10-10 double game point. After some tremendous defensive pressure, they were trapped on the far sideline and threw a bladey forehand dump towards our goalline for a turnover. We only had about 12 yards to go and fortunately it was a single pass to Big Jim who caught it and contorted to land one foot in the goal. Victory! Personal highlights were uncorking a 60 yard trailing long backhand that Jim caught for a goal, and... still no turnovers on the weekend.

Clearly it was time to celebrate after winning our big game of the pool. And thus we did. Tonight was team dinner night and after searching far and wide for a restaurant that would take us (more about the previous night's search later), we found one and waited for about 15 minutes to get seated. Once seated, we ordered some pizzas to tide us over, white and red wine carafes, and started the smack talking. Large orders of food later, and it was time to pay the bill. While I had heard about this before, this was the first time I had seen it in action. We played credit card roulette. Fortunately, it was voluntary. Whoever wanted to pay what they thought they owed was able to do so. If you didn't want to, you had to put your credit card into the pot. Once everyone had chosen, all the cards were put into a basket and one of the women was selected to make the card choices. There were 6 cards out of maybe 14 people. The first card selected was for $. Fortunately for him, he was eliminated. The main philosophy was once you were down to two cards left, the 2nd to last card would pocket all the cash, while the final card left would pay the ENTIRE bill. It so happened that it came down to Jim and JZ. It was Jim's first time in the pool. Lo and behold, after HUGE buildup, the card was picked, and Jim lost while JZ walked away with 145 euros. The bill ended up being 268 euros for roughly a $500 swing. Ouch!

Tonight was the first tourney party not in the main tent but in a disco even nearer to our hotel (oy!). Jim and I headed over at 10:15 and we were the ONLY people at the disco so we headed back to the Barge to hang out with the team. Went back around midnight and all of a sudden, the 7 or so rooms were so packed you could barely move. I guess this is it means to be a Euroxxx (starting to party VERY late).

Sunday morning our first game is at 9:15. Again we stumble out of the hotel, a quick buffet breakfast and coffee wolfed down before getting to the field 10 minutes before game time. Now it is the final power pool play game against a French team, the Friselis. And for the 3rd straight day we were missing at least one teammate for the first game, slightly more reasonable with the early start time. Even though this game didn't matter, we didn't want to be down going into the quarters. VERY tight all game before we pull away to win by something close. Another 3 hour gap between games so we all head back to the hotel... again for a nap. Again I screw up by having had coffee for breakfast so I can't nap but we all head back to the hotel regardless. (I finally learned this by Monday...). We make it out to our 2PM quarterfinal against Iznogoud, another French team. By this team, we are finally fresh and we take it to them. Not close. They have the semifinals staggered on the huge stadium field, first the 2 women's games, then the 2 men's game, and we are the second men's game, so yet again back to the hotel. Although not for long, as I finally head back to catch most of the first men's semi between UTI and Stinks from Sweden. VERY exciting game with huge hucks from both teams. Very spectator friendly. UTI finally pulls away for a 2-3 point victory, but Stinks had a late lead (prophetic as we shall see). This brings up our semifinal against Sexxxpensive, an international all-star team. They had taken down the defending champions Scandal (from Chicago) in the quarterfinals in a not so close game.

This game was nothing like the first semifinal. Neither team played particularly well, it was just that we played not particularly well better than they did. The score was not very close, and after the game, I was interviewed by SkyTV (or something like that, definitely not Blockstack), and pretty much my party line was that 1) our game was definitely not as pretty/exciting as the previous semi, and 2) we just played less badly than the other team. In our post-game huddle we talked about the finals the following day. The game wasn't going to be until 4PM. At one point Hollywood paused and I figured he was going to talk about taking it easy, but no, we concluded we should go with what brung us (to that point). Uh, mistake. Back to the rooms to shower up, cocktails, Barge, party, etc., etc. Another 4AM night.

The biggest problem with the next day, other than not having a game PRIOR to the finals to help clear our heads, was, well, that. Another breakfast followed by back up to the room for a nap. Made it out to the fields around 12:30 to catch some of the women's final, then the co-ed final. At maybe 2PM, we were astounded to see behind the stands UTI warming up pretty heavily, sprinting back and forth, running, etc. After the coed game was over there was a juniors game of 13 and under composed of two local teams from Rimini. Then there was some sort of roman fighting reenactment on the field. During the last 20 minutes before the game, we were all lolling on one goalline, sitting and lying down on the sand. On the other end, UTI was doing drills, throwing running. When I watched the blockstack.tv coverage of the finals, they riffed on us tremendously, talking about how UTI's warmup was very retro and that we had discovered the latest type of warmup. I can't begin to do it justice but they worked us for like 3 minutes of coverage.

FINALLY the game started around 4:20. We started on D and got 2 quick turnovers. Unfortunately we gave them both back, including burying the second one into the sand right in front of one our players in the endzone. UTI scored, we scored, and we end up trading for awhile until we finally get broken when Cash throws a pass behind me as we are fast breaking up the field (picture below). I lay out and get a hand on it but am unable to hold it. They score to take a 2 point lead and we get it back before they take half 7-6. We score coming out of half and then get the big break to go up 8-7. We get yet another turnover before we give it back and they tie it at 8's. THEN the wheels come off. UTI proceeds to score the next 5 points to take the game 13-8. I don't think we got the disc back once. Hard to believe we had the disc to go up 9-7 before losing 13-8. While I had no expectations going into the tournament, once you are in the finals, it sucks to lose. As an observer mentioned, 'if you win paga, but don't bring it, it doesn't count for shit'. Well, hopefully Los Tigres can do slightly better next year and bring it on home.

So, post game huddle, blah blah blah, and then back to the hotel to shower up and go to the closing ceremonies. Those were kind of cool as they actually called up EVERY team at the tournament. We got their maybe 20 minutes before they called us up as they called the top 3 in each division at the end. For our efforts we received a free tourney disc so it was a good thing I didn't buy one... And then the team split up. 8 of the 12 had a morning flight into Milan so they grabbed an 8:30 train after a final stop at the barge. This left Cash, JZ, Jim and I to amuse ourselves. We went to a nice dinner at the 900 (or something like that), and then alternated between the final tournament party and the Barge. Jim and I had a 6AM train to Bologna to catch a 10AM flight home. We kept checking our watches, and finally at 4AM we gave up. The party was still going strong so we just stayed at the Barge until the end. We left around 5AM and the party was still going strong. Back to the hotel, pick up the bags, get a cab to the train, and then pass out. Longest travel day ever and then we finally got back to Boston at around 3PM, roughly 15 hours later. Ugh. So, it was my first Paganello, and hopefully not my last, although I am starting pretty late...

And now the photo montage.

The architect of our discontent

Tournament site from my balcony - Stadium far left, party central far right, and then the Barge smack dab in the middle (pink bottom, white top).

Still annoyed I didn't catch this.

I poached off on this long pass and swung at it and caught a faceful of sand. I couldn't believe I missed it.

What was amazing is that I didn't touch the sand until the last game of the day Saturday and then it was all over. Probably layed out 6 or 7 times the rest of the tournament. In the one below which was maybe to make it 12-8, the guy caught the hammer and then accidentally kicked sand in my face/eye, so bad that I had to take out my contacts and toss'em walking off the field.

The happy faces.

Packed stands! Had to be at least 1000 people watching.

A familiar sight...

Paganello - Day 1

2009-04-10T14:32:00.003-04:00

Day 1 of actual play. So this is my first time playing 'high-level' beach ultimate. Oh, btw we ended up with a starting 5 on the regurgitation team and they started the last game against the Italians. While they were game, we won like 17-1.

So, first round at 12:15 (thank god). We have 10 out of 11 for the first game. It was against Tailspin, a team from Sweden. Beach ultimate is a very different game from ultimate. It is really hard to make up space on someone, so the offense runs very differently. It's more of a German offense throwing to space. We were turnover free in the first half but fell apart in the second. JZ had a bunch of firsts in that game. First turnover, later first point block. After his 3rd turnover, someone else finally joined him on the turnover list. Jimmy P 'had some bad pancakes' and joined us for game 2 against UFO from Holland. However, Woody didn't wake up from his nap until maybe 5 minutes left in the game, so we had only 10 again. They went up 4-3 on us before we got our act in gear and went up 10-5. Served out for the win as the second 'half' got ugly again (there are no halves, you just keep playing until time, then +2 cap). Even longer break now, 3 rounds between this game and the next one. Watched the freestyle competition for awhile. Then Hollywood, Jim and I went to a cafe for an hour+ to get out of the wind and drink some coffee. Finally, game 3 against an Italian team that scored one point on us. Shockingly I ended up with no turnovers on the day. Mike Z said he didn't either but I don't believe him...

And now another Calva and seven...

Paganello - Day 0

2009-04-09T11:51:00.003-04:00

Safely arrived in Rimini, I am blogging on my balcony of the Hotel Bikini looking down at the beach and the frisbee central tents. It is somewhat windy, sunny, and pretty chilly, maybe reaching 60, but that is a reach.

Jim and I met at Logan airport for our 5:30 flight yesterday to CDG (Paris). 6.5 hours, an hour of heavy turbulence, 1.5 ambien, on and off sleep later, we arrived in Paris at 6AM. After we landed, we discovered that Jessica from Lady Godiva was also on our flight along with Sasha from North Carolina who had flown through Boston (talk about a long day). A REALLY long walk to terminal 2D to our next plane and we arrived with no problem in Bologna at 9AM. Jim, Sasha and I hadn't checked bags so we quickwalked to the bus to center town, caught it just as it was leaving and made the 10AM train to Rimini which arrived around 11:30AM. It seemed like we were the first people here. We walked everywhere and it was a total ghost town. After having lunch at an Indian restaurant (had to compare their chicken korma to Punjab in Arlington, very different but also good), we separated and Jim and I relaxed back at the hotel. After hearing that trains might be sold out going back to Bologna Tuesday, we walked to the train station to buy tickets for the 6AM train (it is going to be a LONG day) and then headed out to the beach for the Juniors clinic where we did drills with local Italian youth interested in ultimate. Back to the hotel, showered, and now ready to party. Part of the team requirement was for each person to pick up a bottle of alcohol in duty free. Naturally, I got a bottle of Calvados, of which I'm sipping a very small glass right now. Separately, I started the latest Ender novel, Ender in Exile, and finished it on the train and lent it to Sasha who has the same return flights through Boston again. Off to the opening ceremonies.

Well, I wasn't able to post this last night because I lost the internet connection, so now I can add last night's details. We started at the hotel making various mixed drinks with the duty-free booze. 7-up ended up being a great mixer for Calvados. We went out to the beach around 7PM only to find out that the party/dinner/free wine wasn't happening until 9. To make a long story short, free wine at the expo, pasta dinner, The Barge (bar between the hotel and the party). 2 out of 11 people had problems with regurgitation (so far, we haven't checked in with the other two rooms), none of which was me. Good thing we don't have a game until 12:30PM...

The bucket list continues...

2009-04-03T09:27:00.004-04:00

After seeing my nom de plume mentioned on rsd about blogs, I realized that I had been just as guilty as everyone else out there, taking the winter off. So to fill the void, here we go.

When last we met, I was just returned from Hawaii participating in my first Kaimana Klassic. About a month prior I had received an invite to play with a US team at Paganello the second weekend in April. I had to defer because I had a monster mainframe conversion scheduled for the last weekend of March, and for people in the know, you know you have at least a couple of weeks to a month of fallout after something like that, so there was no way I was going to be able to run off to Italy a week later. And it had already been postponed a couple of times. We joked that deadlines get pushed all the time but I had zero faith because of the high level visibility and the fact that we had already delayed twice (although not because of us). Well, lo and behold we got pushed out to the end of April. I immediately checked airfares and they were sitting around $630 to Bologna, maybe $560 to Milan. The difference in train fares made it a wash flying into Bologna, and since I had been to Milan before, I went with Bologna. I checked in to confirm there was still space on the squad and booked my flight for Wed afternoon-Tue morning.

Imagine my horror when Jim pinged me a week later to say that flights were now ~$400 and he was contemplating going (primary horror on the ticket price, secondary horror on Jim coming...). I went back to my Orbitz reservation to see what it would cost to change the ticket, and they have a $250 change fee! It would have ended up costing me another $50. So imagine my surprise when I saw Orbitz price guarantee which said that if someone else buys your EXACT ticket for less, you will get the difference refunded to you. So after I saw that, I worked on Jim to go and he eventually got approval from the man of the house. I had to send him my exact itinerary because of the mix of airlines (and it showed up like 30th on Orbitz, so no one would have picked it by chance), paid him $20 for the extra $20 it cost, and 2 weeks later I got an email from Orbitz saying that I would be getting a check for $221.40 30 days after the completion of travel. Woohoo!

I was last in Italy maybe 13 years ago, passing through briefly and spending a day in Venice, a day in Milan, and a day in Portofino. I have missed all of the standard spectacular sights in Florence, Rome, Tuscany, and guess what, I'm going to miss them this time also. We get into Bologna Thursday morning, and I suspect we will jump right on the train to Rimini. After that it is tournament Fri-Mon, then EARLY train Tuesday morning and a 10AM flight home from Bologna. I expect that I will be a complete wreck Tuesday night, with 4 days/nights of ultimate and partying and jetlag under my belt.

Another interesting experience this season has been that I have been more aware of the 'cost' of being injured then ever in the past. As in, I never ever thought about it before, even when I was getting calf problems. It never changed how I played the game. Or that I ever thought about it while I was playing. With the Hawaii tourney and now Paganello, which one could consider once in a lifetime opportunities (especially at my age) AND tournaments with large upfront costs, getting injured before the tournament would SUCK. This winter/spring I have been playing a lot of goaltimate, and while I haven't consciously changed any of my play, I think about getting injured periodically. And I imagine even the thought of it is probably changing how I play, which of course makes it more likely that I WILL get injured because it is no longer instinctual. Ah well. Interestingly enough, I have one more round of Goalty this Sunday, and as I'm writing this, I'm thinking that I won't post it until Monday. I can't figure out which would be worse luck. Posting it or not posting it before playing (but writing it). Well, I'm posting it Sunday afternoon after just getting back from Goaltimate. I tweaked my hamstring at yoga and got a nice charley horse from Jeff Graham at Goalty, but I should be good for Paga.

The Paga team is called Los Ox, which I have NO idea what it stands for, and is composed of a bunch of Jam players, 5 Boston players from Ironsides and DoG, and $ from Bravo/Machine/Revolver, hell, wonder which team will be next for him. I'm looking forward to playing with a high octane team, hopefully one which has its act together more than the Southern Dandies did in Hawaii. I expect that it will because of the much smaller squad size.

I did a quick check of the major travel booking sites and it appears that Orbitz is the only one with a price guarantee like this. I have to admit, based on personal results, I may have to let Kayak guide me there going forward if Orbitz is one of the selections. I'm just sayin'...

We are staying at a pretty swanky place, the Hotel Bikini, which is apparently right near the fields/beach. They have wireless internet access, so now the debate is whether I bring my real laptop, or just use the stunt crappy laptop (without wireless) that I was going to use so that I could stuff it in my backpack and have two carry on bags and no checked baggage. Decisions, decisions.

Kaimana Klassic 22 - the tournament

2009-02-27T23:52:00.006-05:00

Boulder had been the most spectacular tournament site that I had ever been to, with the mountains lining one side of the field complex in west Boulder. There is a new sheriff in town. The site of the 22nd Kaimana Klassic (and I assume all the prior editions) was aMAzing.

And, of course, Doug Lilley is holding my feet to the fire. Fortunately, that was the backup camera... After a final morning in Kauai travelling up to the Na Pali coast again, this time hanging out at the beach in Hanauma bay watching paddle boarders, I went to the airport to catch my flight to Oahu. Ran into Steven Rouisse and his wife Tina McDowell who were taking the same flight and we were also going to be sharing a car for the weekend. Simple flight with VERY nice rainbows as we arrived in Oahu. Picked up the car, turned on the GPS and followed its directions to the Waimanolo Bay Polo Club and Beach park. Talk about a cool setup. We drove into the polo club first only to find out that registration wasn't starting for another 1/2 hour. So we decided to go to the beach park and set up the tents. As an aside, I had noticed checking weather while on Kauai that it was supposed to be VERY windy through Sunday due to the trade winds. While the fields weren't terrible, the exposed beach was VERY windy. When I got there, probably 50+ tents were already set up. among the trees. The wind was whipping. I ended up needing help putting up my tent. Someone fortunately had a hammer to help get the stakes deep enough because the sand was pretty loose. And holding the tent down. I set up my airbed (genius!) and sleeping bag and other knickknacks and then headed back to the fields to register and eat dinner. While I was setting up my tent, at one point Rouisse's tent was picked up by the wind and started rolling away into the parking lot. Good times!

The setup was pretty sweet. Registration involved getting the tourney package which included a hat, a tournament disc which was also supposed to double as your plate for the weekend to reduce waste (although I'm not sure the aluminum foil they provided was much better) although they DID say it was to reduce waste, not necessarily to be the most efficient environmentally. The dinners included Thai/Indian food, Mexican night, and some other meal which I don't remember. There was also a beer station and a full bar, although the full bar didn't start until the next day. Most impressively the beer tent was going to open at 10AM the following morning.

We were initially seeded 4th but were eventually moved to 2nd. Ours was a team that apparently had played there before. Composed mostly of Chain and other Atlanta players plus randoms like myself, Jim Parinella and Steven Rouisse from Bravo. On paper we had a stacked squad of 23. In reality, it wasn't quite going to be that way. What was tragic was that we got totally marginalized for the first two days by being sent to these alternate fields which were either a 15 minute walk or a 10 minute drive. Fortunately I had the car on hand, although after getting lost, it probably took us 20 minutes, but at least I was still fresh... Our first two games were at this alternate site. We made things difficult for ourselves, having reasonably close games in both but winning out.

We ended the day back at the main fields against the Banana team. This team had one large man with moobs dressed in a banana suit and another kid dressed in a fluffy pink gorilla suit. He had to be DYING in that thing. It didn't help that he was their main guy and their offense completely ran through him. We kept this game much closer than it should have been naturally. Most importantly, I threw a beautiful long backhand to the guy on our team who was injured and played one point (and won Friday's party). It curled around his defender and clanged right off his mid-section. Ugh. Tonight was Mexican night and we started early and often. At one point I was carrying around the Southern Comfort bottle and distributing shots. Once the bottle was finished, on to Mai Tais. Suffice to say, it was a LONG night, our team won the party for the second consecutive night, and I woke up at dawn and walked back to my tent...

I decided to sleep in and woke up around 11:20, fully confident in my teams ability to handle the first two games of the day. Well, they won the last pool play game in the morning at double-game point, even pulling I believe. This positioned us VERY well for the rest of the day as they ended up losing the first game in the power pool before I showed up. The next and last game of the day was against Voltron, the 3rd or 4th seed. We succeeded in going down big yet again but ran out of time as we mounted a furious comeback. I'm not sure I appreciated every game ending on a hard cap without even a soft cap warning. And we got ourselves in bad positions too often. This night was far more sedate as I was still feeling it a little from the previous night. This setup a quarterfinal against Philthy, a pickup team ostensibly from the Philly area including Trey from Ironsides/Pike and Dusty Rhodes from I'm not sure where he is now. They were down to about 12 dudes and I was pretty sure our team was looking past them. Big mistake. We continued to underperform with basically zero offensive flow and just ok defense. It was actually sort of frustrating because when we tried to mount our comeback early on and clamp down the defense there were a number of points where we got numerous stall 9 counts before letting a dump or short pass off (never a desperation huck). VERY frustrating. We ended up even losing before the cap. Philthy then proceeded to get smoked by Voltron in the semis, who then got smoked by Ono (Condors reunion) in the finals.

Another reasonably mellow night before waking up the next day and touring Oahu with Steven and Tina. They were also leaving Tuesday night so we did the northern route, circumnavigating most of the island including the Banzai pipeline where we watched awesome surfing for about an hour. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and raining for most of the day so the great pictures of the cliffs and mountains didn't really exist. At best I was getting beach shots but anything at elevation was enshrouded in cloud. We ended up driving over to the west coast to sit on the beach and catch the sunset before driving back to the airport.

I dropped them off at the terminal since I had another 1.5 hours. I programmed the GPS to find me a mall so I could buy some coffee for gifts and get some food for the trip. What a nightmare that was. I had to go to four different shopping plazas before finding anything that I could shop at. One was a military only, etc. Boarded the plane, popped an Ambien and got up in San Francisco. 19 hours after I took off from Hawaii, I landed in Boston to a small snowstorm. Ah, good to be back...

OF course, the best part is that almost as serendipitously as attending Kaimana, I just bought my ticket to Bologna Italy in April for Paganello. Woohoo! Yeah bucket list! This whole bucket list thing has taken on a life of its own. Feel free to tell me the can't miss tournaments that I have to attend. Pretty much the big name tournament that I haven't made at this point is Potlatch that I can think of. But feel free to challenge me. I wouuld have liked to have made Mardi Gras back in the day, but I'm not sure it is the same tourney now. Same thing for Terminus, Tempe et al.

As for my own play, I was turnover free in the first game, but it didn't last after that. That is one of the problems playing on a pickup team like this. I think only one of my turnovers was to Jim, unsurprisingly, although I'm sure he'll chime in with the other eight I threw to him. My two (or three?) turnovers in the Philthy game were uncharacteristic, including one throw to Woody that I thought he should have had, but ultimately I shouldn't have thrown. On the first day I completed a number of very long backhands (actually I think all of them) and it felt great to be powering deep backhands again (and having people actually cut for them). I think that all started when I received the disc in a power position on the sideline being forced backhand, looked up field and didn't have a single long cutter, then dumped it to Rouisse who put up a long backhand. I yelled (humorously) on the sideline after the point about nobody cutting for my backhand. After that, everybody cut and all was good... It was also fun being able to cut deep and actually get thrown to for once, cuz this team like to put it up. With DoG, I think that happened once against Furious maybe where I cut up a far sideline and Moses threw me a VERY long pass for a goal. Otherwise, high level play has mostly chosen not to throw to me deep. Watch out for Paganello baby! Although I guess the fields are going to be much smaller there.

As usual, I was stunned to see how few teams went over the top when zone was played against them, and I'm talking about the best teams there, not the cheesy ones. And it was NOT so windy that you couldn't go over. Meh. Unfortunately I only got to play zone offense maybe 2 or 3 times, more for lack of zone being played than anything else.

Sleeping in a tent at the beach was pretty cool, although I'm not sure how much I really slept. It was amazing how windy it was every night, and the constant flapping of the tent cover prevented really deep sleep. And I didn't really drink a whole bunch after the second night so I couldn't really depend on that to help me sleep either. It definitely added to the environment though to be able to walk back and forth from 'housing' to the fields and not worry about what to do with the car, although that was a little bit of a concern because the gates to both park and fields closed after a certain time so you had to make sure you had planned where you wanted your car to stay the night. Good thing there was no nighttime offsite activities planned.

Oh, and if you feel a need to pretend to learn something about ultimate from a blog, um, forget it.

Kaimana Klassic 22 - Kauai day 2

2009-02-13T00:45:00.006-05:00

I conducted some web research while I was blogging last night trying to find the best nightspots in Kauai. Rob's something grill and the Nawiliwili Tavern came up 1 and 2 on one website and they were both in Lihue, 10 minutes from my hotel. So I sparked up the GPS around 9:30 and started at Rob's. It was pretty lame when I started, but a sports bar with LOTS of TVs. What is interesting is that NOTHING is live at this hour. It would be tough to follow sports living out here. The only thing I caught live was the Knicks/Clippers overtime (in LA of course).

Had chili and rice with a side of fries (more Kaimana training) and a beer. Then more GPS to get over to Nawiliwili Tavern. This place had more potential but less action. Rob's was sort of crowded when I left, but mostly locals. So asleep by 11.

The next day I set my alarm for 6:30. Dress, put together a backpack for the North Shore. Walk out to the lobby and find out it is POURING rain outside. Ugh. Regardless, get in the car and start my way to the Na Pali coast.

Pretty incredible light for the shot above. I made my way up the coast, hitting some of the tourist things that I had specced out before I got here, including a scenic road, Kilauea pt lighthouse, another one lane scenic road which was in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately I didn't run into any cars. Maniholo Dry Cave, and then I was at the end of the line. Before then I had stopped in Hanalei at a grocery store to buy the breakfast/lunch of champions, a small bag of salt & vinegar chips, a banana, and a bag of peppered beef jerky. Mmmm. I pulled into a secluded beach and stayed there for awhile, waiting for the rain to stop. No luck so I drove to the trailhead, parked, pulled out my book and read for about 25 minutes until the rain stopped and the sun came out. Got my bag ready and onto the trail. It was a two mile hike to the first beach, Hanakapiai. I made it there in about an hour with numerous stops along the way for pictures. Incredible views of the upcoming cliffs including the Kalahau cliffs that I showed the picture of in my previous entry.

I had camped at this beach 25 years ago with my parents. Back then there was an actual sand beach that I had body surfed on, getting slammed into the sand repeatedly. This time it was only rocks, although I was told that the tide was higher in the winter which was why no sand was visible. LOT'S of signs warning people not to even approach the water. Whatever... I took a lot of pictures so that I could try and match it up with a GREAT picture of my with my blond locks at that beach 25 years ago. Also at this point it started raining again. I started on the 1.8 mile trail to Hanakapiai Falls going straight inland. I made great time, although I only passed 2 people coming down from the falls and no one going there. I reached the falls in about 45 minutes, completely empty.

I settled in, put on my bathing suit and started swimming. Pretty cold but the falls were very approachable. I was actually able to reach them and swim under to the other side and look out. I also scouted out the landing area under a large rock to dive in. There ended up being a very narrow spot about 3 feet wide that I could dive into. After measuring it out, I climbed the rock and made the dive.

After swimming for another 10 minutes, another guy showed up. He was wearing a backpack that happened to have a frisbee attached to the back. I got out of the water and approached and mentioned Kaimana. Of course he was here for that. It ended up that it was Elijah Edwards whom I had partied with at Poultry Days last year! Apparently he is my bucket list buddy! We ended up swimming, taking pictures, and then walking back down together (it was very steep so nice to have company in case something happened). We eventually grabbed a couple of beers in Hanalei. He was staying locally so I bailed and went back to my hotel. After I'm done with this, I expect that I will try out Rob's and Nawiliwili again. Thursday night so maybe it will be a little more exciting. This will probably be my last entry until after the tournament as I expect that I will have no internet access.

Oh yeah, and saw a nice double rainbow! I guess there are some minor benefits to rain...

Kaimana Klassic 22 - Kauai

2009-02-11T23:31:00.006-05:00

Phew. The last time I had a travel day this long was India. Woke up at 5:45AM Tuesday morning, showered, got the kids up at 6:20, we all drove to the airport and got there in 20 minutes, took off at 8AM, land in Minneapolis, take off to San Francisco, land no problem (the sierras and rockies are spectacular!), wait 1:45, same plane to Oahu, land 7PM local, catch a puddle jumper to Kauai at 8:30, land at 9PM. Including the 5 hour time difference, 18 hours in transit. And coming back is even worse, but I don't have to worry about that for a week.

Jet lag tip #1. Melatonin. I popped 3 melatonin around 11PM local when I crashed and I woke up at 6:30 (11:30AM EST) feeling refreshed. I NEVER sleep in late. I expect that the same thing will happen tonight when I pop 3 more and then I should be acclimated going forward. Checked outside and it was pitch black, so got my things together and headed out to the beach and caught the sunrise.

Got in the rental car and started towards the West coast and Waimea Canyon. At one point I just missed a pullover for Hanapepe Overlook but there was another one a little rockier 40 yards down. Pull over in that one, walk back and take some pictures, go back to the car and pull onto the highway only to realize that my front left tire is now COMPLETELY flat. I check the trunk there is an inflated donut but NO jack to lift the car. I had brought my Avis contract fortunately, call them and they say they will send a tow truck. 5 minutes later a Jeep pulls up right behind me with a guy and a girl. They ask if I need help, he gets out a jack, 4 minutes later the new tire is on, I thank them profusely and I'm on my way, 8 miles from Waimea Canyon Drive. More about them later. I call Avis and tell them that I no longer need help but I'm going to continue on with the donut and stop by the airport later to exchange cars and they have no problem with that. Up to Waimea Canyon with numerous overlooks before reaching the 'official' one.

Take LOTS of pictures. Of course I had forgotten to bring my Hawaii guidebook but fortunately my GPS came to the rescue with its special attractions links. I was able to hit all of the sights that I had planned for the east side of the island. Keep in mind that if you go to the Waimea Canyon lookout when you come back down, you HAVE to turn right into Kokee State Park and follow that road ALL the way to the end to the Kalalau overlook, which gives you an incredible view of the Kalalau valley going out to sea.

On the way back to my hotel (the Aston Aloha Beach Hotel next to Lydgate Park) I hit Puu scenic road, the Menehune swinging bridge which was this very shaky footbridge over a river, the tree road, Wailua Falls, Opaekaa Falls, and finally a dip in the water at Lydgate Park before a little hot tub, shower, and then blogging. Tomorrow is the east/north side, hiking up the Na Pali Coast to the Hanakapia'ai beach and falls, followed by more knickknack side trips and waterfalls on my way back. Good conditioning for the upcoming Kaimana Klassic...

One last bit. On the way to the airport from Ninini point and lighthouse (where I had lunch) I was going through an intersection when the car coming the opposite way turned left in front of the car in front of me. Huge collision and I have to violently swerve to the left and brake to miss the conflagration. Well, the car coming the opposite way was the same jeep that had helped me with my tire! So much for good deeds being rewarded.

Kaimana Klassic 22 - the prologue

2009-02-09T14:27:00.004-05:00

So this will be the second major event of the bucket list. Last year I hit Poultry Days for the first time and had a blast. This year's bucket entry is the Kaimana Klassic taking place on Oahu next weekend.

I have to admit I never thought I would have the opportunity to attend this tournament. It was one of those wishful 'gee, that'd be nice' tournaments but it was too far, and life was too complicated. However, through the cluster#(*&$@#(* that is Facebook, the Kid (John Hammond) pinged me on Facebook and mentioned something about Kaimana in February and would I be interested. I casually checked Delta frequent flyer flights to Oahu and when I found one for 40,000 miles, I quickly responded IN! I'm flying out first thing tomorrow morning, spending way too much time in the air, arriving Oahu 7PM, grabbing a flight at 8:30PM to Kauai (fingers crossed with all these flights and luggage pickup), have a hotel room that I got with a Priceline bid for the first time, not saving a tremendous amount of money. 3 days on Kauai then back to Oahu on Friday afternoon, pick up a car and some people at the airport and then go to the campsite.

This should be a very interesting tournament on a personal level. Our team is going to be a mix of current superstars, people along for the ride, and then a group to be determined later (including myself). I hope to lean more towards the former than the latter, at least in terms of my play if not the actual label. I should probably hope for a lot of wind and zone offense in that case... :)

Interestingly enough, it will be the xxxth (number well over 150, close to 200, I have Jim researching it right now) tournament that I play on the same team with Jim Parinella. We came to this in separate ways, but saddling it up together again. Sort of scary actually. Hell, we are even on the same Goaltimate team in this winter's goalty league although Jim is going to miss the season ending tournament because of Hawaii while I will be returning in time.

I'm fortunate in that I've been to Hawaii a few times. I'm very excited to go to Kauai though, since the last time I was there I was 16 and it was with the family, so the memories are a little sketchy although I do remember camping at a beach on the Na Pali Coast which was a lot of fun. No camping this time, I'm saving it for the tournament. I have my airbed, tent (and rental car as a last resort if things fall apart). I guess I should try to see if the airbed fits into the tent before I leave. If anyone that has been wants to comment with suggestions for the tournament, please do so. Otherwise I don't expect that I will be blogging from the tourney since internet access ain't gonna be handy.

Park City - Day 2

2009-01-23T18:26:00.002-05:00

Only because nothing really exciting happened Day 1, including no skiing. We got into Salt Lake City late Wednesday night and didn't get to sleep until 1AM (3AM EST) after taking a taxi to Park City. Didn't sleep well, so Thursday was an altitude acclimation day. Walked to and fro in Old town of Park City, trying to find celebs, but none were to be found. Apparently this Sundance is running at about 60% of normal capacity. The first weekend was crowded, but a lot of the celebrities left for Obama's inauguration.

So haven't seen any movies, and don't plan to until Sunday, we have tickets for the Grand Jury Documentary and the Dramatic Award winner. On Thursday, went to rent some skis for the next two days. I had tried on my old boots before I left, and my toes were butting up against the front. And to think I only used them last in 2004. So I'm renting the whole package. And in this day and age, renting a demo set (for we ex-experts) is costing me $39 a day. Ouch! And how things have changed. The skis go to about my forehead, and the amount of shaping/scalloping is just incredible. The one downside of this is that it takes much more effort to cruise now because the skis don't hold a line nearly as well because they keep trying to find an edge and turn.

I had been in touch with Catherine Greenwald about coming out here, since she moved here in July. She is now a snowboard instructor at Park City. She was doing a training clinic yesterday morning so I met her at the base lodge at 8:45 to get a couple of discount tickets for the day. Walked back to the house, suited up, and then we walked out to the Old Town Lift to take the double chair to the main mountain. The ladies went off to cruise the greens and blues while the boys started off with a couple of quick blues before heading over the blacks. $83 is the undiscounted price for a day for skiing at Park City. At Snowbird, which is higher and significantly bigger, it is only $62. I guess they charge what the market will bear.

So, with Sundance going on all of the lodging is taken for the people seeing the movies and the mountain is empty. And it was. I did somewhere between 12 and 16 runs and never had to wait more than 2 people. Crazy! And I guess since I last skied the 6-person high speed lift has made an appearance. When we started in the morning, it was POURING wet snow. By the end of the 3rd run, my Patagucci gloves were soaked. Fortunately it wasn't very cold (if it had been, it wouldn't have been as wet). There were 3 of us, 2 skiers and a boarder. The boarder was the one whose house we were staying at, so we followed his lead. He brought us to a glade on the second run, and David and I (the other skier) ended up in a really narrow portion with bare spots so it was no fun trying to bail out, miss the rocks, and pretty much lose control. It got better after that. We were all sucking wind because of the exertion at altitude. At least I'm getting in my aerobic training for Kaimana (to be covered in another entry...). And building up my red blood cell reserves. After a few more runs, we ended up starting to hit some more moguls which are my favorite, although they ravage my shins and ankles. Finally pulled in for lunch at 1:15 and then I met Catherine at 1:45 and we did a bunch of more runs. Probably my favorite slope (and best run) was at the McConkey Bowl double black at the end of the day. It was very steep with a little cliff start for the initial jump, and then great snow with well placed moguls. My first run down it was great, my second run was not so great, which informed me that it was time to start heading back and avoid the accident on the 'last run of the day'.

Made it back safely at the base of the Old Town Lift, walked to the rental place to pick up my boots and carried the equipment back to the house. A little ice on the ankle bones followed by a LONG hot tub (and beer of course), walk into town for pizza dinner. All in all, a good day.

I love paddle tennis

2009-01-02T17:20:00.005-05:00

Alright, most of you have probably never heard of it, or know it as platform tennis, but I grew up playing this sport in Rye, NY. As far as I know, it is mostly an east coast phenomena, although the map on this pdf file says otherwise.

Even in Rye, the sport wasn't very widespread, but interestingly enough, the only courts I ever saw were at the various country clubs around the area, Coveleigh, Shenorock, the American Yacht Club (AYC, to which my parents belonged, yeah, silver spoon). We actually had leagues that were played against other country clubs. I assume that it there were municipal courts somewhere, but I never saw them.

Let me tell you, this sport is a BLAST. For more specific details, check out this link. It is played on a court about 1/4 the size of a real tennis court with those paddles you saw back in elementary (or high) school when you played paddle ball in gym. The ones out of solid wood with a matrix of holes to allow them to be swung faster. The balls were these furry, solid rubber balls that sort of bounced. The lines were the same as in tennis, but the biggest feature was that the screens were in play, ie., the ball could be played off the screens, although before it bounced again. So, the ball had to land within the lines, then bounce off the screen and be returned before it hit the ground again. And this included corner shots where you played it off both screens. Finally, you only got one serve which was sort of a pain in the ass. So serves are a lot softer relatively than they are in tennis, especially because the serve is almost as much of an advantage as in tennis because of the net play.

This is me serving. Note the proximity of the chicken wire fence.

And the net (note the narrowness of the doubles lane).

Paddle, while it can be played as singles, unlike tennis it is primarily (and the most fun as) a doubles game. It is also usually played during the off season months, ie., late fall through early spring, but all winter, and then giving way to tennis once the weather gets nice, at least for the cross-trainers who weren't professional paddle players. Interestingly enough, at AYC they took the nets down during the summer because the various summer camps used them for games. That brings to mind playing dodgeball in those courts with a tennis ball when I was 8-10 years old (another AWESOME game). There was nothing like catching a pointblank shot (1 foot away) from a huge windup. I can't imagine anyone playing/allowing that anymore. Sigh...

I had the opportunity to play 4 times while I was down in Rye this Xmas with my brother, his 14-yr-old son and my 74 yr old dad. We played for the usual bragging rights, and that usually came down to who could win with the most teams. I was fortunate that while I lost a set here and there, I always won the match with whichever team, which was either me and my dad or me and my nephew. A few times other people were playing on the courts next to us (3 courts in all). The first thing I noticed was that everyone else's rackets were oversize compared to ours, which I guess wasn't surprising since our rackets were the original rackets my parents got, so they were at LEAST 25 years old. But it looks like paddle went the same direction that tennis did with the oversize sweet spot. So I'm thinking this could be a good Xmas present for the parents next year to replace the rackets... somewhat selfishly also...

So net play is the big thing in this game. Points, games and sets are usually very quick but some points are very long as both sides continually move up to the net, are lobbed over, retreat while the other side moves up in unison, and then back as the first team plays it off the wall and lobs it back, or powers a low shot. It is a very fast and exciting sport, and if you have the opportunity to play some time, you should.

I guess one of the reasons that I was posting this was to cathartically get myself out of my rut and try and find a game in the area. I have no idea what, how, or where it is played in the Boston area, but if you know, shoot me a line because I want to get back into it. Goaltimate is great during the winter, but that is at best one day a week, while paddle tennis can be played at any time (and is).

Coming soon... the further adventures of the frisbee tournament bucket list.

The Play

2008-11-09T17:12:00.004-05:00

It rears its ugly head again. I was talking to Tully about it on Facebook (where he also posted it) and he said he put it up there because he was sick and tired of all the C1 talk and blah blah blah so he wanted to shake things up. Reasonable I guess.

For those of you who feel you are missing out you can find the discussion here. Hopefully I grabbed the google groups link properly. I also covered this play ad nauseum over here during my early blogging days. I first caught up with the latest rendition of this thread about 8 comments in. I called Jim who of course had already noticed and we reflected on the whole fracas again. I debated whether to join in with a response on rsd, but I've been there and done that, even posting to Eurodisc back in the day after I started getting slammed there (I'm sure someone can dig up a link to that discussion) even to the point that I heard on the grapevine that Anders was all offended that I had posted something in 'his' backyard. Oh well. You can't make everyone happy.

I guess the reason I'm even addressing this at all is not to defend myself per se, although I don't have to, regardless of snide comments from types like Wagenwheel, who are advocates of refs of course and are more than happy to use this as a soapbox. I will start with observers and maybe move to refs. At nationals, we had some ok observers and some not so ok observers. One thing that I see has been evolving with observers, and I don't know if they are told to do this, or maybe the 11th edition is favoring the D more (I think it does), but they are definitely allowing significantly more contact than they did say 5 years ago. There are different kinds of contact, as in contact when going up, contact on a layout bid around a guy, etc. I'm not going to put my two cents in there about gradations in the rules and what is/is not a foul, especially now that I'm on the D squad:)

The only observation I wanted to make is that I KNOW I was fouled on that play. The back of my left hand stung from the contact he made. I don't know whether he got the disc, but I know he got my hand. Now for an observer (or ref) to have made that call, they would have to have been in one of very FEW spots to be able to see that contact, which clearly had an effect on my ability to catch the disc. And it was a leading dump to me, which means Anders was coming into my space to make the play. So first perspective is the active observer. I feel like observers are also really pushing themselves to make calls these days regardless of whether they really know what happened. Given that, and the same ideas regarding positioning and the ability to see that play, if this had happened this year at nationals, I imagine I would have been overruled unless someone was right there (and maybe even then). And if it was referees, who would have to instantiate the call (I can see myself turning to the ref like in soccer and pantomiming the contact, etc.), forget it. And SUCKED to have a double-game point Worlds final turn on a call. It sucked for the Swedes, and it would have sucked for the US if I had been overruled by an observer and they scored to win. After that play there wasn't going to be any good outcome to that game.

So keep that in mind during the referee/observer discussions. The field is MUCH larger than a basketball courts, the kinds of fouls that can occur are much wider than during a soccer match, and the action moves around the field far more quickly (and continuously) than football. So until ultimate is ready to have 6+ highly trained referees for ALL games, not just the finals or big games, I would stay away from that concept as long as I can.

As an aside, having played with observers for many years now, it was a little weird at Worlds not having them even as an option. DoG has NEVER asked for observers. I'm sure there are those who will say it was because we were too good and didn't need them, and once we started to fade we got chippy just like everyone else. Who knows. We didn't ask for them this year, and were a little offended when Troubled Past asked for them for our game, but whatever. But back to Worlds, I didn't notice any games that we played (or that I saw) where a team was able to take advantage of the fact that no one was there to overrule a call, but the potential was there for the rules to be abused to win.

Just my thoughts (a la Match). And now I will post this without doing any editing.

Sorry, I cheated. I had to add this after the fact. I appreciated Jacob's comment regarding his view of the play, I only had an issue with his first line :) 'Alex D AKA "The Count" may not have been the friendliest guy out there'. Actually, I feel I am quite convivial, even before my Masters days. Now I will agree that I am fanatically intense and competitive on the field, so I will guess it stems from there. This nationals was interesting because I was in much more of a leadership role including subbing both lines and running the D. I only lost it once majorly when the O was in a 6 or 8 turnover hell point with RIDICULOUS turnovers. I screamed in frustration while the point was going on, and Jim was right next to me and said shutup. I quickly acknowledged my mistake and moved on. But I was definitely a lot mellower, at least verbally, because of my expanded role.

Nationals 2008

2008-11-06T14:32:00.006-05:00

So, other than padding my ultimate history book appendix statistics, what did I accomplish at Nationals this year? Hmmmm. Well, now that the tournament is actually over, I can talk about some changes that occurred.

First of all, probably the biggest change on a personal level was that starting at Sectionals I began to switch to the defensive squad, and by regionals that had become official. There were a whole host of reasons to begin the switch, but interestingly enough, it all started out after I showed up for the second game at Sectionals, didn't make any warmup throws (point of person pride sometimes), and then took the first out of bounds pool, got high counted on the sideline, and then threw away a cross field hammer on my first pass. After a not so pretty other turnover, I decided that I was going to switch to the defense for awhile to get my legs under me and to stop feeling responsible for 'making something happen' on offense. I also felt like I was running very well on defense (at least for masters) and conceptually this wasn't such a reach.

This got firmer going into Regionals as Jeff Brown was away at a wedding (he had run the D and D subs last year) and was almost definitely not going to nationals. I ended up running both D and O subs (for important games) and playing almost exclusively defense at Regionals, only stepping into the O when they would get scored on more than once in a row, or if they had a tough point (and got scored on). By the time nationals rolled around, it was set in stone. I was a D guy. It's not too often that 24 years into your ultimate career you finally make the move from O to D. Usually it happens the other way.

Well, as a long time member of the O, moving to the D was surprisingly liberating (I can see all the D studs out there nodding their heads knowingly). It is amazing how much less stress you have every point. While in an overall game there are a number of stressful moments, you are not expected to actually score every point and this is pretty invigorating. Of course now I would get annoyed when the O didn't score in a close game (such as the semifinals) because that was yet another point that the D would have to break and score for us to keep up, much less win the game. Well, I'll have more ruminations on this I suspect as I try and cover the tournament.

Going into the tournament, we were a shell of last years team. Of 31 from last year, we were missing 17 overall, with 6 pickups for a total of 20 players. Arnold Sanchez, Matt Tracy from A&B, Dennis McCarthy and Jordan Haskell from Earth Atomizer (Let's Go!), and Mark Agius and Scott Hastie from Tombstone. And two of those players wouldn't show until Friday, one of whom would end up being mostly injured for the tournament. So we had iron 18 for Thursday, including a big game against Troubled Past at the end of the day for first in the pool. On Thursday, I basically had a 7-8 person O rotation with 10-11 on defense, and maybe 1-2 of the d players would play some O if necessary. Thursday ended up being very easy to sub, as for whatever reason teams decided to do El Foldo to us every round, even including the expected showdown with Troubled Past. The first game was against Old Style, the #2 team from the Central, featuring yet another Earth Atomizer alumnus, John Huggett, who beat out Dennis for most years between appearances at Nationals, 18 to 14. Old Style ended up bowing out gracefully, losing to us 15-4. The next game was against Anejo, #2 from the South. This featured a first time qualifier that I had played with at Princeton back in 1984-87, Nathan Stuart, whose son played on the winning worlds junior team in Vancouver and is quite the frisbee stud, just like his father (used to be...). Shockingly, we ended up taking half 8-0 having started on D. It was enjoyable because I didn't put a single O player on the field for the entire half. I debated whether to give them a point of their own, but as their numbers were so low in the first place, what the hell. They scored 4 of their own in the second half to make the final 15-4, but two rounds in and we were still feeling fresh going into the matchup of the day.

Troubled had an easy first game followed by a close one with OLD SAG, 15-12. OLD SAG had probably 16 fewer players than last year to get them down to 25 or so and for whatever reason they were not the same team. The Troubled Past game featured the usual blah blah blah from O'Dowd and Switzer among other people. Definitely satisfying not losing to those guys regardless of who we brung. We ended up winning the game 15-8.

Naturally the next stop was the beer tent as we caught up with persons past and present and enjoyed some free beer. After that, a race to Siesta Key to try and catch the sunset at the Palm Bay Club, but we failed. Nonetheless, the sky was gorgeous. Spent some time at the beach, then back to the room to shower and go out and pahty on Siesta Key. Making the rounds of the Daiquiri Deck and other places whose names I can't remember. Back home at a reasonable hour. Reasonably good nights sleep. Breakfast at McD's on the way to the fields to get ready for our game against OLD SAG. Unfortunately they did the same thing as they bent over to us and we beat them 15-8. All these blowouts of course were setting us up for a big loss. Our second game was against Double Black who had to beat us to make the quarterfinals. We were finally challenged (self-challenged at times) before we pulled away 15-11. While the outcome didn't seem in doubt, it was a little more challenging game.

This brought up the quarterfinals against Throwback, #2 from the NW. I was a little worried going into the game. It stayed reasonably close for the first half before we pulled away with a couple of 4-5 point defensive runs where I iced the O players again. Now you would think we would be nice and fresh for our semifinal game in the morning. Game starts at 10:30PM, etc. So I went out again that night to Siesta Key (after reaching the sunset Friday night this time) with Dennis. Suffice it to say, good times were had by all, and we were in at a reasonable hour.

Come Saturday morning, I should have known we were in trouble when I got to our field and there weren't 8 people with cleats on at 10AM for a 10:30 game (hell, there weren't 8 people). Sure enough, we started slowly on O and D, trading the first 4 points although their O scored quickly while ours struggled up the field. They finally blew open the floodgates and kept our D off the field while taking halftime 8-4 with us receiving the second half. Good halftime huddle, and we come out and score. They score, 9-5. We score, 9-6. We get a block and score on a long low backhand to Mark Agius who lays out for a huge upwinder. 9-7. We get the disc again on D and Zaz uncorks a long backhand to Arnold but it catches the wind and lets the defenders in to make the play. So potentially 9-8 goes to 10-7 and then the wheels fall off. The O continues to get broken and the game gets closed out 15-9. Crap! In this game I probably played 50/50 offense/defense as I had to keep coming on the field for the offense after they would get broken, and then I would be tired for defense if/when we scored.

This definitely did not hit me like 2000 (losing the first time after the streak) or 2002 (3 turnovers as a team in a game, you would expect to win, no?). Masters division, knowing we that had smoked and mirrored our way to that point. If you had told me going in that we were going to lose in the semis, I would have been thrilled. Of course, once you get to that point, you realize that you could win the whole thing. It didn't help that Mileage got their ass handed to them in the finals by Surly. It would have been nice to have a rematch from the previous year although I doubt the results would have been the same.

I think I will save my reflections on the various open games that I saw, including the finals, for another post. Might as well stay selfish for the moment. Of course, we weren't able to negotiate a mutual surrender so we ended up forfeiting the 3-4 game to be able to watch the open semis AND because we were a few points from completely losing the team to injury. At this point I went to frisbee central to ask when the beer tent opened, and they said 1PM. I looked at my watch and it was 1PM! Yeehah! Of course, it ended up being easier going on a beer run with Bim so that we could sit between open semi fields and watch. I hooked up my boys Dan Heijman and Shane from Sub Zero with some Poultry Days memory beers. Fortunately I heard that Dan shaved off that nasty thing he had growing on his face by Sunday. Could have hidden a rat in that thar thang. I ended up only having 2.5 beers before leaving the field, as I wanted to stay awake for the partying that night. Good thing as I ended up staying up until around 4:30 in the morning although that was pre daylights saving. The cool thing was that the bars honored the 1AM change so they all stayed open an extra hour. The hot spot was the Daiquiri Deck, as the tournament had provided free coupons for drinks. Then of course to the beach at the Palm Bay for more drinks and hanging before crashing. By the time I woke up, Dennis and Jordan (erstwhile roommates) had departed for the airport. I didn't hear a sound... I actually caught most of the finals, but that is for another entry.

Eh, at least I won the important one that qualified us for Worlds which was a blast! Prague 2010 baby!

Regionals 2008 (masters...)

2008-10-28T20:06:00.002-04:00

Wow. Heading off to Nationals tomorrow night for the 17th straight year. Unfortunately, Mooney will be joining us also, so Jim and I will never catch up to him for most appearances at nationals. This will make 20 for Steve. Oh well. Guess I have to cut him if I want a chance...

It's been so long since regionals I had to consult the score reporter. So, they gave us the ridiculously hard schedule again for the second straight year. Not sure exactly why they can justify having the #1 seed start with a schedule against #3 followed by #2. We had an eclectic mix of people out there both days, including people that weren't going to be attending nationals with us (although we didn't know it at the time for some of them). Basically it was 3 teams vying for 2 spots, with GLUM, A&B, and DoG (yea abbreviations) trying to make the big show. We began with GLUM. They had picked up some of the Tombstone/Worlds players. We had actually appropriated one of the Canadians, Shooter. Of course he got some good ribbing from the team. Nothing glamorous about this game. We won 15-12 and it was not very exciting. This brought up round two against A&B. We went up early and then let them back into the game. The D got a number of opportunities and handed them right back. This finally went down to double game point with us receiving. Fortunately, the O was able to grind it in without a turnover, although it was definitely ugly offense. This basically gave us the guaranteed 1-2 game the following morning.

The interesting part of the weekend was that I had my kids for both days as Georgia was unable to cover. I had the genius idea of bringing their bikes out to the fields. Fortunately they had gotten off of the training wheels a couple of months ago, so all day they biked around the fields and the various parking lots. Of course, I didn't find out until next morning from Geoff Doerre that my kids had been getting into trouble and not listening to the organizers very well. I apologized to Geoff, not having known, and on Sunday they were stars. But it was great to see them being independent and keeping themselves amused for the entire day. Fortunately the weather was gorgeous all weekend. I can't imagine what I would have done with bad weather. I guess I would have spent a fortune on a babysitter.

Round 3 was Mt. Crushmore who we handled 15-10. 4th round bye and I hooked up with Dennis at the Devens Grill with the kids for a little bit to get out of the heat (hard to believe this time of year). 5th round against Hexember, again an easy game, 15-7. Since I knew it was the only chance he would make Sunday's game, I made Dennis stay at my place overnight instead of heading back to New Hampshire. We ended going out in Boston until the wee hours. Good times.

Sunday morning against Red Tide Masters team, 15-5. This brought up the much heralded 1-2 game against A&B, who had beaten GLUM on double game point (I don't know the details). Meanwhile GLUM had an easy road against Crushmore. We took our final against A&B 15-12. They threatened a little bit in the second half, but we were able to secure the #1 seed for the second straight year. And for the SECOND straight year, the team that lost the final ended up losing the 2-3 game as GLUM ended up smoking A&B in the betty bowl to win 15-10 and secure the 2nd spot. So A&B fails to qualify for Nationals in I don't know how long.

I watched some Open games before heading over to the Devens Grill to celebrate with Paul Greff and others. After we left, headed outside to a little fair and the kids did the moonwalk for aboutu 20 minutes (gotta love free) before we headed home. The next two weeks were spent trying to persuade certain fencesitters to come to nationals. We got some, and we didn't get others. I guess you'll see who is coming Thursday morning. Let's just call this year S&M, or Smoke and Mirrors...

Sectionals 2008

2008-10-06T09:10:00.003-04:00

And to think this tournament used to have meaning... although even with Open DoG it didn't mean much except a non-practice weekend. It was only at the end that Metal made the tournament at all useful. Now it is just a warmup with zero official meaning. And after the results, thank God...

So this was a weekend that I had the twins, and my ex was out of town all weekend. Normally that wouldn't be an issue except that the weather forecast was horrible. Possible torrential downpours ALL weekend. We had already been kicked off of the grass fields and moved on to the turf fields (blessing in disguise). Unfortunately there were fewer fields, so they kept tweaking the schedule and we didn't know the final schedule until late Friday. Our schedule was game, game, bye, game, game, game. First round was creampuff, second round was against Red Tide to reach the 'power' pool, then bye, creampuff, Bodhi, then creampuff. Based on that schedule, I decided to miss the first game, then get a babysitter and make the big Tide game, swallow the bye ($18 bye), then creampuff and Bodhi before leaving the team to play the last game and relieve the babysitter. Well, I should have saved some money and blown off the Red Tide game. It didn't bode well when I threw away a high stall hammer to Cork on the first point/pass. And it didn't get any better as Red Tide raced away to a 13-6 victory. This was clearly not the same Red Tide team that we had beaten for the Clambake title the previous week (nor were we the same team now that we had around 16 players). Then sitting on our thumbs during the bye with no real interesting games to watch. Bodhi beat Red Tide next to our field 13-8. It was little exciting as Red Tide looked for the big upset, but it was not to be as Bodhi pulled away in the second half.

This set up the next game against Bowdoin College Stoned Clown, who we had also beaten at Clambake. I started trying to get the team focusing on playing man D, as we were having serious issues. This was going to be regardless of the score. Unfortunately I no longer remember the details, but I do remember we struggled with the man defense again, as we did all weekend. We eventually won 13-7. BTW, to this point, it has been pretty much raining non-stop since I have arrived, with minor breaks here and there. Fortunately it was reasonably warm, which was key because I had brought ZERO rain gear. I had shorts and a t-shirt, and that was about it. Nice planning, I know.

We got Bodhi to start the next round about 30 minutes early. Yes, I was trying to get home early. I was hoping for big things against them. Not to be. We got smoked in the first half, and didn't stuff and score until late second half. We again went mostly man in this game. Our early turnovers were stupid ones as opposed to great D, and it didn't get much better. Final score, 13-6.

Like the girl I am, after hanging around for about 15 minutes, I left the team to their druthers in the last game of the day against Red Circus from Halifax. I had watched them play earlier and they were pretty solid. I predicted a difficult game for DoG, and I wasn't wrong. Apparently the game went to double game point with DoG pulling. Bim made a great D (I think) and DoG pulled away to victory.

As occurred for the Saturday games, we didn't get the final schedule for the Sunday games until LATE Saturday night. And there were a few issues with inconsistent times, so we just claimed the one that favored us with a start time of 11AM. I decided to bring the kids with me today, as some other people had said they would bring theirs out weather permitting. It was pouring while I was driving out there, but once we got there, it ended up being gorgeous for most of the day. I had set up the kids under the gazebo with chairs, a huge bag of books and lunch, and all they ever had was lunch, otherwise strolling too and fro, playing with kids. Christian walked up and down the switchback endlessly, getting his exercise as he put it. Catherine was doing her gregarious thing and playing with the other kids.

Oh yeah, and we played. First round against Militia, who we had lost to at Boston Invite in an UGLY game (ugly for our level of play, not spirit). We had beaten them in a scrimmage during the summer prior to worlds, so now was the rubber match. I decided to start the game continuing to work on man to man. The game stayed close for awhile as we struggled to put real pressure. Finally late first or early second half we broke out some zone to man to at least stop their play, but only played maybe 2 points of exclusively zone. We ended pulling away at the very end of the game, winning 15-13. I continued my shift to the D-line. My personal highlight of the game occurred while playing the point in the 2-3-2. I was off point, and at one point Sam TH lofted a bladey cross field forehand for a swing pass. I chased after it and was going to knock it away when I heard the sideline yell something about a Callahan. So instead I went up to catch it, caught it, landed while looking at the cone, and immediately spiked it for the goal (and then apologized to the guy who I had caught it on)! Finally!

This set up a game against Run Silent, Run Deep, another one of our Clambake victims. Unfortunately, it was not to be this day. We tried man, we tried zone. We went down a few stupid goals early, and then very slowly chipped away at the lead, getting within 1 in the second half before gakking some more. Finally we were pulling at 13-14. We got them trapped on the sideline and at stall 9.8, they uncorked a desperation long forehand that was easily caught by one of their players that had slipped behind the defender. I expected them to score immediately (like a good team would... ;) as I sagged, deflated. Unfortunately they sat outside our endzone for the next 10 or 15 seconds as I finally started sprinting to catch up and was about 4 feet away from the thrower when they scored the goal. After I shouted in frustration, Coop correctly scolded me for saying anything while not having sprinted to catch up. I sheepishly agreed with him and apologized. Fortunately that ended up being our last game of the day.

It is clear we are not the same team as we had at Worlds, but that is no surprise. At this point, my near-term goal is to avoid the post worlds meltdown that bit Furious in the ass this weekend, with them failing to qualify for nationals since at least '98. For those who haven't done it, it is REALLY hard to double-peak in the same year, especially within two months. So fingers crossed going into Regionals. Hopefully we will be able to focus a little differently on this tournament as it is finally elimination again...

Clambake 2008

2008-09-24T15:42:00.003-04:00

Now that I've had a chance to digest the weekend, I will now spout my usual drivel that is all about me (or not). You have been warned.

I was actually out of town on business all last week, from Monday morning to late Friday night, so didn't have the chance to follow up with the team very much in trying to plan. I was in heavy requirements/design meetings all day from 8-5 with people perched on either side of me so personal email was out... :) From the VERY little that I was able to monitor, however, our numbers were clearly going to be very low on Saturday, and not much better on Sunday. I got to sleep at 1AM Saturday morning, set my alarm for 5:30, and Jim stopped by around 6:10, we switched to my nice fuel-efficient Prius for the long ride to Bowdoin. I drove, and surprisingly didn't end up needing a coffee. As we passed by North Hampton, NH, I called Dennis McCarthy at around 7AM to make sure that he was going to leave at a reasonable hour and be at the first game, as he would be our SEVENTH person. For anyone that knows Dennis, that was going to be a Herculean task. We pull into the parking lot, get a sweet parking spot, and walk out to the fields at maybe 8:45. I think we were the 4th and 5th people. At 9, we still have 5. Shockingly, a few minutes later Dennis strolls up followed by Larry David. We have 7. I thought we were playing a huge team, but they had been warming up for a game next door. Our opponents were almost as small as we were, and hadn't approached us at all to get started. Forgot to mention that the tourney had a white board with announcements where teams were looking for players. We posted 'DoG looking for two bodies for 1st round'. The unspoken implication being JUST for the first round. Well, nobody answered the call. The first team was the Bowdoin alumni team. Not too much exciting in this game. We started on offense and coasted to a 15-8 victory. Then came a 2:45 hour bye until our 1PM game. Jim, Dennis and I drove to downtown Brunswick to get some breakfast at an overpriced restaurant. We then strolled over to the Joshua Tavern to check in on the clockmakers convention. Jim and Dennis had a beer while I stuck with water. Dennis bought the beer because he refused to do #2 in the restaurant because of the proximity of the toilet to the tables, and felt he had to buy a beer to use the bar toilet... Then back to the fields.

Right before our second game, the whiteboard call was answered. A guy walks up to me and says the TD said we might be looking for players. After a quick interrogation of playing history, I said that sure, he could join us for the day. His name was also Alex, although fortunately he preferred the nickname Grin. The second team was the current Bowdoin Stoned Clowns team. They were larger, younger, and faster, and although we started on offense and playing man to man D, they quickly buzzsawed through us to go up 3-1, and we had no answer. We scored to make it 3-2, and then clamped on the mighty 2-3-2 zone. Well, after 20+ years, college kids still suck at zone offense, and it was NOT windy at all. This completely turned the game around and set the tone for the rest of the weekend. We played zone almost exclusively the rest of the tourney. In this game, we ended up winning 15-8 again as they were almost helpless against the zone. Next, ANOTHER 2.5 hour bye as we had the crappy game-bye-game-bye-game schedule. Yeah #1 seed! And Grin ended up being a stud for us, including a huge saving grab on a high long backhand that cemented his spot. This time hung around the fields and watched our final round opponents play our second rounders. You know, it is the weirdest thing. So many times I will watch a team play someone else and say to myself, boy we are in trouble. How are we going to beat these guys (even happened a little in the DoG glory days, but only against the Elite teams)? I sort of felt that way watching this team. They finish off their game, and then we start our game a little early because everyone wants to get to the famed Clambake party.

Well, same thing. I think the final might have been 15-9, but they were completely incapable of handling the zone also. So we had 9 people for the second and third games, and did not have too many problems dispatching these teams. When we received, we did not set up zones for the turnover except for one REALLY long throwaway out the back of the endzone where I quickly set up a zone (and we got the stuff and score).

Quick shower at the fieldhouse, then into the car for the 50 minute ride to the party site. We get there well after dark, pull into the campsite area, and I proceed to set up my sleeping spot in the passenger seat (put the seat back, double therma-rest, sleeping bag, pillow) and then watch Jim finish putting up his tent in front of the car while my lights are on. Dennis is parked next to us. Once Jim is done, the three amigos :0 walk to the party. On the way in, grab a quick burger and other food. I will try and capture the party in snippets instead of chronologically. All told though, I did not have as good a time at this party as last year (nor did I stay up as late). The beer running out at 12:30AM was not a show-stopper, though it contributed.

* Catching up with Joey Giampino and spending quite some time shmooing with him, watching the bonfire, and then having him buy me some body shots off of one of the young women's teams that was raising money for charity. We hardly knew ye, Wendi and Marci, but you gals ran a great booth.
* Catching up with KD, although unfortunately I missed the conversation described here although Jim gave me some of the highlights in the morning.
* Being in the beer tent when the last keg was announced, then promptly filled up one beer, held it in left hand, and then kept filling other beer in right hand as they brought out the pitchers, drinking it, then refilling. Probably 3 beers in 10 minutes. So bad timing/placement for me... :)
* Not doing a single shotgun, which is SHOCKING! Guess everyone was scared of the old gunfighter...

As you can see from the recitation above, I was surprised that I don't remember doing too many things, but that is a minor indictment of the party as there weren't as many things to move people en masse from one location to another, like Godiva's party-wide gun last year, among other things.

The next morning saw my car the last one to leave the party site for the second year in a row. I rose groggily around 9AM to see Dennis take off and say he wasn't coming back for the games (roundly cursed him) and then realized I still had my contacts in. Took them out, and back to sleep. Oh yeah, the other key to sleeping in the car is having the eye protectors by the makers of the bucky pillow for the neck. Very comfortable and pitch black. I finally rouse around 10:30, relieve myself, then pull Jim's sunshade off his tent only to hear him groan. Well, suffice it to say, Jim wasn't feeling very well that morning, and didn't end up joining us on the playing field until half-time of the second game.

Get to the fields just before noon to find out we are playing Harvard, who won the tournament last year. We have 3 new players for the day, Tyler, Simon, and Billy Rodriguez (!) from beyond the ultimate grave. Minus Dennis and we are at 11. I ask the Harvard captain what happened and he says they have like 9 new guys. Once we start playing, this quickly becomes apparent. Zone, zone and more zone, and they fold like yesterday's laundry. Yet another long break, although not as a result of a bye, as Red Tide '98 squeaks by whoever they are playing to set up the hotly anticipated matchup between our two teams. This was a reunion teamm of the Red Tide squad that had gone to nationals in '98. They had shirts made up for the tournament that had team designs from Furious and Red Tide on the front with the score 16-14 under it, showing the Red Tide victory over Furious at nationals that year. Pretty clever I thought. Kenny D, Benjy and EO were among the returning players that had been partying at various reunion events since Friday night.

Well, I REALLY did not want to win this game, and made it very clear to my team. We started on offense and turned it over allowing them to score (I was not involved in any of it). But walking back to the line, I steepled my fingers a la Burns and said 'Haigcellent' much to the amusement of my teammates. However, it was not to be as the teams exchanged leads throughout the game with no one pulling away by more than 2 at any time. Finally, in the second half we are on serve receiving at 12-12. We turn it over, and then just outside our endzone, I end up getting a poach D in the corner and we go down and score. We eventually trade again then score to win 15-13. So I basically blame myself for winning the game and having to play the finals. The other note was that their zone offense was far more patient than the other teams. It was basically KD at pivot with Benjy and EO on each side taking HUGE swings back and forth. I was shocked at how far back KD was standing, losing yards (although gaining it back on the swing). They kept doing this until EO could uncork a long hammer somewhere. They had some good success scoring on us in the first half. To remove some of EO's options upfield, we switched to a 1-3-3 which ended up being more successful.

The club Red Tide team has beaten the other team pretty handily in their semi (they played the SECOND team from our pool, yeah A pool!). I was hoping our pool would win and then we could say that we won the pool thus the tournament but it was not to be. We agreed to play immediately after the Red Tide game was over, and at first we agreed to play to 7. They came back a little later and pushed for much more. We finally settled on a game to 9. We were down to 10 players at this point and some with nagging injuries, although the reason we wanted to play to short score was more wanting to get out of there than the injuries. We started on offense, and quickly went up a break. More breaks both ways although they never took the lead. We had chances to really pad our lead that we blew before finally winning 9-7 in a pretty sedate game. We played zone again although they were better at it. I went down with a calf (thanks to Al Michaels) with maybe 4 points left (safely in the lead of course) and Will had gone down a few points earlier with a hammy. While I had hydrated significantly on the way to the fields, after maybe 1PM I forgot to drink quite so much, and that is always the reason my calf goes. Fortunately, I was able to see Russ on Tuesday and I had stopped playing in time to prevent a major seized muscle, and I should be fine for Sectionals this weekend. And, yes, we are currently small-squadded for Sectionals also, but not quite as small as Clambake.

Which brings up a side question. For any nationals masters players reading this, do you guys have trouble fielding your main squad when you go to Sectionals? I was looking at the Sectionals results yesterday, trying to pick out all the masters teams out there and there were quite a few. I am betting that they have more success/numbers at these pre-series tournaments than we do. Although I will acknowledge that we are experiencing some Worlds burnout. Hell, Tombstone from Canada isn't even playing the series this fall.

Oh yeah, quick little celebration, then skedaddled off to my car, picking up an individual Clambake trophy on the way to bookend the Clambake trophy I have from 1996.

And that's all she wrote.

WUGC 2008 - Reflections

2008-08-12T14:39:00.002-04:00

So, now that the week is over and I'm back home, I guess it is time to reflect on the whole experience. No matter how many times you do it, and no matter what division you are in, Worlds is something very special.

I didn't succeed in finding a ride back to Seattle, so I had to rush around and get a taxi to grab the 2:45 Greyhound bus to Seattle. If I missed it, I was going to miss my flight. I had Georgia call Greyhound while I was on the way (talk about a LONG taxi ride) to see if she could buy me a ticket. She couldn't get one on that bus, you had to buy 2 hours in advance, but could spend an extra $18 to get an anytime ticket. I get there to pick up my ticket, nice long line, finally they ask if anyone is on the 2:45 train. I move to the front of the line, we have to figure out whether to look me up in the Canada or US computer (way to have them talk, Greyhound...) get my ticket, and rush to the loading area only to find like 6 people. Oh well, there go the worries about being left off the bus. The border took less than 20 minutes as we were the only bus. Get to Seattle at 7PM, find a local bus and eventually get to the airport at 8:30, check into United, grab some food, fly to Dulles, fly to Boston, get picked up by the kids holding Congratulations! signs. Didn't sleep a wink on the flights, as is my wont.

Back to Worlds.

WUGC is a totally different experience from WUCC. At WUCC, you are just another one of many teams from your country competing for the prize. Ultimately, it may be harder to win (at least for US teams that compete as themselves at both tournaments), but it doesn't have the same cachet while you are there. There is far less of a patriotic feeling because you are just one of many teams from your country. At WUGC, you ARE your country. If you fail, your country fails. As such, there is also a lot more pressure I think. Imagine how Seattle feels right now. If they had lost to Bravo in the finals of WUCC, that would be one thing, but losing to Canada as the sole Open representative? I can't imagine how much that must suck right now, especially as they seemed to be heavily favored going into that game.

Unfortunately I missed the opening ceremonies. I would have loved to do the parade, and would probably have choked up a little bit. I also missed the Masters medal ceremony because of the rush to get back to Seattle, which was also a bummer(apparently I didn't get one of the Champion discs). According to Jim, it sounded pretty cool. I did see the Jr. Women, and it did look pretty cool.

My main objection with the tournament was that there were no socializing opportunities that included drinks after 7:30PM until the Friday and Saturday night parties at the end of a long week. I went to the chill-out lounge one night and found a bunch of people (not too many) playing board games. Uh, lame. It didn't help that Canada doesn't sell on Sunday and Monday was BC day with no alcohol, so those nights we just mooched off our fellow players on Shazam Returns and other teams. It was only once Tuesday came around that we found out actually how much beer cost in Canada, which is RIDICULOUS. Bad beer costs $35 a case and you need to pay at least $45 for the acceptable stuff. So thanks to Shazam Returns and others for subsidizing us.

It is just amazing to walk around the fields and see all of these players from different countries playing in different divisions. At first, I objected to the number of byes we had, but in retrospect, it makes the week more social, getting to pick the games you want to watch, whether a big Open showdown, the Swedish women..., etc. And based on how I feel right now, 4 days after my last game, I'm thankful that we ONLY played 11 games during the week. Hell, we played one more game than the US and Canada Open teams, who topped out at 10 games. My right heel/soleus is very sore to walk around on, there is something going on on the outside of my upper right leg. and I have something going on with a rib on my side which is VERY painful, but the rib problem is nothing like Dugan's rib (and Jim on a lesser basis).

When I was playing ultimate back in the '90s, I had always wanted to run subs, at least the O-line. Well, with this masters team, I have finally gotten my wish, and hats off to Jordan for all those years for subbing us. Being the subber, even for just half the team, is not the cat's meow by any means. You have to worry about involving all of the players during the week, trying to make a judgment when someone should play through problems, someone isn't getting it done at the moment, and do all this without it detracting from your own play. I'm not sure how well I succeeded on any of these fronts, except for the fact that we won. I know I missed some people in the finals.

As for my overall play, I ended up with more than twice as many assists as the next person on my team, but I would given that up to have far fewer turnovers, including 3 in the finals (I'm giving the long backhand to Jim). I iced myself in the second half after my final turnover flaring out Paul Greff too far. Unfortunately, Marshall got hurt a few points later, I put Paul in, and then the next point, Marshall still wasn't ready so I started going in again. But I finally played within myself for the last few points. Like I said before, I was totally feeling the hero hormones on the last possession after the Canada dump turnover. If I hadn't had any earlier hammer turns, maybe I would have uncorked the long goal score to Jim so that he could dive into the hot tub, but we are ALL probably better off this way.

This all started as a little bit of a lark last fall, and now my team has won the World Championship and we get to own it until 2012. That is pretty sweet. I know that in the post-game frolicking and huddle there were a lot of emotions. Leaving the stadium on Saturday to get my bus to Seattle, I gave a big hug to Paul 'TGPITG-BF' Greff and we both got a little emotional. Part of the specialness, especially at our ages, is that we sold the week on the fact that there was a HIGH probability that this would never happen again. As if we weren't old this year, imagine having to win masters in 2011 and then do Worlds again in 2012. Mooney would be 54! Paul 50, Jim 47, myself 45. Crazy, eh?

Thanks to the D for picking us up when we were down, and they are welcome for us holding on... I'm sure I have more to say, but that's good enough for now.

Oh yeah, like my old gunslinger reference, Match challenged me to a gun during the tournament and I finally took him up on it at the Friday night party. He smuggled in a couple of beers, and we got ready. He made a HUGE hole, so I felt a little threatened and enlarged my hole more than I normally do. His buddy counted down us, we started, and spiked my can well in front of him, although he apparently thinks he was right on my back. He also had beer left in his can where mine was completely empty. In this one I didn't really try and time the end of the beer but waited for an empty gulp before spiking. But I'm sure I'll hear from him again...

WUGC 2008 - Day 6 - Part II

2008-08-09T13:25:00.002-04:00

Hmmm. I was starting to post, and I realized that I didn't really have much more to say.

The New Zealand game was way too close. Not that we looked past it, and not that they were looking past it to the bronze medal game, although they admitted they did at the beginning. All of a sudden, 16-13 and I think we gave them the disc. Ugh. 17-13 final. I already covered the finals...

And then the games began. First back at the room because we missed dinner. 4 pizzas later we had quite the gathering, maybe 12 teammates. Then off to the party. Huge indoor ice rink, loud music, dancing.

Ahhh, nothing else to say. My current goal is finding a ride back to Seattle so I don't have to take the bus. Later days.

WUGC 2008 - Day 6 - Part I

2008-08-09T00:15:00.003-04:00

Mellow night last night. Had my last beer of two at 5PM. This morning we played the New Zealand team in the semis.

Alright, we won. Woohoo! Despite my best efforts. Although I blame Jim for the 'dropped' long backhand on the 3rd or 4th point of the game. Same point, a hammer turnover to Will, who I couldn't connect with all weekend. Later, a LONG hammer to Husak after I pointed him to cut there. Finally a forehand to Paul Greff that I flared too much. Oh well. I benched myself for a few points, but then Marshall pulled up lame, so I had to play out.

At 14-13, game to 15, receiving, we then proceeded to turn it over 3 times. First was a hero goal throw from Paul to Simon that was too short. Followed by a hero long backhand from Dugan to Moonee, followed by a turnover just outside our endzone that Moonee picked up to fast break to me and he was kicked blocked on a backhand. They called timeout and we set up a forehand defense. Dugan was on the mark, and after I explained that if he turned to face the sideline, take away the dump. He did, and they turned over the dump and gained us another 10 yards upfield. A few passes later, I had the disc and looked off two turnovers, one a hammer goal to Jim (that he said he would have dove into the hot tub after catching, oh well) and a dump to Paul Greff that Moonee's guy poached off on at high count. I hit Steve going upfield all alone instead, and he hit Simon for the game winner. Boy, did I want to make that throw...

More when I'm actually in front of a screen again...

WUGC 2008 - Day 5

2008-08-08T01:52:00.003-04:00

Felt a little blah this morning. 5 straight nights of semi carousing is a little tougher at this age than it used to be. Although most of it has been hanging out in our room or other rooms on our floor. Exciting stuff I know. First game was against GB at the Jericho fields at 9AM. There are shuttles at 8:01 and 8:11 that will get us there in time. After a quick breakfast, we go out to the shuttle to find out that they are not running. Apparently there are 4 cars staffed by volunteers that are shuttling people to the fields. This of course will take forever and they talk about the schedule being modified at those fields. A taxi pulls up and 4 of us get in, we get to the fields. Most of our team gets there by 8:40 and GB appears to be there so we start on time.

Not too much exciting in this game as GB is very generous with the disc. We go on a bunch of runs, so the O gets put sometimes on D to practice and not get too cold. We end up winning 17-7. The best part was that I finally was able to give up the NO BRAIN shirt to Bobby Stoddard after he threw his second consecutive bad long throw. He still has it as of this evening. Simple huddle, and now we have a 3 hour wait for our next game. Namkung, Hollywood and I walk to the beach and out on the jetty and hang out for a bit, then it is back to the fields to 'watch' the Swedish women play the Irish. Eventually, it is time for our game against Venezuela. The Venezuelans always win the party with their omnipresent drums. It is a fun game, although Jim drops the 45 yard hammer that I uncork to him for a goal on the third point. He said that the moment he dropped it, he burst out laughing and it was pretty obvious as he was walking up to the line to play D with a shit-eating grin.

Later in the game makes an ill-advised throw to Marshall to let the Venezuelans reach 10, which they are very happy with. A good huddle after with dancing, drums, booze (bottles presented, not drunk). After our game, some more Swedish game watching before we head back to catch some mens quarterfinal action in the stadium. When I get there, Canada and the US have just finished, and GB is starting to put the hurt on Australia. Japan is pulling away from Sweden. GB ends up blowing out Australia in a surprise upset while Japan finishes Sweden, setting up Japan/US and GB/Canada.

Off to dinner and then shower and trading night. I brought a lot of old DoG jerseys plus a couple of US ultimate jerseys. I ended up getting rid of everything, including the hated purple and green jersey from 1999 which is still the most uncomfortable jersey I have ever worn. My biggest failure was to not get the French warmup jacket. I worked that for awhile, including trying to swing a 3-way trade including a Canadian jacket, offered my jacket plus a DoG shirt plus $20 and the one guy still said no. I ended up trading it for a Colombian warmup jacket which was pretty sweet. Other than that, I have now have a bunch of shirts that I will probably almost never wear. Oh well. Guess I'll have to trade them at Worlds in 2010...

They had some other fun stuff going on, with 5 ultimate setting up a bunch of carnival type games, including a test your vertical leap (not a chance I was going to do that, especially with the crowd watching), various ball games, measuring the velocity of your throw. The usual mingling with people, the 'Do you know who I was?' kind of blarney.

And now off to sleep. There is a good chance that there will be no Day 6 entry for awhile, as I will either be celebrating or drowning my sorrows FEROCIOUSLY tomorrow night.

WUGC 2008 - Day 4

2008-08-07T00:50:00.006-04:00

Today brought up our most recent most important game of the tournament. Australia was also 5-0 and had beaten Japan worse than we did. Fortunately it was another 10:30 game, so another leisurely morning, breakfast, watched the US-Sweden and Japan-Canada games.

The J-C game was reasonably exciting with Canada taking half before we had to go to the stadium for our 10:30 match against Australia. Shockingly enough, a whole bunch of our team was actually there arond 9:45. We warmed up with an endzone scoring drill, O versus D. Come gametime, we were ready. We started on O and scored reasonably easily. The D went out and scored 2 in a row. 3-1, 4-1, blah blah blah, the O played well, the D played well, and we took half 9-4. Game over? Not quite. The O reverted back to norm in the second half and starting frittering away the lead. The D also reverted to norm by not getting ANY turnovers for their first five points of the second half. Australia brought the score to 14-12 at one point. The D finally scored a few more to take the game 17-14, effectively giving us the first seed going into semifinals.

After a short break finally (maybe an hour) we went over to the main fields to get ready for our Germany game. This was a very relaxing preparation, as Germany hadn't done very well at all this week. The post game celebration was far better than the game. The Germans had a genius gift which was the NO BRAIN shirt. To be given to the person who most recently had done the stupidest thing, usually on the frisbee field. They gave it to me as captain to hand out to someone else. Um, I claimed it because my body of work to that point. I wore it the rest of the day and night (took it off for sleep) and into warmup the next day.

Tomorrow morning we have Great Britain then Venezuela. The GB game is at the Jericho fields, about 25 minutes away by car and at 9AM. This will involve the first really early game of the week, which will be an interesting change.

Quick burrito lunch at the same place although this time I got the kids burrito because the regular was too much food. Fascinating stuff, I know. Back to the fields to watch the Jr women beat someone or other. Our first short bye of the week, and then it's time to play the German team. The team was very flat for this game. We had a number of people sit out because of tweaks, injuries, or mental breaks. Despite the hot temperatures, we won 17-4. Then the games began. Off to the 'spirit enclosure' to start the drinking. We were setting up to watch the US play Australia in the Open division. Both teams undefeated. We grabbed a set of stands and made our nest. 5 ciders later (yes I know I'm lame), we're watching an exciting game. No turnovers until 5-5. Jim and Dugan are playing a points game, predicting things every point and making in point bets on number of passes per possession, who will turn the disc over. Jim had a HUGE lead and then tied on the over under at the end. Oh well.

Back to the rooms for dinner, and because all the people coming back from the fields were clogging the entry, Jim and I snuck in the exit. We get in and then a woman comes up to us asking if we just came in from the exit. I pretend to reach into my bag as I explain that we had just eaten but that we were meeting friends who were going to eat and she let us by. Phew!

I met JB back at the room and he said he was heading out to Rec Beach which was near us. It included a LONG descent to the beach over 400 stair steps. We got down there and ran into the Tufts/Vermont boys. I took a quick plunge into the ocean which was GLORIOUS. This was also a nude beach, so as I was taking my photos of the area, at one point I had to curve the camera to catch one woman from behind...

So, I'm blogging in our room, and all of a sudden a guts frisbee flew into the room sent by the mixed team. Ah, worlds. Right now it is JB, Jeff, Brian (who showed up this morning finally), Jim, Paul G, Hollywood. They are now making fun of me for blogging during our conversation.

Hollywood making fun of us for not warming up. We are talking about tomorrows 9AM game, and why we are trying to take a bus to get there by 8:30AM. He was saying that if we aren't going to warm up, then commit to not warming up.

So, JB went to room 227 and grabbed a 12 pack of bottles. Hollywood showed us how to do twistoffs using your forearm only. Just now, Jim grabbed a beer and is trying to do the same thing. After much amusement and attempts, JB just grabbed the beer and opened it quickly with his forearm.

At this point, I'm just listening for more stories to recount from the room recap. Brian said to say notice that I'm typing slower because I just opened a twistoff beer bottle using my forearm.

WUGC 2008 - Day 3

2008-08-06T01:44:00.001-04:00

So most normal tournaments are over by now. And yet it is the third day of worlds. We had another late start with the first game at 10:30 against France. I recently posted on Eurodisc about how annoyed I was that France hadn't sent an Open team in the last 8 years (including this year). Naturally it caused quite and uproar, and you wouldn't believe how many off-list responses I got complaining about how classless/spiritless I was. Regardless, I had caught up with the French Masters team at the opening showcase game, and had gotten a lot of agreement from them on my complaints.

My turnovers continued in this game. On the first point I threw a full field backhand to Alec Ewald, and he played the man not the disc and let it go over his head, even though he had a clean bid on it. This game we broke out the ho stack (Huck & Hope tm). The O played it for the whole game. During the opening huddle I spoke about how we were now going to be more aggressive... Then a little later in the game we got a turn back, I received a pass and looked up field. I didn't really have a force and Jim was in the middle of the field cutting deep. I uncork a long backhand, admittedly a little low, as he curls back under. We theorized that it was the furthest a pass had landed from the nearest receiver. So by the end of the game I was still 0-x on long backhands.

I'm in my room right now with Jim, JohnBar, Dugan, and Husak. Husak is joking about posting on 70-40 about how Alex has the most turnovers on the team to this point. And I would have to agree. I haven't reached superstar status yet where I'm able to bury my team, but I'm trying...

Husak also said that Corey is wondering where his invitation is. We also had the discussion at dinner at the Sailing Center that I invented Home & Away (not really), but more importantly, that I HATE it. Cuz you have to not only know the force, but where your sideline is, as opposed to just the righty-bias game.

Then another long break between games. The 4 hour byes are very tough, especially when you blow through the first game in little over an hour to extend your bye to 4.5 hours. Paul Greff and I went over to the stadium and watched the Sweden-Japan women's game. The Swedes got bagled and didn't look very good. Then it was naptime in the stadium while watching the Women's jrs Finland v. Australia. Finally it was time for our game against Japan, who had surprisingly lost to Australia and more importantly, New Zealand. They had to beat us to start making some noise and make the semis. Finally, both the Offense AND my game showed up. We started on D, got the disc and gave it back. We go out on O, they pull it out of bounds and I bring it to the center mark. Quick juke by Jim and he breaks deep, I fire a long backhand for a goal. I FINALLY COMPLETED A LONG BACKHAND! The second offensive point, this time upwind, I threw another long backhand to Jim, this time not quite as good but he was able to catch it nonetheless. Finally, I had broken through. I would have had a great game except for 2 late turnovers, one a short backhand to Gary Bernard, and a hammer for the game to Bim that he wasn't quite ready for. But we won the game 17-13. Tomorrow morning brings the biggest game so far as we play Australia who is also undefeated.

WUGC 2008 - Day 2

2008-08-05T03:04:00.004-04:00

So, one game today at 5PM. Talk about a long day of doing nothing. I didn't know what to do with myself. I've never been the guy to sleep all day. And unfortunately I woke up at 7AM. The call from a work person at 7:15 AM didn't help with my concentration on sleeping...

I woke up at 7, caught up on the internet on someone else's laptop since my laptop screen is fried. Breakfast at the meal place followed by a walk to Thunderbird Stadium to watch Japan-Great Britain which was a tight game at the time. Lots of turnovers by both teams and then Japan pulled it out. Then another long walk to find lunch at the burrito place from yesterday. BTW, this is all with Jim, contributing to the legend... Back to the fields, catch some frisbee, and Dan F. from Canada showed us a picture from his perv cam of a woman with a long lollipop in her mouth. Fortunately the picture was out of focus so it was able to be submitted for a best day picture.

Another trip to the stadium to watch Japan play New Zealand, and actually lose. Doesn't bode well for our game tomorrow as we are totally going to look past that game... :) Especially after a 4 hour bye (even longer based on probably crushing the French team in the morning well before the 2 hours window). DoG doesn't do well after a long bye, which we have proved numerous times.

Finally, time to get to the field at around 4PM for our 5PM showcase game. Warmed up for awhile, looked at the stands, notice no one was there, realized that I couldn't drink yet, then the game started. The game didn't start out well for the O, and not because we started on O. We are worst off when the D gets a bunch of turns early but doesn't score. It makes the O think that they have to do all the dirty work, so we put a bunch of pressure on ourselves. Regardless, the O sucked and we went down at half 9-5. This included 2 hammer turnovers by yours truly, although both receivers felt they needed to catch them at the maximum point of the arc rather than just catching them (I try not to throw hammers so that the defender has a play). In both cases, the defenders didn't have any real play on the disc, but both receivers played it that way and dropped them. They are both my turnovers, but still frustrating.

Fortunately the D pulled this game out as they went on a number of runs. We ultimately won the game 16-14. We pulled at 15-14 and they stuffed and scored. I was more than ecstatic to not have to go back onto the field for double game point at 15-15.

I'm really tired right now since it is 12:30 (or 3:30 eastern time), so hopefully I will be able to add to this tomorrow.

Amusing anecdotes
* Jim made a joke about Andrew Lugsdin playing the Danny Clark role for the day when he saw him against the Dominican Republic.
* Drinking into the wee hours with the Canadian team that we had just beaten. Apparently it was BC day in this part of Canada and no liquor stores were open.
* Match challenging me to a shotgun right after the victory and me explaining to him that after a dehydrating event the esophagus shrinks and you have to drink/chug a lot of fluids to expand it again. At this point, I haven't taken his challenge.
* Watching numerous Family Guy episodes in our room that are stored on Paul Greff's laptop.
* Mootching beer and fun off the Shazam team that is right across the hall from us.
* Schmooing with Dan Fassina and abusing him about choosing to play with the Canadians.

WUGC 2008 - Day 1

2008-08-04T11:57:00.000-04:00

After a 'brief' 8 year hiatus, here I am back at the World Championships. At least the Olympics version. I have to admit, I have missed it. While that was definitely one of the reasons that Jim and I put together the DoG masters team last fall, I'm not really sure we could have predicted ending up here now.

I flew into Seattle on Thursday and stayed with Brian Cameros and his family for a couple of nights. On Friday, I took Brian's 15 year old Mazda Miata (!) out I-90 and did a waterfall tour, seeing Snoqualmie Falls from various vantage points including going off path to get straight to the base of the falls and take some footage, then did a 1+ mile trek to see the upper and lower Twin Falls in Olallie State Park. All gorgeous falls, and a great way to spend the day except for the fact that Seattle was actually gorgeous blue skies and 45 minutes out west, it was cloudy and misty/raining most of the day. Oh well.

Saturday morning grabbed the 8:45 Greyhound bus out of Seattle with John Bar for Vancouver. While on line waiting to board, I see 3 people who look like frisbee players, and then it is obvious once I spot the Gaia bag. I introduce myself and they are with the German Open team. We talk for awhile. It's there first Worlds. After I do some counting, I realize that it is my 11th World Championships. 86, 88 (with the French team), 91-2, 95-6, 98-00, 02, 08. 1 hour later at the second stop, the bus had broken down and we had to wait for a replacement. Two hours later it gets there and we are on our way. Customs at the border is pretty straightforward, and then we are in Vancouver at maybe 3PM.

We grab a taxi to the dorms since we are too late for the opening ceremonies, check in, drop off our bags, and then head to Thunderbird stadium to catch the tail-end and then watch the showcase game (unfortunately Co-ed) between Great Britain and Canada. But mostly it is about the beer garden and catching up with people. Jens is there from Germany, as John and I predicted, I spend some time talking with the French masters team, ruing some more about how lame the French were that they couldn't send an Open team for the 3 straight WUGC. Drank some ciders, some beers, and then back to the room. At 7:30 I hit the captain's meeting, which as usual is phenomenally boring, though I'm not sure there is a way to make them interesting, except to prevent people from asking stupid questions. The nice thing about the meeting is that they had a bunch of beer for the captain's after, and barely anyone took any, so I was able to squirrel about 12 beers into my tournie schwag bag. That made up a little bit for the fact that they were charging for ALL the beer at the tournament. Still trying to figure out where my $350 in individual entrance fee went to, besides the $20-$40 in schwag.

Finally, it is Sunday morning and time for the games to begin. I'm rooming with John, Paul Greff, and Jim Parinella, who had gotten in at 1:30 that morning. We grab breakfast and then get a shuttle to our fields which are NOT close. It is a little pod of 2 fields about 25 minutes away on foot (UBC is a BIG campus). Our first round doesn't start until 10:30, so we watch the previous round. On our field it is Germany versus Venezuela in the Open division. Venezuela is doing very well, and at one point is up 12-10 with the disk on the upwind goal line before a lame turnover. Germany pulls the game out 15-13. Our first game is against Italy, who is maybe 20 strong. The other field has Canada versus New Zealand, and for the afternoon game, we will reverse opponents, playing New Zealand. Italy does not prove to be very strong, as they do not perform particularly well against our various defenses. We went on long enough runs that we put the offense out there on D lines for two different runs of two points. I got my first turnover out of the way, jacking a long backhand to Jim Olson that was a little too low. Otherwise we won out maybe 17-3. Canada had a tougher start with New Zealand, although they pulled away to maybe 17-9. After that we took the opportunity to scrimmage ourselves at the field for another half hour. Boy did O suck! At least it was a good reminder that we weren't nearly as good as we appeared during the Italy game...

With 2.5 hours still left before our game, it was off in search of food. We found the one food enclave in the entire campus and proceeded to wait for burritos in the slowest line I have ever seen. But the burrito was one of the best I ever had, with nice crispy chicken. We brought them back and watched the Australians dominate the Irish (Open) and a battle royal between Great Britain and Colombia. I was VERY impressed with the depth and skill of the Colombians. Unfortunately, the points were VERY long with lots of turnovers. At one point, there was a point that took over 30 minutes. GB ended up pulling away and winning the game, but Colombia definitely had their chances.

So now it is New Zealand. Nothing particularly memorable about this game (except for playing against a team that is over 20 hours away by plane). I chalked up 2 more turnovers, a long backhand to Jim that I put too much touch on and another long backhand to Steve Dugan that stayed too low. He got his hands on it, but definitely my turnover. So I'm now 0-3 on long backhands on the tournament so far. Wonderful. I did uncork a nice 40 yard hammer goal to Bim in the second game. We ended up winning 17-9. Over on the other field, the Canadians matched us again, winning 17-3, setting up a nice showcase match for tonight. After that we headed over to the showcase game to catch the Japanese women's team buzzsaw through the Canadians. And it wasn't as close as that.

So, at this point my biggest peeve is that there are no organized socializing (read, drinking) opportunities after 7:30 until Friday night's party. I have to figure that UBC is restricting it somehow, because otherwise the tournament is leaving a HUGE financial opportunity on the table. The whole point of worlds is to mingle with the other teams, and the showcase game with a beer garden isn't enough, especially as it closes down at 7:30 every night. We stopped by the players 'chill out lounge' and it was just a bunch of board games and stuff. Again, I'm wondering where my $350 went (don't forget, there is also a $1000 entry fee per team). Someone has to be making out like a bandit.

But tomorrow is another day... And it is going to be a long day, as we only have one game, and it is the showcase game against the Canadians at 5PM. Hopefully we'll find something interesting to do until then.

Boston Invitational 2008 - Ugh!

2008-07-02T12:05:00.002-04:00

So, Jim covered the debacle in some detail over here. I'm not sure what I really have to add to that with respect to actual sequence of events.

On a personal level, I think that Saturday was the most devastating day of ultimate that I have ever been involved with. When all is said and done, we only lost one game that we feel we should have won (against Gunslingers, who we had beaten prior, and who lost to Tombstone whom we had beaten...). Hopefully we will be scheduling a scrimmage with them in a couple of weeks to win the rubber match.

However, it was the nature of the losses that really hurt. It was dispiriting to not be able to adjust in ANY of those games to turn anything around. In the huddles people were saying all the right things (mostly), we were trying to make adjustments, but it was just a continual litany of individual mistakes on offense and defense. The defense was exposed early in the Tombstone game as, even though we won, our various transition junk defenses had huge gaps in them as people were missing their assignments. Throwers remaining unmarked a couple of passes in for almost 10 seconds in a 5 pass clam, which is incredibly unacceptable, and this happened more than once. Being beat deep when playing junk way too much. The whole point of junk is that you have a safety that is supposed to eliminate the deep throw. And it didn't get any better in the subsequent games.

The offense had very little flow, and the other team almost never truly 'earned' the turnover. It was typically poor throw selection, the occasional art, uncharacteristic drops, pretty much think of something offensively bad, and we were doing it. Hell, I even had a bad turnover against a zone on a stupid bladey huck to Zip(?). Been awhile since one of my zone throws had been so easily d'ed. Basically, people were trying to do too much, or too little, or everything but playing the 'DoG' way. About the one good thing that came out of this tournament was when we realized that there would be no Saturday games during Worlds (starts on Sunday, ends on Friday for Masters), which means if we can blame our last two incredibly lame days on it being saturday (masters easterns also) then we should be good to go for worlds, at least psychologically...

What is more valuable in playing a tournament like this is the wakeup call for Worlds. As Jim says, we are no longer able to either coast or just turn it up when we need to. We have to play intense pretty much all the time to have a chance. A little depressing, but that's what happens when you get old. I guess I should be happy that I'm still able to play at all.

And, of course, we had a glimmer of hope after Sunday play. We played much better both defensively and offensively, and did a better job of taking what we were given, although we still scored deep a bunch. At least 2 of the 3 longish throws that Jim caught for goals over Korber, as each one was being released I was saying to myself, Noooooooo! And each one JUST missed John's outstretched fingers. Korber took me out at one point on a poach D attempt. I fell over and cracked my head on the ground and took an injury sub. As predicted, my neck was brutally sore the next day and even now is still pretty stiff.

Interestingly enough, I didn't end up throwing any hammers on Sunday after having thrown at least 20 on Saturday. Draw whatever conclusions you will from this...

One month to Worlds!

Poultry Days 2008

2008-06-16T11:01:00.006-04:00

So, I can now remove Poultry days from my ultimate tournament bucket list. As expected, it was quite the experience. I hooked up with Breasts & Thighs, a mishmash team from Minneapolis with pieces of Pittsburgh, help from Colorado, a dollop of Boston, and a side order of Madison, WI.

This all started when I was talking to Paul Greff about Worlds and we discussed possibly adding his brother to the roster. After looking at schedules, we decided he wouldn't be able to join us at any of the June tournaments, so Paul mentioned he would be at Poultry Days and that would be a good opportunity to play with him. I had tried to attend years ago and bruised my heel a week before the tournament, so it was nice to finally make it, having heard much about this tournament.

So Thursday I checked on my plane and car reservations and found out I had screwed up and was renting in downtown Dayton. I was wondering how I had gotten $19 a day and now I could only see $40 at the airport. So I made a new reservation for $44 for an economy and then went to my new best bud for car reservations, Priceline. I put in a bid for a full-size car for $22 a day and it was accepted. So I upgrade 3 sizes and saved $22/day. First flight leaves Boston at 2PM Friday to Cleveland. I run into Salsa and Yusi (sp?) and their newborn, and we hang out for a two hour ground stop for weather. They go to rent a car, and all of a sudden they announce they have found another plane (we were still waiting for our plane to take off from Richmond, VA). Salsa and co show up having eschewed the 5 hour drive and we get on and arrive in Dayton 3 hours late. I get my fullsize car, program my GPS, and I'm off to the races. I have some interest in getting to the fields before dark since I have never been there and know NOTHING about the site. I get there in the early gloaming, park, and start wandering the campgrounds trying to find someone, anyone I know. 5 minutes from the park, I stopped at a gas station to buy a six-pack since I didn't know the setup. So I'm wandering the campgrounds, six pack in hand. In the meantime, Luke Smith was supposed to be here, so I called Brian Jameros in Seattle to see if he could dig up Luke's #. 15 minutes later he calls back in failure (good thing, because Luke ended up bailing on the tourney, loser that he is). I also called the Greffs who were at a hotel 30 minutes away. They promised to show up at some point (naturally they didn't, damn old guys). I also asked them for a cell phone # for anyone on our team that I could try, and naturally they had nada!

I finally found some action in the far corner of the site at the Cock Block pavilion. I recognized Keith, the really blond guy from Colorado. We chatted up and I started hanging out. I had a long conversation with Meredith Tosta, UPA youth director (or something along those lines), played some flip cup, cut up my throwing hand trying to jam a tiki torch back into the ground, crushed the competition in a shotgun, you know, the usual. I finally bailed at around 1-2AM and walked back to my car. I had already set up the passenger seat as my bed, so I slid onto the thermarest, draped the sleeping bag over me, put on my eye buckys, and fell asleep. As an aside, you HAVE to buy the eye buckies if you ever sleep in a not dark room. When I finally woke up at 8:10AM, I had no idea what time it was because it was still pitch dark for me (these are night and day from the flimsy things that airlines provide). It had also rained ferociously during the night, which I had conveniently slept through ensconsed in my nice, firm, DRY, car.

Wake up, go to the bathroom, and then off to the gazebo to see what the crowd is doing. What they are doing is buying a REALLY cheap breakfast. Fruit, juices, yogurts, bagels, etc. I grab a yogurt and bagel w/cream cheese, then run into a few of my teammates (who had to point themselves out to me, I knew NO names in advance besides the Greffs). I end up grabbing a ride to the fields from them as I didn't want to lose my sweet parking location right by the campsite. We drive for a WHILE to get to the fields and we at the second farthest field of the whole tournament. The fields are a little soaked and muddy, but not too bad considering what had passed through the previous day. Our eclectic band starts to drift in and introduce themselves (or at least to me...). I recognize few of the players by name, although naturally they know me... :)

We start out with Coop Flyers from Atlanta, and end up really struggling against them. 5 straight rounds of games to 11 hard, and we win maybe 11-9. Not a rousing start. After the game, we are hanging out at our tent when I hear that the Flyers are looking for one of us to a shotgun with them. Someone is pushing Matt Greff but naturally I leap up to grab his spot. I walk over, open my can with my teeth (always impressive), grab some keys to widen the hole, and then we get set. 3-2-1, and in just under two seconds, I finish the can, spike it, turn around and walk away. Both teams were in awe. It's always fun to perform in front of a virgin crowd. My win streak is still going from the early '90s (I'm going to be that old gunfighter guy who has to kill like 3 people in each new town he goes to some young punks want to challenge him). Second game is against Chicken Schitt from Columbus, OH. This game is a little easier and we win reasonably handily. This brings up the 1st seed in our pool, Chicken Pasties from Nashville, TN (including Salsa and Yusi). Here our frustration boils over as we can't complete a pass. They end up winning going away, something like 11-6 maybe 7. To make the A bracket we now have to win our remaining two games. Game 4 against Cluckin' Deep from Dallas, and we struggle mightily again. They also smoke us 11-7 or so. The damage is down and we are in relegation. Last game against Pink Flaming-Hos from Tampa/St. Pete is not very close. I won't speak about their after game ritual which they tried to get us to play.

This brings us to the mill portion of the day. Matt Greff's wife Renee had set up a HUGE spread of food and drink for the day. We finally get to work after the last round. We had one of those Gatorade coolers full to the top of Reneegherita (and potent it was). Also a pony keg of their latest concoction from their microbrewery, Tree Fort Ale. Lots of talk, playing stupid games, etc. Two of the belladonnas (U-Wisconsin college women) challenged Adam Goff and myself to Cricket, which was basically beerfriz with two beer bottles side by side instead of a single cup. And since we were playing on grass, there was no sliding... for the girls at least. Adam and I quickly switched to sliding in scoobers to hit the bottles while Jason was trying to teach the girls to make that throw. Their efforts were somewhat amusing. Adam and I ended up winning going away, 13-2. Although we made sure to only score 1 point each rounbd to maximize the damage to the girls. It's finally time to leave the fields, and fortunately the field crew shows up in a couple of carts to help us move all of our crap back to the cars (tent, keg, food, chairs, etc.). I only had a backpack, but we had LOTS of team stuff, coolers, etc.

Back at the campsite, I discover the outdoor shower. I grab my stuff and take the cold shower which feels incredibly refreshing. While I'm drying off in the sun, the Bellas show up to take their showers. We hang out after, and most of them are pretty stewed at this point, not really having paced themselves at the fields. Granted the margheritas were deadly, which was why I had only sipped them. I end up hanging out with them for much of the night. After everyone drops their stuff off at the tents (or my car), we all head over to the carnival to grab some chicken dinner. We get the last 3 dinners and share amongst all 5 of us. We walk around a little, I buy the girls some funnel cakes (of which I eat the most). Then on the way back to the campsite, we pass a trampoline which we bounce around on for awhile, then find a merry go round, which we try and make the girls fly off of (or throw up). We get some people flown off but nobody tosses. Oh well. Back at the campground, time to hang out with the Iowa crew for awhile with Maria and Karrie (sp?). Watch them do some obstacle course where you have to spin around a stick 10 times then run around a course and then catch a frisbee. Naturally it is very difficult and comical. Karrie and I smash Maria and her partner in the game where you try and knock the cups off the two sticks at each end (and if you catch them, the points are reversed). Bail on the Iowa side of the hill and cross back over to the lakeside and end up finding the Minneapolis/Madison crew and hang out with them for much of the night. This includes Dan Heijman, Shane Ho... from Wisco/Sub. I talk to Dan about the state of the game for a long time. He wanted to make sure he got a mention in my blog, so Dan, there ya go. I had to flex my muscles for a few more shotguns, and at one point they played this game called Detonator, where you had to shake up a can of beer and then try and smash it open against your forehead. I had never 'played' before, so I watched for a little bit, then Shane was really forcing the issue, so I took the can, shook, shouted Detonator, and then smashed that baby right open. They were most impressed. A bunch of us then went back to the carnival late night, to check out the scene. Not too much going on, but at least it was some exercise. At some point I check my phone and realize that there is really no purpose in staying up anymore, so I head back to my car/bed and crash around 3:30.

Back up at 8 for another breakfast and then looking for the schedule to find out where we are. Field 10 at 9AM, so have to drive. This time I give up my cherry parking spot, figuring that by the time I return for the finals (!) a bunch of people will have lost and spaces will be open. I drive to the fields, which are in the same vicinity as the previous day but MUCH wetter (which is a bummer). Our first game is against a very tough squad from I can't remember where. They go up early on us, and then we slowly get back in the game before winning by 2 or so. Games are now to 13. Round two is against the Michigan BAT types. They also go up early 3-0 (pulling) before we outscore them 9-1 and eventually close them out. This brings us to the semis against a Pittsburgh team whose main strategy was at most one or two passes followed by a full field huck for a goal. It worked shockingly well early and they went up on us again. We gritted the game out and won by a couple, qualifying for the finals against Party Fowl. This was back at the showcase fields, so again we had to make an effort to break down our site and drive back to the fields. As I predicted, there were PLENTY of spaces to be had. I parked near our field and headed out. The finals between Chad larson Eggsperience and Paideia reunion had just started. We got going maybe a half hour later. Apparently the two A finalists AND the B team finalist we were playing had all been in the same pool. AND they had done a 3-way tie at 4-1. Party Fowl had the best point differential among the 3, but when they included ALL the games (which is Poultry Days tradition), Party Fowl ended up 3rd. The team they beat ended up winning the A bracket.

We started the Binals (great nickname someone came up with) on D and got a quick stuff and score. I didn't know any better, so I thought we actually had a chance. It was not to be. They smoked us 11-4 or so. They were Michigan types, including Will Neff and some other people whose names I was supposed to know. At least I had maximized my games played with 4 each day. Hung out after the finals a bit since I had a few hours before my flight. Eventually said my goodbyes, filled a small gatorade bottle with somne more Reneegherita, and then headed off to the airport. After I dropped the car off, I camped right next to the security checkpoint people and read my preproduction novel (Some Assembly Required by Lynn Kiele Bonasia, get it at your local bookstore or on Amazon 7/1) for awhile while drinking my 'rita. After I finished, I went through security, bought some dinner, and flew home...

Some other amusing tidbits. After the quarters the team we beat set up an American Gladiator obstacle course complete with 5 or so stations. The shooters were behind an umbrella which the competitors had to hit with something. They had cross bows, air shooters, some sort of dart flinger etc. Kyle from Sub-Zero went first, didn't get hit but didn't hit the umbrella either. He finally did a last second lunge attack since he was out of implements but was shot within inches of the umbrella. Then our female competitor finally succeeded at the fourth station and won. What was funny was that she was wearing some sort of Wonder Woman type outfit over her frisbee clothers. Imagine my surprise when after the competition, she took it off and kept it. She had actually brought it with her! I had figured that the other team made the competitors wear it. Not quite sure why she had that stuff there...

Also, after the Binals, Dan and Shane stopped by to say hi/bye. Funniest part was when JohnJohn (sp?), our captain who played with subzero last year, saw Shane and I catching up. When he found out we had partied together the previous evening, he said his mind couldn't quite encompass that fact and he was surprised his head didn't explode. Most amusing.

All in all, Poultry Days was an amazing experience. The whole smalltown feel, the amazing organization of the actual tournament, the facilities, the carnival, the camping (for most), the atmosphere, the inaccessibility. I would heartily recommend its inclusion on everyone's ultimate bucket list. Hopefully I will be there next year.

Oh, and apparently I'm known for liking to throw hammers. I ended up throwing quite a few over the weekend, and although I feel like I had one in there but can't remember it, the others thought I was turnover free on all my hammers/blades for the weekend. At least 25+. Imagine that?

My team picture. I'm sitting on the left.

Once more unto the breach

2008-06-08T20:45:00.005-04:00

So, we just finished up Masters Easterns locally at Fort Devens this weekend. I was going to write something about the White Mountain Open, but Jim ably covered it over here. Before I get into the masters tournament though, I do want to mention one thing about WMO.

I won the party baby! And no, not my team. I won it by myself. After the last game Saturday, I followed Jim and his family to their hotel up the street to take a shower. Munched on some of his spaghetti and red sauce, had a beer, then went off to find the party that Seigs had told me about. It was a gathering of Dartmouth alums with some stringers. I had no lodging coming into the tournament. I had brought a couple of Therma-rests, and was planning to sleep in my car if nothing turned up (I had Jim bring a sleeping bag for me as mine disappeared years ago and I haven't gotten around to replacing it). It was a nice night, if somewhat cool. They had a beer pong table set up in back, and they were playing beerfris on the side driveway where most of the people were hanging out. Ipod speaker setup, a keg of good beer, some 30packs of cans, and you have a party. I played one game of beerfris but got spanked by the team that held court for almost the entire night. I'm not sure they ever lost. There were a couple of rounds of shot guns. I naturally held court on that, probably halving the time of the next fastest gunner. It is not up to least 15 years since I have last lost a shotgun. Hey, have to be good at something, right? As the party moved into late night, they started serving up hot dogs with all the fixings and various other snacks. Yum! Finally, we had petered out to 5 people left. There was some talk about trying to kick the keg. We did a few rounds of keg stands. I crushed that, checking in at 18 and 15 seconds. Then we moved the house next door and slept on the couches. A perfect night.

Of course, when I woke up, I should have drunk at least a gallon of water. Because I didn't, I was dehydrated, and as usual, my calf betrayed me late in the first half of the first game and I was out. I was the stupid idiot that Jim referred to in his entry. But enough of WMO. On to Masters Easterns.

This tournament was a tale of two teams. As of a couple of weeks ago, it wasn'[t even certain that this tournament was going to happen because of low response. We were stuck at around 3 to 4 teams. Funnily enough, we had offered to try and split into two teams. Otherwise Jim and I were going to enter a Tea Party time into the mixed division to at least make sure that we got some playing time. Fortunately they were able to talk OLDSAG into making the trip up from Philly and we ended up with 5 teams. OLDSAG didn't want us to split into two teams. Of course, once we ended up with maybe 15 players on Saturday and 12 players on Sunday, that makes the whole two team effort comical.

We were the one seed of five, with 4 straight games starting at 8:30 Saturday morning. Our first game was against a team from Halifax, Nova Scotia. At one point during the game, I asked them how long it had taken them to drive down, to which he responded that they had all flown, because it was a 14 hour drive. Wow, talk about the middle of nowhere. They had great spirit despite the spanking we administered. After the game, they all came over to our sideline to 'administer' a shot of some really nice scotch whose name I don't remember. They picked Marshall Goff, and then starting chanting breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, repeat. And a good morning to you Marshall. Maybe that's what set up our next game against OLDSAG. We had heard that they were still a little bitter about their quarterfinal loss to us at nationals. This game started chippy, and continued mostly chippy throughout the morning. They jumped to an early lead as our first game had not prepared us for real defense, and our offense was playing sloppy anyway. They ended up taking the first half 8-5 and it only got worse in the second. They ended up walking away with a 15-9 victory.

Round 3 was against Mt. Crushmore. Nothing remarkable about this game except for the fact that it was WAY too close, as we 'pulled' away to a 15-12 victory. This set up our last round game with Above & Beyond. Still smarting from our offseason acquisition of Arnold Sanchez (!???!?!! maybe not), they were eager to prove they didn't need him. Well, after they went up 5-0, it was pretty clear they didn't. It didn't get any better as the game went on, and we ended up losing 15-8. We got beaten in pretty much every aspect of the game as they ran right through us.

After the last game, a few of us went to the Devens Grill right next door for a couple of cold ones. Then Dennis McCarthy (YES, HE ACTUALLY SHOWED FOR TWO GAMES) and I drove directly up to Portsmouth to party. We ended up closing the town at the Red Door after stints at the decks and the sports bar by the parking garage. However, this time when I got on the road at 9:15, I stopped by a gas station, filled up the tank and purchased a large gatorade and a water and finished them as I got to the fields 5 minutes before our first game. I actually had to pee before the game started. Also, my massage guy Russ had recommended Endurolytes, an electrolyte replacement capsule after he rehabbed my calf. I bought those on Friday and popped them all day Saturday. Even though my OTHER calf seized up on Saturday, it wasn't bad enough to keep me out, although I was terrified I was out for the tournament. It's still there, but it mostly faded by the end. I was pounding the Endurolytes, ibuprofen and water all day Saturday.

That was Saturday.

We lost 5 players from Saturday and picked up 2 (or something along those lines). We ended up playing with 12 on Sunday. Oh, and I forgot to mention that on both days, it was disgustingly hot, well over 90 and humid. That definitely contributed to a lull in energy. Fortunately we had some shade trees, although a little far from the field. That didn't prevent people from taking their subs under the trees and not helping on the sideline. Our first game was against A&B in the 2-3 game. The winner would go on to play OLDSAG in the finals while the loser would play down to the 4-5 winner. After yesterdays performance along with our reduced numbers, I wasn't expecting much. It sort of felt like '95, when we lost to NYNY 17-6 in the finals at regionals, and went to nationals just hoping not to embarrass ourselves, much less defend our title. We started on offense and had to grind, but scored. This time it was our turn as we went up huge, maybe 4-0 or something like that (all these games are starting to run together, maybe that was round 2). Regardless, the energy was completely different today. While we were subdued after the previous day, we played hard, actually got a lot of defenses instead of waiting for the other team to turn it over. Our offense, while not flawless, was night and day from Saturday. We kept the disc moving, throwing to open people, taking advantage of poaches, actually had a deep game, which opened up the short game. Of the 30 points or so of defense off the pull, we played straight man-to-man less than 5 times. It was transition D almost every point, and for whatever reason, it worked. The personnel we had today was definitely a lot of vintage DoG, or people that had played a lot with us so definitely were with the program. We ended up finishing the buzzsaw 15-8, setting up a final match against OLDSAG, who rolled out to the fields at maybe 12PM. They were pleased to be playing against in the finals, and this game was much cleaner than Saturday. And the success we had against A&B continued into this game. OLDSAG definitely started off slow. It was this game that we jumped out to the 4-0 lead as they were turning it over early and often and playing poor D. We took half 8-4, then they received to start the second half. 8-6, 11-6, and then traded out with a few more breaks to take the tournament 15-8. During the lineup after, they expressed that while they were not happy about losing, they were definitely pleased that we had turned it around from the previous day and looked much better for worlds, although we still have a lot of work to do to try and avoid embarrassing ourselves.

Oh yeah, and we decided to cut the remaining 50 people from the team and we are going to Worlds with just those 12 from Sunday...

While tempting, and useful for practice trash talking, just kidding.

I'm particularly thrilled that my calves held up the entire weekend, especially after the scare from my right calf early Saturday. The main reason I didn't want to hurt my calf was actually not for this weekend, but the upcoming weekend in Versailles OH. I will be attending my first Poultry Days tournament and I am VERY excited. I had tickets to go maybe 6 years ago, but pulled up lame a few weeks before the tournament with a bruised heel. As my career winds down, I'm working on my ultimate tournament bucket list. Feel free to suggest other tournaments. I will be playing with the Greff brothers on the Breasts & Thighs team. Hope to see you out there.

College Nationals 2008

2008-05-15T11:23:00.002-04:00

If you're looking for bracket analysis or predictions, look elsewhere. Match and other blog/rsd luminaries have already covered this stuff in excellent detail. For some reason, this year I am particularly interested in the process/outcome. And I think that is due to the explosion of coverage in the college game.

Back in the day, I was fortunate to be able to compete at 3 college national championships with Princeton in '85, '86, and '87 (freshman-junior years). Our best year was in '87 when we just missed the semifinals by gakking a 10-6 lead to Cornell, losing 15-13. I actually ended up beating Cornell for my one and only time the last time I played them senior year. But that is another story.

For those 3 years at nationals, I'm not even sure we knew who else was going to be there besides the other team from our region. The UPA newsletter (in newspaper pamphlet form like those 'medical marvel' things that clog your mailbox, unlike the current glossy) was of course wildly out of date as always. And interregional travel, especially east/west, was completely non-existent. We did Florida one year during spring break (senior year and I had a screwed up bone in my foot, so we asked Columbia to play zone for one point so I could go in and play. When there was a turnover (not mine), they let me take an injury sub, but at least I could say I played) and maybe DC a few times during my college career, but otherwise it was Mid-Atlantic sectionals and regionals in the fall series (yes, it was that thin back then) and we would actually win a game or two against teams like Periodic Table (of Elements), Lunchmeat, etc., and then Ivies and maybe a few other local tournaments in the spring, and then the college series. We knew nothing about other teams and email was only within the school at best (and was not the attention sink it is now).

With the profusion of blogs, sites like mssui, aggregators like ultimatetalk, and, of course, ultivillage and their 'subsidiary', ultitv, I know more about college ultimate than I do about most professional sports other than names of players. I think that is a great thing, and I'm sure that is helping to contribute to the explosion of high school ultimate, as they now have tangible evidence of something to look forward to once they graduate high school (much less actually having the opportunity to choose where to go based on ultimate programs). That definitely was not where I started. I was planning to play tennis at Princeton until I quickly realized I wouldn't even make the JV squad, and then saw an ultimate frisbee flyer about practices every day during Freshman week. I had played hack ultimate in high school, 10 on 10 style and even back then, I was the guy sitting back and hucking to the tall guy. I don't even think we had a stall count, and I couldn't have played more than 5 times. We played on the lawn at the Presbyterian church.

While I won't do the comparison thing at the Open level (how would vintage DoG compete against the current crop of semifinalist/finalists), I can confidently do this exercise at the college level. The championship winners from the '80s would get smoked by the current crop of elite college teams. Except maybe for the ringer Chabot College team in 1987, which resulted in the first serious eligibility rewrite. I would love to be able to attend college nationals in Colorado this year and just sit and enjoy as a spectator. I remember when 'natties' were held in Boston, which was awesome. I actually took the Friday off to be able to go see some games. I bet that the finals which were held in the Tufts stadium were the most-watched finals ever (definitely to that point) by non-competitors, since they had a very deep ultimate community to draw upon. I don't know who ran that, whether it was the same people that are running the Boston Invite these days, but I would love it if they stepped up to the plate again. I think the attendance compared to the previous outing would balloon significantly.

But lacking that opportunity this year, I will be watching closely on score reporter (another great invention that has made it easier to follow the game, kudos to Rodney) and the various blogs and ultivillage to keep track. So good luck to all the competitors this year, and make it an exciting nationals!

The Dive

2008-05-01T20:27:00.004-04:00

Well, I have no idea how this will work, and it isn't very impressive, but I promised.

For those who don't pay CLOSE attention to the minutiae of my blog, this dive at a Costa Rica waterfall is discussed at the end of this entry.

Costa Rica, Part 2

2008-04-30T21:34:00.016-04:00

So unfortunately those people never sent me the picture they took of me diving from the cliff. Oh well. I'll have to figure out how to extract an image from the mpeg video. Any suggestions anyone? Well, back to the trip.

So, back to the same hotel I stayed at the first night. Very mellow night, then leisurely morning before checking out and heading out to the airport to pick up my traveling companion. We had rented an SUV and of course they tried to upgrade us, we said no, then they said they would give it to us for the same price. Nice. The nice thing is that the woman asked us our itinerary, and we gave her the first two destinations, Arenal Volcano and Monteverde, and she totally hooked us up with a map and step by step directions to get to Arenal. And let me tell you, the map I had wouldn't have gotten us anywhere near. Signs are nonexistent in Costa Rica once you get off the main highways. Oh, and the SUV was manual transmission, which is always a little exciting on vehicles that large. I offered to drive even though it was her rental. Once we got off the main drag into the mountains, I let her rip. Barely any lane dividers, and we got stuck behind a truck once for about 15 minutes. Otherwise, we made fantastic time, getting to our hotel (Hotel Campo Verde) in Arenal in maybe 1.5 hours instead of the recommended 2.5-3. Our hotel had a fantastic view of the volcano, as can be seen below.

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That is actually smoke from the volcano pouring out of the top.
After a dinner across the road at some lame steakhouse which was WAY too expensive for the quality (even for Costa Rica), we headed out to the other side of the volcano to try and see the lava at night. After off roading for about a half hour (SO happy we had an SUV), we reached a spot where a bunch of people were hanging out. And while we drove over, at one point we got a great profile shot of lava splattering out of the mountain. Unfortunately, we only saw the lava 3 or 4 times, and it was really far away.

The next morning we woke up real early and got picked up to go canyoneering. Basically, we were going to hike into the woods and then do 5 rappels, 4 of them down waterfalls. I had never done real rappelling before, so I was looking forward to it.

The first rappel was the longest, unfortunately. I went down somewhat tentatively, only getting to about 6 yards at a stretch. I wish we had save the big one for last, as I was ready to do some long descents by the end, but it was still a blast.

They provided us a basic lunch and then brought us back to the hotel. That afternoon we had signed up for the 1 to 5PM stint at the Eco Termales hot springs, a very 'exclusive' (limited to 100 people) set of 4 successfully hotter springs that were fed by the volcano. The setting was gorgeous and when we got there around 1:30, we were the 3rd and 4th people there. We had the place to ourselves for another hour before a large group of high schoolers from North Carolina showed up. While it was no longer quite as exclusive, at least it was good eye candy.

We eschewed going back to catch another lava viewing, which was really surprising because usually I'm the first one to do whatever is necessary to maximize viewing opportunities, vacation opportunities, picture stuff, etc.

The next morning we went to do the final Arenal excursion to see the Fortuna waterfall. This required a rather long descent of maybe 1 mile to the base of the waterfall, with numerous views of the waterfall along the way. When we got to the bottom, the waterfall pool was pretty much empty. We set up various photo ops, and then I had to do my usual diving thing. The first dive was very minor, and while I was in the water, I researched the second dive, which was off a much smaller rock. There were some rocks underwater, so I had to feel them with my feet to make sure they weren't doing the optical illusion thing and were really close to the surface. After confirming my landing spot, I climbed the rock, had to take off my tevas because the rocks were so narrow and slippery, then climbed the rock to get set. I was on a very narrow perch, and then once the video was running, went to do the dive. As I pushed off, my foot slipped and I landed very short of my intended spot. I quickly put my hands in front of me to protect my body, and fortunately I was still able to push off the sand/rocks without a potentially nasty injury.

Long climb back up the mountain, then back to the hotel to shower and check out by noon before heading off to Monteverde Cloud Forest National Park. This was going to involve driving around Lake Arenal and was supposed to take around 4 hours. I drove again, and we made the park in record time, just over 2 hours (or something like that). Basically well more than an hour under the recommended time. This was an interesting trip. After rounding the lake, we veered southward away from the lake. At one point the road forked to the left and we went straight. A hundred yards later, some guy stopped us in the street and basically explained how the way to Monteverde was back the other way at the fork. He had a turn by turn map that he wanted to sell us for 4 bucks. Well, always ready to support the locals, we purchased the map. It ended up being useful if only to monitor our progress. But 20 yards after we went back and took the other fork, the road disappeared and we went offroading. At times, the road was TERRIBLE and I had to drop to around 5 miles per hour. But for the most part I was able to continue to be pretty aggressive, passing lamer drivers at will. Fortunately Christine didn't have a problem with my driving. It would have sucked having to slow down or be less aggressive, because we had a long road to go.

After finally getting there and settling into our hotel (Hotel Arco Iris), we signed up for a night tour. We spent the rest of the afternoon reading, sunning, I went for a walk around the town triangle (really, the town was a single paved triangle surrounded by dirt roads). Finally, we got picked up for the night tour, got equipped with lanterns, and went walking. We saw a lot of sleeping birds, bugs, a sloth, and at one point, he enticed a tarantula out of its burrow. Boy, was that thing HUGE.

Next morning we had signed up for a zipline tour with Selvatura. I had also done the zipline tour at Tortuguero. Fortunately I did it in this order, because I would have
been VERY disappointed in the Tortuguero one after this one. There were twice as many ziplines, and the views were spectacular. At one point, we had to do a 700 yard line. It was so long that we had to go in pairs to have enough wait to reach the other end. This was great as it allowed me to take video and still footage of the traverse, because the guys wouldn't let me take a hand off the lines for doing video. Christine took anchor and did all the braking. This shot shows another pair about halfway across the traverse.

The highlight of the zipline tour was actually the Tarzan swing. I had done a tiny Tarzan swing at Tortuguero, basically swinging between two platforms like 10 yards apart. Whoopee. I was the first one to, which ended up being great because I had no expectations. They hooked me up from the platform, and there was no platform on the other end. He tells me to grab the rope, and then says jump. I look at him a little dumbfounded, then jump off. I process to drop maybe 30 yards and swing out into open space and REALLY high. I definitely shouted in surprise. TOTALLY cool. Swung back and forth a bunch of times before I shed enough speed that they could wrangle me in. Then sat and watched while everyone else did it before moving on.

After finishing the tour, back to the hotel to shower and check out. We were off to Manual Antonio national Park, down on the Pacific coast. 10 minutes into the trip out of Monteverde, we could see the Pacific beckoning to us. I drove again and made excellent time. They had projected between 4 and 5 hours to get there. We made in just under 2.5 hours. It was a solid hour of 4 wheeling again before we finally got to a paved road. I was fortunate to not get stuck behind any cars for any length of time. That was probably the benefit of such a crappy conditioned road, in that cars were going so slowly it was easy to quickly pass them even though the sightlines wouldn't have allowed it on a paved road. It was a pleasure to finally get out to the main highway and not have my teeth continually shaking. This main highway included two one lane bridges where traffic stacked up on either side while the other side went across. We waited less than 10 minutes at each bridge, although we found out later at the hotel that depending on the time of day, you can wait for more than an hour at each bridge. I guess that was one of the reasons the estimate for the transit time was so large. We ended up getting in around 2:30PM. We had saved quite a bit at the earlier hotels, so we splurged on this one (La Mansion Inn). This was the view from the hotel.

It ended up being this awesome place in the ass end of nowhere. After we settled in for a bit, we walked down to a private beach and went swimming. On the way back from the hotel, we got our first monkeys (white faced).

Then back to the hotel for pool time before showering up and trying to catch the sunset somewhere (yeah Pacific coast). Well, we found a nice outdoor restaurant with a great view, unfortunately it didn't actually capture the sun going into the ocean, but it was a spectacular sunset nonetheless.

The hotel had a tiny little bar called the bat cave. The comments on TripAdvisor.com were amusing, so we checked it out for a drink. It was scorching hot, they had a steam machine going, and you could tell the bartender was miserable also. But we had to do it to get some pictures. We definitely did NOT do the bat cave the following night though.

The next morning we took the car down to the entrance of Manuel Antonio and parked at the official lot. We walked into the park, which basically consisted of a number of spectacular beaches with trails between them and into the woods. The guides recommended hiring tour guides to maximize wildlife viewing, but Christine had had enough and was going to do the beach thing. I figured I would be able to crib off of others peoples discoveries, so I traipsed off into the park. I ended up walking every trail except for one that went to a waterfall which I was told was totally dried up as it was the end of the dry season. Manuel Antonio is reknowned for its monkeys. I had seen few monkeys since I got to Costa Rica, and for the first few hours, the trails were cold. I was starting to get a little annoyed, when I reached the end of the main trail (which was a solid 2 miles in). I had not taken any water, and I was walking pretty aggressively as I was impatient. I was paying very close attention to make sure that I didn't get dehydrated. All of a sudden the trail ended at this little concrete slab with a gorgeous overlook of yet another inlet, and there was a couple there that spoke a language I didn't recognize. More importantly, there was a little tribe of at least 6 white faced monkeys that were no further than 20 yards from us. We watched them play for the next half hour.

One monkey that I had heard (and heard of) a number of times during the trip was the Howler monkey. Let me tell you, they are aptly named. Their howl is incredibly loud. We heard it from the hotel in Manuel Antonio from at least a few miles away. Well, after 'feasting' on the white faced monkeys, literally a hundred yards away on my trip back down the same path I ran into a group of 3 people that were watching a group of howler monkeys. So, another half hour spent there watching the howlers. Unfortunately, I was never videoing when they howled, but it was AMAZINGLY loud from that close.

Finally I made it back to the car and then the drive to the hotel. Spent some time at the pool 'bar' reading and drinking foofroo(sp?) drinks before showering up for the final night. This time we asked at the desk for the best sunset place. Duly informed, we were off in the car, and they were right. Another outdoor deck overlooking the forest, and it had a great view of the ocean. A whole bunch of people were there to catch the same view. Had some snacks and drinks, then off to another restaurant for dinner before turning in. Next morning had to catch another puddle jumper flight at 9AM in order to make our 12:30PM return flight from San Jose. We did, and thus ends my adventure.

After looking in blogger some more, it looks like you can upload videos, so I will try and edit the dive video to make it smaller, and then upload it to the other entry (or maybe just a new entry all by its lonesome).

Costa Rica, Part 1

2008-04-06T23:53:00.001-04:00

Greetings from Costa Rica

Why here? Long story. Basically I had 35,000 United miles expiring by July 31st. I found that could get me to Hawaii or Central America. Having been to Hawaii enough, and Central America never (Tijuana doesn't count), it was an easy choice. After doing some research, I settled on Costa Rica over Belize/Guatemala. Then I found out that tickets to Vancouver actually cost over $600 (and Seattle not much less). For a lark, I checked on fare prices to Costa Rica, and found that I could get there for $400. So I used the frequent flyer miles to go to Seattle instead. And since I had spent a couple of weeks looking at Costa Rica by now, I HAD to go there anyway...

Unfortunately, my flight was at 6:45 AM. I get to the airport at 5:50, it is dead, through security in 2 minutes. I bought the Stellar Black Hole bag regular after checking out the Patagonia website. Jimmy mentioned later that Hh had written a whole blog article on it. I vaguely remembered, but at this point in my trip, I agree with him. The bag is great. Probably a little big for your standard frisbee weekend (and it needs to be checked), but otherwise perfect for a trip like the one I'm on right now. Flight through Miami to San Jose, and I arrive at around 1PM. There is a little confusion trying to get a taxi to the hotel (Adventure Inn in Ciudad Cariari) before I finally figure out how to get one of the recommended, official airport taxis.

I arrive at the hotel and quickly realize I don't feel like trying to get into San Jose proper to do touristing. I do some errands locally, use the hotels internet to catch up on email, hot tub, beers in the bar, ya know, the usual vacation thing. Next morning I have to wake up at 5AM to be picked up at 5:30 by a bus to take me to Tortugueru National Park. The whole journey will get us there around 2:30PM. We went to a few other hotels to pick up the rest of the passengers and the guide, then off we went. Picking up the passengers in San Jose hotels confirmed the rightness of my decision the previous day not to visit San Jose. It was pretty dungy. Our travelling group ends up being family of four from NYC, including a biology teacher who had taken his class here for the past two years, and was researching a subsequent trip, a french couple, a spanish couple, and two older ladies, I was never able to determine whether they were a couple...

We finally left San Jose and made our way up through Braulio Carrillo National Park, which was a gorgeous mountainous and green park. We didn't make any stops, just passing through. The road eventually devolved down to a dirt road with a bunch of pebbles. At one point we were passing banana plantations on both sides. Our guide gave us the entire lowdown on the planting and harvesting process. Let me tell you, I will never look at a banana the same way again. The reason that bananas are so cheap is NOT because it is a mechanized process. That is what things like Nafta and Cafta get us. Not that I necessarily agree with it, but based on everything we saw, there won't be a mechanized process for a LONG time, at least not at this stage of robotic development. Each banana bunch hanging from a plant had a blue plastic bag around it to protect it from the elements AND bugs. And the plants, while in 'rows', had canals going through them for waste water, basically totally uneven ground. Bunches would get picked, attached to a wire harness, and once 25 bunches were picked, a hauler would drag them along the wire to the processing plant. There, smaller bunches would be cut off each main bunch which had between 60 and a 100 bananas. They would dump them in water which would get sprayed/cleaned and passed down to the next set of people, who would cut them into smaller bunches. The whole spraying/cleaning process also sealed up the cut end of the banana bunch so that the bananas wouldn't dehydrate through the opening. Then another group would take the individual bunches and bag them, Another conveyor then brought it to a final stage where the bagged bunches were put into boxes. And the boxes had the Del Monte label on them. Our guide said that all of the plants were the same size, there were no economies of scale to be had, and from what I saw, they were right. Picture below.

We come to the end of the road and now we have to wait for our boat. That eventually arrives while it has started raining. Fortunately the boat has a roof, but with open sides. We head off down the canals towards the town of Tortuguero. That takes about an hour+. We pull up in Tortuguero and have our first 'tour'. Tortuguero has a population of maybe 2-300 people. At one point I walk by a little B&B that I had emailed about vacancies. They hadn't had any, and in retrospect I was very happy about that. Back to the boat, and then off to Turtle Beach Lodge, which was another 35 minutes away, including a turnoff off the main canal into a tiny canal which couldn't have had more than 1-3 feet of clearance on each side of the boat for the ENTIRE trip. Talk about resupply fun. When the tide was low, they actually had to lift the motor most of the way out of the water otherwise it would drag the bottom. Pretty wild. We finally arrive at the lodge around 2:30 and head off straight to lunch, which is buffet-style. Our table is identified by the name of our guide, Eloy. We are there for the duration. I neglected to mention that we had picked up another guide in Sarapiqui, a friend of the guy from NYC who had done trips with him before. He was part of the research team, and ended up being very useful as a counterpoint to Eloy. And his English was a little better, but no knock on Eloy. After lunch, we finally check into our rooms. I have a room at the end of a series of bungalows with screens on 3 sides. Very cute, and surprisingly isolated. In the meantime, I had befriended the French couple, and got a chance to refresh my French. It did get confusing after awhile, switching from French with the couple to English with the family, and then speaking French to the help before realizing I had to switch back to English, or my pidgen Spanish every now and then (3 years in high school). After checking out my room, I headed out to the grounds, and 100 yards later, I was on the beach facing the Caribbean. They had strenuously suggested that we NOT swim, which was too bad considering the good body surfing opportunities. Although there was some yellow foam/smegma on a lot of the waves, and I never asked what it was. I walked along the beach quite a ways down, did the whole photo thing, and then rested up in a hammock for awhile and thought of Lost... :)

Then a swim in the turtle-shaped pool, at which point it started raining again (I have always loved swimming in the rain). Finally, drinks, dinner, drinks, a little pool with the NYC dad and his 8 year old son Tomio, who actually got the ball in 3 times while his dad and I looked on in amazement (never where they were supposed to go in, naturally). There was another large group of French people, a few Americans and a large young Spanish-speaking contingent, but nothing to really glom on. And then off to bed for a little reading because we were going to have another early morning to do a boat tour. Up at 5:30, on the boat at 6:10. This trip was guided by Erich, the friend of the NYC guy. We slowly went along the canal, seeing lots of cool birds, lizards, basilisk types, and finally towards the end, we finally saw some spider monkeys. We sat and watched them for about 20 minutes before heading back. On the way back, 5 minutes before we pulled in, the French woman looked in the trees behind us and spotted another pair of spider monkeys, mother and child, and we ended up watching them for another 15 minutes. VERY cool. I got some good film and ok pictures.

Back to the lodge for breakfast and an hour off before going out to the jungle tour. I forgot to mention that there was not a cloud in the sky during the boat tour. Of course, for the 10:30AM jungle walk, it started pouring. I was well equipped with my Patagonia Rain Shadow jacket and a tiny portable umbrella that I had brought, so that I could take footage without having to worry about the cameras getting wet. We saw cool stuff like a strangler fig that had destroyed and replaced one large tree, red poisonous frogs, some spider monkeys in the distance, a bunch of birds and cool plants. It rained the ENTIRE time, and pretty hard also. It definitely made it feel truly like the 'rain' forest in which we were walking. The added benefit was that it kept away the mosquitos. Just before we started, the Spanish group came out and had mentioned that they had been bludgeoned with mosquitos. I saw maybe one the entire walk. Considering that I was already waffling on whether to continue my anti-malarial treatment, the lack of mosquitos during this portion of the trip sealed the deal. Towards the end of the walk (I was bringing up the rear) all of a sudden I heard a buzzing sound around my umbrella. I shook it and it was still there. I shook it some more, walked faster to catch up to the group, and it didn't stop. Finally I look at the top of the umbrella and don't notice anything but still hear the buzzing, and then it begins. I started getting bitten, and I look down at my shirt and I am COVERED with what looks like large flies. The french couple is just ahead of me, and I call out to them and start giving them my umbrella and camera bag as I am frantically taking my rain coat off. I am starting to panic as I continue to get bitten/stung (I don't know which yet), and we call out to Eloy, who is well ahead. Now I'm down to my shirt, and I look down and it is festooned with bugs. The french couple sees the back of my shirt and it is similarly accoutred. I frantically take the shirt off and start shaking it to get them off. Eloy has gotten to us by then and he picks a couple of them off to show to everyone, identifying them as a stingless wasp. He shows the over-large mandibles and says that they were only biting me, and that there was nothing to worry about. I put the shirt back on, and a couple of minutes later get 'stung' on my right arm, think it is psychosomatic, then get stung again, have to take off rain coat, camera bag, and shirt again. Pull the arm inside out, and sure enough, there is a goddam wasp on the inside of the shirt sitting there laughing at me. Flick him off, and I finally finish the tour pest free. But it was exciting/memorable, let me tell you. We also took a fallen coconut and watched as Eloy opened it up to get to the big hairy seed inside, and then crack open the seed so that we could try the shell and drink some coconut juice. I am normally not fond of coconut, but when I tried the shell, it basically tasted mostly like a nut, with VERY little coconut. Makes me cringe to think of what they do to it to concentrate the coconut taste. The juice was pretty cool also.

Nothing else particularly glam. A drink, dinner, a couple more drinks, and then played pool against this one guide and smoked him 5 games to 2. The most satisfying one was the first one where I couldn't sink a ball until he had only one left to my 7, and then I finally went on a run and beat him in two turns. Not that I'm competitive...

Of course, the next morning I had to wake up at the crack of ass yet again, as I had a 7:05 flight out of Tortuguero to get back to San Jose. This involved the 40 or so minute boat ride to the airport. When I say airport, we're talking an one floor open sided building maybe the footprint of my living room, with two guys outside with a sheet of paper checking off names as we show up. And when they weighed my bag to see if I was under the 27 pound limit, they used a handheld spring scale! When I arrive, there is one plane there, Paradise Air, which takes off 5 minutes later. I walk to the end of the runway (maybe 40 yards away) to get some footage of the runway and our plane landing. The runway isn't exactly paved, but nor is it dirt. More like craggy pavement that hasn't really been touched up in a few years. I see our plane coming in finally, and take some footage of the landing and a picture as it approaches. It turns off 50 yards before it reaches us. Imagine doing this in the US.

I walk back to get my bags and get in line to get on the plane. It seats maybe 15 people total. Shockingly, I'm the first guy in line after we provide our bags, and as I'm getting on, I ask the guy what is the best side to sit on, and he says the left. I sit in front just behind the pilot (knees in the back of his seat) and get my gear ready. I take footage of the takeoff and random pictures of the journey.

25 minutes later, we are in San Jose at 7:30 instead of 2:30. Well worth the $90. I grab a taxi to my hotel, fortunately they have a room ready for me, and I settle in while I figure out what to do with my day. After discussion with the front desk and the realization that any tours I want to do have already left, we settle on my renting a taxi for the day for $80. I tell Jorje that I will be ready to go in about 40 minutes, once I am done settling in. I go to my room, settle in, catch up on email, and then grab my backpack, bathing suit (ends up being an essential thing to bring as we'll see later), camera gear, and money of course. To this point, I have still not used my credit/debit cards for anything besides an initial withdrawal at the airport of colones. EVERYTHING can be paid for in US dollars or colones, which I wasn't completely aware of, so at this point I'm trying to divest myself of the roughly $600 in colones that I took out. I had also neglected to inform my two credit cards that I was going to be travelling abroad, so the later I have to charge something, the better, so that they won't have a chance to freeze them until it is too late (fraud protection).

So I get into the taxi with Jorje and we are off to Volcan Poas (Poas volcano). Naturally, Jorje speaks only a little english, and no french, so I have to dig deep into my 3 years of high school spanish. It ends up being great, as I get a crash course in vocabulary and other as we try and communicate. There was a lot of 'como se dice'. There were only a few concepts that took a long time to figure out, like 'verb', etc. We never actually got the generic word for verb, but didn't end up needing it. By the end of the trip, we were conversing reasonably well, if in very short sentences. As we were driving, I asked where the volcano was, and when he pointed it out, with nary a cloud near it, I asked if that was normal, and he said no way. Maybe 3/4 of the time it was covered in clouds. I was thrilled that I was going to be able to see it sans clouds. Sure enough, we got to the volcano and still no clouds. He walked with me to the actual overlook, took a few pictures of me with the volcano, and then as we walked back, and I was going to take the loop trail to Botos Lagoon, I told him that if he wanted, he was more than welcome to wait for me back at the car.

I think he was happy about that, and after taking the loop, I understood why. It was pretty long, and had a number of steeps to it. But it was well worth it, as the lagoon was gorgeous.

45 minutes later, back at the visitors center, lame tourist goods, I grab a large bottle of water, and then back to the parking lot to catch up with Jorje. Next stop, La Paz Waterfall Garden. Takes about 45 minutes to get there, and then he brings me to the gate, and we arrange to meet after I'm done, maybe 1.5-2 hours later. The garden is pretty cool, with the initial walk taking you through a huge bird cage with a bunch of tropical birds, a hummingbird cage, frog cage, snake cage, etc., before getting to the second part of the trek which involves walking along a narrow path to walk down a river and see 5 reasonably gorgeous waterfalls. Naturally, I'm doing all the little side trips to get footage.

The tour ends at the top of the final waterfall, named La Paz. I can see at the bottom that there is a road crossing it, so once the shuttle brings us back to the lodge, and I catch up with Jorje, on the way out I tell him I want to go to the bottom of the falls. He says sure, and we drive on down and park. I take some footage, he takes some pictures of me near the falls, and while we are there, some guy randomly climbs down to a ledge and jumps into the pool at the bottom. It is higher than the diving board that John Bar may remember from Jonjoping at Worlds in '96. Naturally, intrigued, as I'm walking back to the car I make up my mind and tell Jorje that I want to go in also. Jorje had said that it was the first time he had ever seen someone do that, and he was there all the time. I put on my bathing suit, walk Jorje through how to take a video using my camera, and then as I'm walking to the ledge, I see the guy (who had since jumped with his son), walk up to him and ask him if he had touched bottom. Once he said no, I made up my mind. I climbed down to the ledge, and as I was standing there overlooking the pool, I realized it was even higher than I had originally thought. Nonetheless, I looked over to the bridge, gave Jorje the thumbs up, and then proceed to set up and do a perfect swan dive into the pool. Well, it felt like it at the time. Boy, the water was COLD. But the crowd was suitable impressed, and Jorje actually got almost all of it on the camera. After we got back to the car, we had parked right behind the other guy, and his kid showed me a picture of the dive, so I gave them my email address and asked them to email me the picture. If they send it, I will add it to the blog below.

And that's it for part 1.

The cleanse, Day 5

2008-01-24T12:30:00.001-05:00

Before the diet, I purchased my first real scale from Costco, some Weight Watchers digital scale, pretty sweet looking actually. I figured that while the weight loss was incidental to the diet, I was very interested to see how much weight I would lose. Well, I have lost 10 pounds so far as of this morning, or 4 days in. And the loss has been pretty steady, although I expect it to taper before the end.

I've been working at home all week, and haven't really left the house much except for a quick trip to the store and the library. So I have been wearing sweats and haven't tried on any of my regular pants to see how they fit. I started at 184 pounds, and am now down to 174 with 3 days left. Wednesday morning was the first time I felt a little sketchy when I woke up. Once I had gotten the kids to school I started to feel better, and 2 hours in I felt fine (or normal for the diet).

Possible justifications for that is that as the 'plaque' is sloughed off of your intestines, pockets of toxins can be released that flood you in the short term and can cause effects like that. Whether that was the real cause or something a little straightforward or physically nefarious, who can tell. But it makes for good press.

I've been doing a sauna every night to help with the toxin flushing (I have an infrared sauna in my basement) and that definitely helps eliminate the excess water that I have been drinking a lot of during the day. A nurse that I know expressed concern about my electrolyte level, but I figure with all of the pills and capsules I'm taking, I have that covered. Hopefully no hyperhydration here. Normally I'm not supposed to eat until Sunday morning, but with Goaltimate at 10AM that morning, I'm going to have to eat something Saturday night AND Sunday morning or else I will be a puddle of jelly on the field with zero energy reserves. So I'm starting to plan that dinner although I will have the kids so that will make anything in excess somewhat difficult. I'm thinking Pad Thai or something along those lines.

The stuff cost $78 including shipping (down from $121 MSRP love the internet) and I have probably saved food money this week, although it might be close. Yesterday night I felt a little weak also, although my barbells came in yesterday. I won't start any of that until after the diet, seeing that I have had zero protein this week. Doing my 'stuff' at the UCPC will be interesting. Look for the guy with the backpack carrying all the pill bottles, apple juice, etc...

I'm also going to be on a panel at the UCPC, talking about 'Professionalism in Ultimate' It should be interesting, although they moved us off of the 5-6PM slot where we had no competition to the slot before lunch. With all of the other presos going on, it will be interesting to see how many people we get to stop by.

Wouldn't that be cool if I actually dropped to 170 by the end? I bet if I didn't have dinner Saturday night, I would be 170 by the morning. Oh well.

The cleanse, Day 2

2008-01-21T14:08:00.000-05:00

So, I started the fast Sunday morning. In true fashion, I did a little excess the previous night, going to a housewarming and not getting to sleep until around 3:15. So instead of starting at 7AM, I didn't roll out of bed until 8:30 feeling a little hungover.

I made the first shake and fortunately I had some apple juice in the fridge, otherwise it wouldn't have gone down too smoothly, although I barely put any juice in it. I did a quick assessment/count and I figure I will be getting at most 500 calories per day probably closer to 300 depending on how much apple juice I use in the shakes.

I had to run to Goaltimate at 10AM so had my pills right before leaving, and then brought stuff to make my next shake since I didn't know how long Goaltimate would go. We are running a 5 week league right now, so I have additional incentive to go. We ended up winning our game that day 3 games to 1 (it was REALLY frickin' cold, so we blew off best of 7). Then back to the house to clean up some more, more pills, more shakes as I tried to make up for the lost time. Watched the Pats game on the projector in the living room. While not stellar, it WAS an exciting game, considering only a 14-12 lead in the 4th quarter. Then watched some of the Packers loss. After TV was over, I sparked up the sauna in the basement and did 45 minutes there, sweating out all the water I had drunk during the day. Hey, in for a penny, in for a pound.

The toughest thing about it so far was watching football and seeing the fast food commercials. I rarely feel like I have to eat because I'm hungry, but I DO enjoy the taste of food, and that is definitely what I miss the most. Even today, I don't really feel especially hungry, except for a low-level emptiness which is pretty easy to ignore.

I weighed myself yesterday when I got out of bed, and weighed in at 184, with some excess fluid and food weight. This morning I was down to 181. It will be interesting to see what I weigh by the end of the week. I'm figuring somewhere around 175-77 but we'll see. Hell, more would be great, but I don't have my hopes up.

The cleanse

2008-01-18T11:20:00.000-05:00

So starting Sunday morning (well, Saturday night), I will be beginning a 7-day fast. While the point of this fast is not to lose weight, but more of a systemic cleanse, that will be a necessary and welcome side benefit. I recently bought a scale, and am disappointed to see myself hovering around 181-4. I would definitely like to get back down to the mid 170s or even lower.

Details on what I'm about to do can be found here. This is the 'product' that I will be using. While I haven't done this particular 'diet', I have done similar ones over the years, but I haven't done one since my kids, so at least 2001, and as I check Quicken, I see nothing since Jan 2008, which is when I migrated to Quicken from MacMoney. So, it has been at least 10 years.

You might ask, why now? Well, I have undergone some recent life changes, topic for another post, and have also realized that I need to get in a little better shape, take better care of myself, and I figure this is a good springboard to do that. The fasting portion shouldn't be that difficult, because I have always been able to ignore food cravings. And with all of the shakes and supplements, there will be enough activity going on, and with the schedule of something every 1.5 hours, it will engage my attention enough that I don't dwell on it. About the only issue will be that I will be cooking for the kids at night, and will not be able to eat with them. I guess I'll just have to make them really crappy food that I won't miss... So no drinking for a week, I expect I won't really make it out of the house that much in general. The biggest issue will be the UCPC conference on Saturday, the last day of the cleanse. I will have to cart around all my pills and shakes in a backpack or something. And now that I'm actually 'presenting'. Oy! Maybe I'll talk about it re: Professionalism in ultimate.

As part of this personal renewal, I also purchased a set of barbells. Yes, funny I know. There have been too many situations recently where I have had to lift something, or do something upper body that has resulted in sore arms, general aches or even what would feel like bone-level soreness. I have never possessed any real upper-body strength (hucking is all technique...), but another facet of aging is bone loss, etc. And resistance training is the best thing to combat that. So I will be beginning a workout program to try and strengthen my upper body. There is no way I have the patience, wherewithal or money to join a gym, so I'm going to have to do it at the house. The barbells will go in the TV room so I can work while I catch up on my 'shows'. Unfortunately, the writers strike is a little annoying, but I guess it is giving me a chance to clean up the house also.

I also have a spinning bike that I purchased from Bryan Doo a few years ago. I have to admit, trying to do spinning alone is pretty lame. I haven't used it that much, and I'm not sure these workouts will extend to that, although I think I'm going to try and do the whole tabata thing on the bike that the Jims talk about (Paramello and Biancolo). That will be a lot easier mentally for me than sitting on the damn thing for 45 minutes and trying to vary a workout.

So, barbells (the Bowflex 5-50 pounder for space reasons) and a spinning bike. I guess I'll have to dig up a bench from somewhere so I have more variety in my upper body stuff, but we'll start with the little baby steps.

I will keep you posted next week in excruciating detail on the progress of the cleanse. Maybe I'll do a daily journal on how I feel, and whether the toxic cleansing is really having an impact on my physical and mental wellbeing. Stay tuned!

Nationals 2007 review

2008-01-04T16:31:00.001-05:00

So now that I have a little distance from Nationals, woo-hoo! I'm going to Worlds baby! More relevant is that I have received my ultimate magazine AND my Ultivillage CD (great work as always Rob).

Since the magazine came out, the DoG masters list has been woofin' up the finals stats of course. We duplicated our 1995 success by having only 3 turnovers in the finals, again all by the offense. As I was just remarking earlier today, I was the one who opened the spigot with an inside out over Alec Ewalds head early on (they did NOT score on this turnover, which is the only personal stat that matters...). I mentioned that I provide a valuable service to the team by turning it over first so that others don't have to stress about being the first. And my ego is big enough to handle the damage. But maybe that's why I have shifted from trying to start games on O to starting on D. Maybe I want the D to screw up first. I'll have to think about that. I also broke the plexiglass shield and scored the second to last goal without cutting myself. I even scored the last offensive goal in the semis against Troubled Past. Maybe I should recast myself as a cutter. Nah!

It was sort of cool having all of the stats on the same page in the magazine. Now I know it wasn't quite as windy on Saturday afternoon as it was Sunday, but c'mon. In the masters final, there were 11 total turnovers, 3 by DoG and 8 by Surly. In the open final, 44 (23/21), in the mixed, 54 (30/24) and in the women's, 41 (24/17) go women. I attribute the fewer turnovers in the women's final to the mismatched nature of the teams, winning 15-6 yet still combining for 41 turnovers. As for the mixed stats, well, you probably suspect how I feel about that.

So, I had to take another look at the DVDs. It was much nicer watching the masters final on the big screen than squinting at the UVTv, although Jim and I remarked how easy it was to recognize people on the field by how they move, regardless of the fidelity of the video. The masters final's coverage began from the crows nest at Tourney Central because the main cameras were covering the men's semis. This was actually a cool vantage point because you could see the play developing on the field a little more. That is probably the main objection that I have to much of the Ultivillage footage in that it is often very hard to see what is happening away from the disc. It almost seems like they should have had a crows nest video also, and used the closeup stuff more for the replays on good plays. Although they did have the steel structures on the sideline, it still wasn't that 'widescreen'. Regardless, the masters final didn't look too dissimilar to the Open final. I would say that Surly played much more of the huck n hope than we did. We hucked it maybe 2 or 3 times, one of which resulted in a turnover to Eric Carr. Otherwise, we played pretty conservatively, at least compared to the current game trend.

The reason I wanted to watch the video was to see if I could see any big differences between the two games. One of the reasons there probably weren't more turnovers in our game is that we had only 1 MTP (multi-turnover point) and that was on my turnover when Alec got it back with a layout block. Otherwise, every (rare) turnover resulted in a goal for the other team. Watching the open game, it was embarrassing the number of MTPs. I saw the Open game live and the video was a great refresh. By half time, this was definitely Bravo's game to lose, and lose they did. They came out of half and scored to make it 9-6 and then proceeded to have the disc multiple times per point, whether on offense or defense, and couldn't put it in. Both Sockeye and Bravo had UGLY turnovers. Silly drops, silly hucks to nowhere that were thrown literally just as the guy was beginning his cut, so by the time he turned around to track the disc, the wind had taken it off the original line and he had no chance. It was also surprising the number of open people that were looked off on both teams. The teams did not appear to adjust their game plan to the conditions at all.

I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm trying to conclude (besides that DoG is dead, long live DoG masters, 1 of 3, etc.), I just wanted to point out the disparities between the two games and bemoan the ascendancy of the huck n hope, I guess. Yes, it makes for good viewing, but hell, I'd rather just win, ya know?

Xmas in France, la conclusion

2007-12-30T08:26:00.000-05:00

After the gift-giving Sunday, we ended up having another huge meal for lunch in the upstairs dining room. This time I had a more interesting seat, as I was seated between two of my 20ish nieces. It was fascinating to talk about their lives and get the perspective of a college students in France. One of the things I remarked with them, that I had observed in many of my conversations was that the French educational system really forces the 'users' to figure out what they want to do with their lives much earlier than we do in the states, having to specialize in their post high school (and often even during high school) education. I leave it for the user to decide whether this is a good idea. I'm sure the corporate world feels like it is a good idea, as they are more than happy to see the lemmings self-organize early on, but I'll save that diatribe for another time.

One of the things I neglected to mention about the previous night's dinner is that my aunt is apparently renowned for the cheese plates that she breaks out during these galas. Well, they are right. Before dessert, they passed around two two foot diameter platters stuffed with over 10 cheeses each. Naturally, the platters made a long stop at my plate as I cut a piece of each one onto my plate. Naturally, this was accompanied with copious amounts of French bread. I have to admit, I do love 'stinky' French cheeses. While you can get many if not most of them in the states, you usually have to go to places like Formaggio's Kitchen in Cambridge and pay through the nose. And you definitely won't have access to a lot of the 'micro' cheeses (similar to microbreweries). Well, they passed the same cheese plate around for Sunday lunch AND Sunday dinner, and I chowed down each time.

After lunch, there were lots of motions to try and get a soccer game up, but these never really came to fruition. So I corralled Gillem, a 19 yr old (or so) cousin, who had been asking a couple of people if they wanted to play tennis, and asked him if he wanted to play. He was psyched to play, so we changed into our sport clothes (shorts for him, T-shirt and sweats for me), and headed out to the tennis court. My brother had brought a couple of rackets, so I picked one of them, made a mental note to razz him about getting them regripped, which was especially difficult in the cold air, and we headed off to the tennis court, which was on the adjacent property. My aunt's husband (yes, uncle) and his two brothers own contiguous properties in the area, all centered around a castle which is owned by one the them. The tennis courts was on the castle property, and we had open access to all of it.

Gillem and I set up camp on the very hard court and starting hitting some rallies. Other than playing against my brother a few times this summer in Rye, I had not played any tennis of note in at least 10 years, and no more than 20 times since I graduated high school (and the high school tennis team) 22 years ago. Ultimate quickly took over and did not leave much free time to keep my tennis game up. We hacked around for quite awhile, and another nephew, Charles-Henri, joined us for awhile, although he played on my side which cut my chances in half... He finally gave up with a bad knee, and Gillem and I hit around for another while before I asked whether he wanted to play a game. He was all for it, so we flipped for serve and I won and chose to serve. Meanwhile, the sun was pretty low in the sky, so he wisely chose to receive in the sun for one game. I won that game, and then we switched sides. By now, the sun was even lower, and directly in my eyes. I had to hold my hand up to try and block out the sun during his serve, and when he tossed the ball up, I always lost it. Fortunately, he always served to my forehand side, so the ball would eventually appear. If he had served to my backhand, it would have never come out of the sun until too late. We had probably 10 deuces in this game before I finally won. I ended up taking the first set 6-0, although we had a number of good points and close games. I won the first game to start the second set, and this is where the wheels fell off. Well, not really. He won the next game to make it 1-1. The games and points were definitely closer as we were both 'warmed up' by now. Of course, as we were getting warmed up, the temperature was continuing to drop now that the sun had gone down. By the end, it couldn't have been more than 35 degrees out there. Despite a number of close games, I eventually took the second set 6-1 and we called it a day as we were actually having difficulty seeing the ball by the end.

We walked back to the compound, and were accosted by various relatives on the way. Gillem sheepishly admitted to his loss, while I mentioned that I had had to defend our generation against the upstarts. Ultimate conditioning definitely made a difference in the game, even if the season has been over for two months. I think it is more of a competitive mindset and willingness to sacrifice your body. I ran down a number of balls, both short and lobs, that I know he was very surprised that I got. It felt great to run again. I should explore tennis a little more in the off season for some cross-training. Of course, that would involve purchasing a new tennis racket, since I lost mine like 15 years ago after playing Jimmy P over at MIT one day. I haven't seen it since.

That night, the conquering hero... well, we all had another great dinner in the attic, I was in another section of young relatives, next to my 15 year old niece Chrystel on one side, and relatively the same age Maelys on the other. They had made sure to set us up boy/girl around the entire table for every meal. It was great fun, and Gillem sat next to Maelys, so we were plying each other with red wine for the entire meal. Of course, I had to offer it to him because my cousin Sophie, his mom, was observing from across the table with a jaundiced eye, but he definitely kept up. Another round on the cheese plate, a large serving from the local bottle of Calvados, and then we were done.

One other sidebar from this dinner. At one point, I have no idea how it came up, but I asked the kids if they could get their hands on a can of beer. This went into a discussion of shotgunning, and I was telling them I could finish a can of beer in under 3 seconds. I never explained how, just that if they got me a can, I would show them. They didn't have any, of course, and we were racking our minds trying to figure out how to get one. Next door neighbors, local gas station. Unfortunately, it was Sunday night of Xmas in France, and Sunday is already pretty closed unlike the states. I eventually said I would show them with ANY can, but we couldn't find one. I never gave them the details on how I would do it. It was funny, they were asking if I meant that I would empty the can that quickly, etc. They were disbelieving when I finally confirmed that I meant that I would actually consume and swallow the entire contents in under 3 seconds. Oh well, something to bring out of the quiver the next time I see them.

There was a lot of game-playing (backgammon and others). Meanwhile, during the whole stay there, I had setup my laptop in the main room with my downloaded pictures from the visit to Tanqueux (the compound) and had it running on a slide show for the entire time. As people passed by, they would watch for awhile and move on. I downloaded a new slug of pictures probably every 4 hours or so and would shift the slide show to the latest slug. It was definitely would be a topic of conversation at times.

Finally, I pack in preparation for my 9AM departure the next day, and we finally turn in around midnight. Up the next morning, get a ride to the local train station (RER) with my brother and mom, and then take it to Notre-Dame/St Michel, switch to another one, fortunately an express to CDG, and get to my plane with plenty of time to spare, although I had to remove a bunch of stuff from my checkin bag to make the weight limits. I also had fun with doing the wrong line because it was a Delta ticket on an Air France flight, but we eventually took off and got in an hour late. Georgia and the kids were waiting for me (Logan finally has a cell phone lot!), and my trip was over. Until the next one...

Oh yeah, and the final picture of the entire clan. I'm on the far left. Grandma is sitting in the middle with my father right behind her.

Xmas in France, part quatre

2007-12-23T04:41:00.000-05:00

So Thursday night we all met (brother, girlfriend and parents) at a restaurant called Le Troquet. None of us showed up together, but we all arrived with 5 minutes of 7:30 for our reservation. This was a basque restaurant that my brother knew about, and it was GREAT. Reasonably cheap menu fixe for appetizer, entree, and desert. I had the sausage sampler for appetizer, which was a basket of 9 different sausages that you could cut slices off to your hearts desire, complete with cornichons, pearl onions, and bread. For main course, I had deer in a yummy sauce, and pineapple skewers for dessert. Awesome! Then back to my brothers for our obligatory late night bottle of wine before crashing for my final night in downtown Paris.

The next day, up at 8:30ish and looking for something to do. I call my parents over at the place they are staying looking for ideas. They reel off a bunch of stuff that I have already done at one point or another in the last 15 years. I know, your hearts bleed for me, but it is already difficult enough to do something touristy again, and doing it ALONE is ridiculous. We couldn't come up with anything, so I went out for a walk, ended up at Les Halles mall, browsed for an hour, bought a Parisscope to see if there was anything going on, found the movie listings, and ended up planning to go to the Champs and see I Am Legend in v.o. (version originale, or English with French subtitles). It's funny, all the American movies playing on the Champs are in English with subtitles, where when you start doing the suburbs, it switches to the dubbed versions. It's also very amusing to see how they translate certain quintessential American expressions, and you realize what is lost in translation. Pretty good, if disturbing movie. I skimmed the book by Richard Matheson back in the day in a bookstore, but I don't remember enough of it to see whether the movie was faithful to the book or not. I believe it was not...

After the movie, I drifted back down the Champs, not having had ANYTHING to eat all day. I was expecting to have popcorn with the movie, but they were doing a bunch of construction, and did not sell anything. I ended up back at L'Entrecote, International Herald Tribune in hand, and had another serving of the fries and sauce while I caught up on the news for the first time since I was here. Nothing dramatic in the paper, unsurprisingly. Back to the apartment to start packing my bags, which I have to bring to my brothers apartment before we leave for my aunt's house. Including the transformer, which I was bringing for my laptop (and again, HUGELY heavy), my large rolling bag ended up being so heavy, that I eschewed taking it on the metro, and instead caught a bus to the train station. It ended up being that the worst stairs were the single flight out of the apartment. But when I mean heavy, it was probably 50+ pounds. Which of course will be too much for the airplane to travel for free. I expect that I will redistribute all the heavy stuff to my backpack, and also put a bunch of stuff in some plastic bags to carry as if they were 'purchases' that I had made since I passed through security.

Met my brother, we went to pick up his kids, and then off to Tanqueux (name of the 'compound'). We made great time, with surprisingly no traffic. An hour later, we showed up at a place I hadn't seen since my cousin's wedding 16 years ago. We get in around 10:30, and hang out until 12:30 to see the other cousin's dribbling in. They were totally organized, including a map of the place with all of the people's names in the rooms where they were staying. 60 total, and they had mattresses for everyone. They only had to borrow one mattress from some neighbors. Finally crash, and next morning, the rest of the family drifts in by lunch. At one point, we go for a long walk qround the property, which my 97-yr-old grandmother does in its entirety, which is mind-boggling. Probably about a mile walk. Back for lunch, with the older generation in the main room and the kids 14 and below in a separate building with some 'tenders' which was also all scheduled (in terms of who was covering what meal).

After lunch, the big event was going off to another part and cutting up some trees that had fallen into this waterway. Probably 15 of us, 3 chainsaws, a block and tackle plus steel cord for pulling things, and of course lots of electronic gear to capture it all. One of the trees was reasonably slim, but the other one had a diamter of at least 3 feet near the base, so it was cut off a slice, drag it up, cut off another slice (and roll the slice out of the way), and so on. We were out there for probably 3 hours. At one point, a bunch of the other cousins came out to spectate with a bunch of the wee bairns. Then back to the house for a snack, and preparation for the church service, which all 60 of us were going to attend. Apparently they had worked with the priest to plan the entire service. Well, we all pour out in our cars, get their 10 kilometers later, and walk into an unheated church! It was no more than 35 degrees in the church during the entire service. Foggy breath and everything. And they had planned a way too long service, with too much singing considering the conditions. I even had to get up at one point and do a reading in French. Fortunately I didn't screw up, but it was a little nerve-wracking.

Back to the house, and then they finally unveiled the second floor of the main house. My aunt had created a spectacular setup as you can see below.

I think we were about 35 people around the table. They had a table map and everything. With everything else going well so far, this was probably my biggest complaint on the weekend, as they put me on the side of the table with the oldest generation. People were intermingled freely, alternating sexes, but it wouldn't have been my first choice of seating. I made the best of it however. The meal was great, and we ended up with this cake for dessert, of which I had 3 servings. The third serving was with a large slug of Calvados, which had been made locally and was like firewater. From there, everyone descended to the main barn where they had set up a dance floor, complete with huge speakers, laptops running iTunes, and everyone danced for the next 3 hours. The French have this dance, le Roc, which is great to watch, and aggravates me because when they are doing it, I can't go on the floor because I would look like an idiot. Of course, I probably look like an idiot anyway... Finally crash at 1AM.

The next morning was the gift opening for the under 10 set. The prior night, the parents had set up stacks of gifts in the main room by the tree, with a shoe identifying whose stack it was (a shoe from each child). After breakfast, the kids descended and opened all the gifts in no more than 15 minutes. It was a total madhouse. Keep your hands AWAY from the area, or you might lose them. And right now I'm about to go outside and hurt myself playing soccer. Now THIS will probably be the last one before I get back. Let me see if I can dig up some more pictures.

Oh yeah, one of my cousins had to catch up on his flying, so he buzzed us at the house around 11AM on Saturday. Picture below.

And finally, the dancing

Xmas in France, part trois

2007-12-20T11:54:00.000-05:00

Now that Idris is refreshing ultimatetalk, these France blog entries will probably get me kicked off syndication, but oh well. Um, something about Worlds in Vancouver in 2008, Turkey Bowl in 2007, blah, blah, blah. Alright, back to Paris.

Today was walking day. Paris is a GREAT city to walk in, although this is the first time I've been here in December and I was older than 10. It is DEFINITELY cold here, not making it much out of the low 30's every day. This is atypically cold for this time of year, so the one benefit is that almost every day the sky has been completely blue, with not a cloud to be seen. If you have been to Paris, you know what I'm talking about, especially in the winter. This place is typically grimy, overcast, moist, etc. To have 5 straight cloudless days is a rarity, and has resulted in some great photo opportunities. The fact that the sun is low in the sky most of the day (much high latitude than Boston) helps to get good photo light for a good chunk of the morning and the afternoon. It is definitely weird to have it pretty dark out at 8AM in the morning, although it helps as I'm crashing on a couch, so I don't wake up to the sun until 8:30 or so (and I have those Bucky eye shades just in case).

So roused at 8:30 this morning, showered, and then headed south for Ile de la Cite, where Notre Dame resides. I walked the whole way down the Rue St. Denis, which is packed with XXX shops, peep shows, and one section had at least 7 prostitutes hanging out by doorways. Pretty funny. I had forgotten about the prostitutes from the last time I was hear in 2005. Stopped by Les Halles for some pictures, then off to Notre Dame whose front face was in shadow, but I hurried around to the other side to get the good light, and then off to Ile Saint Louis to do a quick walkaround. I had never been there before, and it was a little 'island' of calm in the midst of Paris.

Back across the bridge, and I stopped by the Sainte Chapelle to see the gorgeous stained glass windows and hopefully get a good shot. Unfortunately, part of the windows had catwalks up (doing work on them) AND the line was really long, so I punted. I went to BHV, a department store, continuing my quest for a little espresso maker that would do single servings. This place was even worse, as the smallest size they had was 6 servings. I'm not normally a coffee drinker, but you get in the habit when you are in Europe, and I'm thinking of trying to drink a little more when I'm back in the states. Jury is out on the health benefits of coffee, although since I'm fortunately reasonably healthy (knock on wood), I think the positives will outweigh the negatives.

Failing at BHV (second major department store to ice me), I headed back to the apartment to drop off some stuff, including a bunch of Asterix that I had purchased, and then off to Rue de Rocher near Gare St. Lazare to meet a female cousin of mine for lunch. This was the first time that I had ever met with one of my cousins one on one. Typically we see each other en famille, or at reunions with a bunch of family, so it was very cool to just hang out alone and talk about stuff. She took me to a roofdeck restaurant on top of the Printemps store where we noshed on seriously expensive food (even without the crappy dollar exchange rate, the stuff was way expensive) and caught up. After that, we went and did some errands, checking out Fnac for my espresso machine, they still had nada, so I finally broke down and bought a 3 serving size one. Meanwhile, she was looking for a unicycle for her 10-yr-old son, who apparently is loving them right now. She failed in that quest. Back to her apartment for some coffee, then she had to head out to pick up her remaining children at school around 4:30. So we said goodbye, two-cheek kiss, and then said a bientot to tomorrow night, as we will be meeting at her parents place for the weekend. Back to the apartment to pick up my 'library' kit of laptop and transformer, and here I am. Tonight my brother, his girlfriend, and my parents are all having dinner at a restaurant, Le Troquet. I will be treating, although I imagine it will be a battle with my parents... I may end up having to let them buy the wine, of which I imagine we will imbibe a good chunk. I just realized I don't have my camera for today's pictures, but I'll see if I can find a couple of good ones from yesterday.

I thought this one was clever. It was some bistro/bar on the Champs-Elysées.

And of course, now that I had somebody else around (my parents in this case, after lunch at my grandmothers), I set up my Dad to take this picture from her roofdeck.

Just to prove that I'm here... There is a good chance this is my last internet until I get home, and I'm sure you're all thrilled to see these end, but I figure I'll have at least one more probably when I get back, just to wrap things up. Until then. Oh yeah, insert something ultimate related here.

Xmas in France, part deux

2007-12-19T11:17:00.000-05:00

!!! I finally got on the internet from my laptop. But let me tell you, it wasn't easy.

After doing some more research, apparently Paris is blanketed with free wifi, just not in the area I'm staying. All of the public libraries have free internet, so I found one a few blocks away that happened to be in the mayors building for the arrondissement. It was unfortunately closed Monday, which I figured out 5 minutes before I was about to leave. So, I head over Tuesday around 5 (closes at 7PM) and at the entrance are two security guards. Meanwhile, in my backpack I'm carrying a HUGE and have transformer because my laptop chokes on the French power. They didn't end up frisking me but did ask where I was going. Once I said library, they let me through. Then, inside another woman comes up and asks me what I'm doing. I say library, and she points me to the 5th floor and elevator. Phew! Get in the library, find the last remaining seat, it has a plug, I pull my transformer out, and lo and behold, I get on the internet. Woo-hoo! First thing I did was check my email and then go through my work email so I'm not bludgeoned with 600 mails when I get home. Fortunately, most people are on vacation right now, so only 160 notes in 5 days.

After the library, head back to the apartment, and my brother finally shows up at 9PM. We immediately meet his girlfriend and some friends at a Lebanese restaurant for dinner, then back to the house, a bottle of wine, and thou... Next day is my first real tourist day. Get up early with my brother who is on his way to work at 8AM. Finally get out of the house at 9:30 or so and take the subway to the bottom of Montmartre, where the cathedral of Sacre Coeur resides. I take a walking tour of the area, seeing a bunch of places where painters like Vincent Van Gogh, Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec resided during the areas bohemian days. Visited the Dali museum which showed the breadth of the man's imagination. Finally ended up at the Musee de L'erotisme, an erotic/porn museum. This place was pretty cool. 5 floors of a tiny building dedicated to sculptures, drawings and paintings from around the world and throughout history. I'm telling you, we had NOTHING on the ancients in terms of sexual variety. They were also playing porn videos from the 20's in one area. Pretty damn funny. They definitely had different ideas of beauty back then.

Caught a subway to the Left bank/St. Germain-des-Pres and commenced another walking tour. This one wasn't quite as exciting . Getting cold, so I surprise my brother at his office at Place Vendome, then head back to the apartment before humping my way to the library for two hours. After that, back to the apartment to drop everything off, then another subway to the Champs-Elysees to meet my brother and a friend of his at the Cervoise, a beer place right off the Champs. This is us doing 3 rounds (1 apiece) of the beer sampler.

Oh, and the Champs was beautifully made up for the holidays, as you can see from the picture below.

Then back to the apartment for yet another bottle of wine and some appetizers. Get to sleep around midnight, and up the next morning at 9. Hang around the apartment until 11, and then off to my grandmothers to meet my parents and grandmother for lunch. My parents had just gotten in that morning. We have lunch, which is ordered in advance, and it's fish. Joy. No I don't like seafood, but my grandmother will never know that by how I chowed down. Had to borrow a jacket and tie from my brother for the lunch. I can't even remember the last time I wore a tie, definitely over a year ago.

Then, off to do some more shenanigans, back to the apartment, off to the library, which closes at 6PM tonight, in 20 minutes. And still have no idea what we are doing tonight, although I hope it involves a good meal and some strong drink. I only have two days left before we head to my aunt's outside Paris for 2 days with the ENTIRE family of over 60, of which the ONLY missing person will be my brother. Ugh. I'll make sure to take lots of pictures to annoy him. Seriously, that points out how tragic it is that he couldn't make it, as this will probably be the last opportunity for the entire family to be together in one place, especially with my 97-yr-old grandmother, who was surprisingly spry today, despite the fact that she had a mini-stroke yesterday, her 8th in the last few years. That's about it for part deux.

Xmas in France, Part I

2007-12-17T14:10:00.000-05:00

I am writing this from a gorgeous apartment in the 10th arrondisement in Paris. Unfortunately, it doesn't have WiFi, and I have spent about 3 hours trying various shenanigans to try and get it going, all to no avail. So tomorrow I will be on a hunt for free wifi.

This trip to France grew out of the fact that my divorced brother (who lives in Paris) only has his kids every other Xmas, which he brings to my parents in Rye. This is his off-year, so he was spending it in France. My parents decided to go also, as they hadn't spent Christmas with the French side of the family in years. At that point, I decided to hump along, as did my other brother in California. Naturally, such a family reunion couldn't come off smoothly, and it didn't. 2 weeks ago, my California brother screwed up his foot so badly playing basketball that he is unable to walk, and basically had to cancel his trip, which is terrible because my other brother is working this week and I was looking forward to spending some quality time with him. Oh well.

The trip out here was eventful, as I was supposed to leave Thursday night at 5:40PM. First noreaster of the season in Boston, we boarded at 7:30, and finally took off at midnight. At least we were able to walk around while we were attached to the gate. The deicing took over an hour and they had to refill the de-icer tanks the wings were so full of snow. Apparently 100 other flights were cancelled that day in Boston. I'm pretty sure it is more painful to cancel the intercontinental flights than ones within the US, so I did feel reasonably assured that we were going to take off. I finally arrived in Paris at 1:30PM instead of 6:15AM. Missed lunch at my grandmothers. Furthermore, I was supposed to meet my brother at the train at Saint-Lazare at 1:30 to go to his place in the burbs, pick up his car, and then go pick up his two daughters at their private school an hour out of Paris. So I'm trying to call him to let him know I'm at the airport instead of the train. I have his cell phone number, but he is not answering. I'm leaving somewhat inflammatory messages, like what the hell do you have a cell phone for, you know I'm coming in and late, etc. I call my parents in the US, and we commiserate, and I ask them for his home number to leave a message, and they end up giving me the number that I had thought was his cell. My other brother, who I had called from the airplane for Eric's cell phone number, had given me the wrong number. So I now called the cell phone, and naturally he STILL didn't answer. Finally, at 2:20, he answers, saying he was in an analyst (finance) lunch with a CEO, and it was 'inappropriate' to take calls. After laying into him, we decided that I should take a taxi to his place, and then we would leave. I do so, costs 45 Euros, which used to be cheap at 0.85 to the dollar, and is now expensive at 1.45 to the dollar. We are driving to the school, and we go RIGHT past the airport. Naturally I excoriate him for not just choosing to pick me up at the airport instead of taking the taxi. We finally get that out of the way, and the visit is on. Pick the kids up, do family stuff, come home, some dinner, some digestifs (after dinner drinks), and then I finally call it quits at 11:30PM, with almost no sleep since Thursday morning at 7AM (the Ambien I took on the flight shockingly only put me out for about 1.5 hours). LONG day.

Saturday and Sunday we did family stuff, hanging out, shopping, eating, playing games, watching stupid Mtv shows translated into French with the English in the background. Like the girlfriend trading one, the parents picking the date one. Always interesting to hear the translations. It is stuff like that that makes you wish you could watch and understand all movies in their original language, because you really do lose a lot in the translation.

Today transferred to my brother's girlfriend's apartment in the middle of Paris, where I'm staying until Friday. BTW, my brother does NOT have internet, although he does have a computer. He had a DOOM3 CD which he couldn't get to work, and he had me take a look. I found that it didn't like his graphics card, although according to the documentation, it should have. So I wanted to update the driver. Well, when you don't have internet, you can suck it. Unbelievably frustrating not having internet access. We ended up going to his girlfriends, I brought a USB drive, downloaded the driver, downloaded a new version of Itunes (7.5x to replace his 6.0 version), and Picasa because he had a new digital camera that he hadn't even taken the pictures off of yet. Went back to his place, installed everything, and sho' 'nuff, Doom3 worked. We played for a little bit (good graphics), and then dinner, the 3 musketeers, which was supposed to be in v.o. (version originale), and you could choosed French or the original language. We were looking foward to watching it in English only to discover that the original language was an ALREADY dubbed German. Ugh. So we stuck with the French soundtrack, and again, having seen the movie quite a few times, it was obvious that a lot was lost in translation.

Today was errand day. Went to Galeries Lafayettes to get some stuff for Georgia and the kids, and some 3 year Calvados for myself. Ate lunch at L'Entrecote with my brother. This place is famous for its 'secret sauce' and unlimited french fries. It is basically a fixed price menu with a salad, then a small steak and unlimited french fries with the REALLY good sauce. Pictures below.

And finally

Note that we shared TWO plates of fries this size. I make it a point to eat there at least once every visit to Paris. Then back to Galeries for more errands, then home to try and hook up to the internet. She has an ADSL modem with a USB output! I had planned to try and buy a wireless router and hook it up while I was there, and then at the end of the week, she could decide whether she wanted to keep the always on connection, or whether I would try to return it and get cash back. Well, there are no routers that take a USB (instead of Ethernet/Cat5) connection as the input. Talk about frustrating. So I explained that maybe I could connect from my laptop to the desktops ethernet port and configure the desktop to share it. He said I could do that, so I bought the appropriate ethernet cable and went back to the apartment. Lo and behold, I couldn't configure her desktop to share the connection. Everytime I checked the box, it said failed to share the connection. Then I tried to configure my laptop to acess her modem directly over USB. I downloaded the driver for the modem (which took awhile to find), but THAT install didn't take on my laptop, even while I had the USB connected. At this point, I have given up. I'm now writing this in a text file on my laptop, then I'm going to transfer it via USB drive to her desktop and submit it to blogspot from there, because she has a french keyboard, and it is REALLY a pain in the butt to type with the french setup.

I actually researched free wifi connections in Paris, of which now all the municipal libraries have. I was about to pack up and leave when I noticed that ALL libraries are closed on Mondays. They also have wireless in some outdoor parks, of which one was listed nearby, so I humped my laptop over there and in 25 degree weather, tried to connect to the wifi. It found it, but would not complete the connection. So finally I went back to the apartment and cobbled together the approach I'm using now, transferring stuff between computers. More later

#7 (or is it 5)

2007-10-31T10:41:00.002-04:00

The question implied in the above statement comes from the abuse we heaped on Jay Seeger when he won the Masters division in '95 with Squash and we said that Masters was a minus one against national titles. Of course, now that a bunch of us have migrated to the old guy division, we may have to reevaluate this philosophy...

Well, in short, I had a lot more fun than I expected, and having won, it was much more difficult than I would have expected if someone told me we would win. I did not go in with the expectation of winning, just the hope and knowing that we were one of the top contenders, but the tournament itself, and specifically the quarters and semis, were VERY difficult. Fortunately we had some easier games where we were able to open up the rotation, but it definitely tightened up at times. It was hard to manage a roster of 31. I subbed the offense (easier) and Jeff Brown subbed and selected the D (harder).

Logistically, everything went off pretty well. Not buying the tickets until after Regionals cost me probably $200, but doing some last second shopping, Jim was able to find us a very cheap place on Siesta Key. Everyone stayed there except for Mooney who had a room at the Palm with his family. We also had to scramble for jerseys at the last second, having Patagonia second day mail a bunch of Chili and White jerseys the week after Regionals so that we could get them to the printer in time. The shorts we got from BreakMark as the Patagonia shorts have gotten WAY too big and they didn't have any mediums left when we called. They were pretty sweet. The shirts were good while the design was acceptable. Some people liked it, some people were not so fond. But I guess moving away from the dot designs of recent years was the key as they started showing up right around when we started losing. Now that we have the superstitious stuff out of the way.

We flew in Wednesday afternoon with few problems, got the rental car, drove down to Sarasota, stopped in Wendy's for dinner, and then went to our room. Originally Jim, Jameros and I were to have a cottage together (we figured no one else would want to stay with any of us individually, so why not put us all together...). However, the week of, they let us know they had double-booked, so we generously gave it up to the Eastham family, who we NEVER saw while we were there. The condos were about 200 yards away from the Palm hot tub. Wednesday night was also the first game of the World Series with YOUR Boston Red Sox, so everything was coming together perfectly. A few ciders/beers into the blowout, and we go to bed reasonably early. Brian is supposed to get in late from Seattle, and he rolls into my room around 2AM (11PM PST). The next morning when the alarm goes off at 7AM (4AM CST), of course Brian is luggage. We actually get out of the condo around 8 and to the fields by 8:30. For some reason, the anticipated traffic on 75 and University Ave which we had experienced the past few years never materialized. Very weird.

For Thursdays games we were in front of the roped off clubhouse for all 3 games. I had warned the team just before coming that they should bring a second pair of cleats and socks to the fields each day because all the dew on the field would soak cleats and socks during the warmups. Naturally this advice proved foolish, as for the first time in MANY years there was very little moisture on the fields in the morning. In fact, the only real moisture came Friday afternoon during the quarterfinals. It felt good to be back at the show, albeit in a 'slightly' less competitive division. I have my warmup down, which includes not too much throwing, since I get tennis elbow these days, especially after a lot of hammers, and I figured I would be throwing a bunch of them. It would be interesting to speculate exactly how many throws I have made with this wing over my entire career, tournaments, practice, summer league, etc. Probably a pretty scary number.

We opened with Ironwood, who was a first time entrant at the show (that I could see). They were from Arizona, and we were fortunate to start with them, as it was a good warmup, and they were generous with their turnovers. 15-6. This brings up round two against Mileage from Dallas. They were coming off of a double-game point victory over Surly, which I had examined as I could to find out what they were going to do on offense. Basically, they were huck & hope to the nth degree. They had one main tall blond guy that I often just threw the disc long to, whether he was cutting or not, just as long as he was deep. And of course he came down with most of them. We ended up playing a mix of zone and man and after giving up a large late lead, we took the game 15-13. One of the things that I noticed in the masters division is that people were a little more willing to throw over the zone than in Open, although I noticed this more when teams played against OTHER zones than ours. It always befuddles me how Open teams struggle against the zone. I always think zone is a gift and unfortunately, no one really plays it against anymore. We often joke on the line that if somebody throws a zone against us, we should dump and swing for about 40 passes so they think it is working and will play it more.

This brought up the long anticipated game against Troubled Past for command of the pool. It was fun to see these guys, against whom we have fortunately had a lot of success, often at their expense. Billy and Worm had iced us, originally with Worm playing with Truckstop and Billy playing with a local FL team, only to give us a 'in your face' and play with the enemy. We went up big again only to fall back to a close game. I stopped playing around 12-10 because my calf was starting to tighten up and it wasn't worth having it seize completely. Admittedly, it made it a little easier to sub the game as I didn't have to worry about playing time among the handlers now. And Jim made it even closer at 14-13 with a drop. 4 MORE points later, and it is 16-16 with us receiving. Coop throws a beautiful cross field long backhand to a streaking Alec Ewald for the goal. No, wait, Alec, no one within 10 yards, goes up way too early and has the pass go off his fingers out the back of the endzone. He walks back to play D with his head in his hands. Fortunately, Bickford got yet another huge D and we punched it in a few passes later. Game, set, match.

That night was Red Sox game 2. After poaching on the Palm Bay hot tub for awhile, back to the condo for the game. Too freaking exhausted, I finally crash after after the end of the sixth, when Hideki came in to finish the inning and held serve at 2-1. It was a good thing I crashed, as the score didn't change and the Sox went up 2-0. Next morning, the team is pretty good about getting out to the fields around 8:30 again for a 9:30 game. Interestingly enough, I was getting to the fields earlier for the Masters division than I ever did for Open. As the first game wasn't critical, I figured I would hunt down Russ for a quickie calf massage, but as I looked over at the Boston Ultimate sideline, he was continually busy, so I hung out until he freed up before heading over at around 2-1 us. After some hemming and hawing, we figured out it would be best if Jim subbed while I was gone. Half hour later (after Russ beat the shit out of my calf) I came back and Jim had JUST subbed his first line. Meanwhile according to Russ I was good to go for the rest of the weekend if I took care of myself. I ended up playing some in this game, although didn't have to since we coasted to a 15-9 win.

After winning that game, seeds were finalized for our pool and the game against Surly was now meaningless. They treated it that way, and we eventually did also. They were more than generous with their turnovers, and we coasted to a 15-8 victory. It was good to catch up with a lot of the Sub-Zero guys like Cooter, Dan Rydel and Dave Boardman. Little did we know that we would meet them again.

My prediction of having the tougher pool was validated when we ended up sweeping the quarterfinals, although I think a lot of that was due to the matchups, especially with the upsets in the other pool. On Friday morning, OLD SAG went double game point with Old and in the Way before losing. If they had won, they would have won the pool. As a result though, they ended up forth, and lining up across from us for the quarterfinals. This was an obscenely difficult game. They went up a break early, we got it back, they got another break and took it into half. The first half was pretty chippy with calls, as we felt a lot of D's were stolen from us, including 3(!) by Bill Stewart on one point! I believe we started on D the second half, so down a couple of breaks. We could not stop them on offense. I barely recognized ANYONE on their squad besides Paul Bonfanti, Brendan, Sam Sackett, Will Heyman, and another guy who was their main handler. They were short and ran the crap out of us and we couldn't get the breaks. Finally as the weather got worse we got the lead back with a 3 point run to make it 11-10 pulling. Right after we took the lead, they tried to ice us with a half hour lightning break. Although it was already clearing, most of the people headed to their Faraday cages (I mean cars) to ride it out. I stayed at the fields with a few others, and after a half hour, they gave us 15 minutes to warm up, and 16 minutes to cap. We ended up trading to 14-13 pulling before we finally got the D. At one point, we had two injury subs on one called back D play. First I walked in and called in Jim. Then backed out when it was a foul. Jeff didn't notice, and then called Mooney and Greff in only to have to pull them. So imagine my surprise when a bunch of passes later I notice Jim on the field. I completely missed Simon's injury and replacement. Finally, game over and the army of 31 beat the bigger army of 37 to make the semis. That was a LOT of handshakes. Talking to Paul Bonfanti, he figured (and was originally hoping) that they would be playing us in the finals.

And now the long awaited rematch with Troubled Past, who ended up third instead of second in our pool after losing to Mileage that morning to move to our side of the bracket. The day started off poorly for me as I was the first one at our field at 10AM for a 10:30 game. As you can imagine, I was livid at my team for getting there with so little time to spare for the most important game of the tournament so far. It didn't help that when I walked out and stopped on the upwind upsun sideline, Jeffy immediately came over and started barking in my ear with a megaphone to move to the other sideline because they didn't want us there. Naturally this got my hackles up so I stayed for awhile. They took my chair over to the other side, so I sat on their cooler, etc., etc. Much 'hilarity' ensued until FINALLY a teammate showed up (Rick Kenyon) after 10 minutes of this. We ended up going to the other side, although he kept me company for awhile on the evil side. This set the tone for the game early, as it was now elimination, and it became readily apparent both on and off the field. They had a few players who thought it was funny to heckle people on the field during the game after bad offensive plays. I'm not sure I remember ever having that happen to me before at Nationals. I thought it was incredibly unspirited and made me want to beat them all the more. After going up big yet again, the O gave up 3 in a row in the second half and the lead before we got it back, and traded out to 15-15 receiving. After scoring the previous 2 or 3 goals without a turnover, Jim hands the disc on a platter to Worm just outside their endzone. Fortunately we get it back. Then we turn it over AGAIN and I believe Bickford gets it back. Finally we push it in to make it 16-15 pulling. I REALLY don't want to have to go in to the game at 16-16. The D saves me by getting the quick stuff and score with a bladey forehand from Simon to Dan the Can(adian) and we're in the finals. It was incredibly satisfying to win this game because of the poor spirit displayed by the other team. It would have sucked if they had made the finals. Of course, we were fine off the field with them, but that doesn't excuse the game time posturing.

Now the long break before the finals. I went over to the Boston Ultimate guys, told them we had won, and said I had one word for them. "SHOWCASE". Playing in the finals was about the only thing that made it seem like a real division, at least in terms of the other players. We eventually got a pretty good sized audience once the JAM game was over although, like Jim, I barely noticed anything that was happening off the field, including some apparent heckling that I was getting. I had an early forehand inside out turnover which I think we got back, but otherwise I was able to keep up my largely good play from the weekend. At one point, we were going slightly upwind in the second half and I was on the right side of the field being forced forehand. All of a sudden, my teammates were lined up in about 4 different areas to receive a hammer, and I cocked and waited to see who was going to cut for it. There was NO way I wasn't going to throw a hammer here. Finally, Mooney, who had was deepest in the stack and had been curving to the far sideline, looked like the likeliest candidate so I uncorked at least a 45-yard crossfield hammer to him which he ended up catching cleanly although his defender made up most of the ground. One pass later, goal. Very satisfying. I threw a couple of goals in the first half, caught the last goal by the offense to make it 14. The coolest thing was opening up the subbing on the last D point and watching them get the turnover and then have everyone involved in scoring the final goal, including people who hadn't touched the disc all game. Everyone had gotten with the program. This was definitely our most complete game of the weekend, with the only glitch being the two straight the O gave back in the first half.

I was pleased overall with my performance on the weekend. I had between 0 and 3 turnovers a game, including 1 in the finals, 2 hammers in the semis (and maybe one other), and I think 0 or 1 in the quarters (which I'm sure Jim will modify). The only time I had any difficulty getting open was when one Trouble Guy covered me, but only because he was cheating by handchecking me continually. I had to keep slapping away his hand. Someone said he was marking me by putting his hand in front of my face which apparently is now explicitly excluded in the 11 edition. I said I didn't notice and thought it was a benefit because it gave me an unmarked throw on that side. I thought I broke the mark pretty easily all weekend on both sides, including the step around backhand and the step out bladey forehand (often without the step). Except for the end of the Trouble pool play game when I stopped playing because of the calf, I probably played almost all of the O points and was the hitch for almost every point I was in, except for when I switched it up with a fake to me a few times in the Troubled game. I heard second hand that an OLD SAG guy that had covered me a bunch had expressed that he hated covering me because of my first step. Thank god I have that, because there ain't much else. However, I thought I was running very well considering how much less track work I had done this season (interesting comparison) although I had played a bunch of tournaments and had done some low level pickup where I tried to focus on running hard and playing hard D. I thought my D was very good, especially when I covered handlers. And considering how many points I ended up playing, especially compared to last year (playing barely 50% of the O points), I thought I held up very well, feeling almost as fresh at the end of the tournament as at the beginning.

Subbing was an interesting experience, one which I had requested long ago before we had coaches. I think it helped to have an O person sub the O and a D person sub the D so that we could stay in tune with what was happening on the field. At the end of the Troubled Past semifinals (or maybe OLD SAG), I ended up putting the same O line in for the last 6 points because it was playing well, and I didn't feel comfortable putting in someone new at that time of the game. It was sort of cool in that the typical power O lineup was basically old DoG plus Alec Ewald for a little bit of youth leavening. Once the O would get on a run of being broken, then I would have to start putting in some D players. I know some people got iced in the important games, and it is never easy to take. I didn't hear too many complaints from any subbing 'liaisons', but I think part of that is because a lot of people were just happy to be at nationals at all, AND even happier to be part of the National Championship team (maybe THIS should be called the Chumpionship).

And now on to Vancouver!

We're goin' to the show baby!

2007-10-07T20:21:00.000-04:00

Masters regionals. 3 teams go in (+2), 2 teams leave. After a short fall, we were finally going to put the sack on the line. Would perhaps the last running of the 'dogs' end in ignominy and the first missed nationals since 1991? Stay tuned.

This was basically 3 good teams battling for 2 spots. Tombstone, fresh off their dominating win at Canadian nationals (including a large victory over Glum, the NE regional winner the previous year), had also picked some of the Glum players. The one factor against them was that Monday is Canadian thanksgiving (what are they celebrating? Our Columbus day but refusing to honor Columbus?) and a bunch of their players had not shown up. Above & Beyond brought their usual short scrappy team, although they were missing Faust and Showers (injury) and EO (Friday night scratch). DoG/Big Ego Ultimate was sporting our full roster for the first time all season, and what a large sideline it was. First and last round we subbed freely, and the middle 2 games I ran O subs and Dick Brown ran D subs.

Saturday was one of my better days of ultimate. One of the benefits of moving to Masters is that I still have the mindset of open play, so I was able to get open pretty much all over the field. It took Tombstone until the second half to upgrade their defensive matchup on me after I continued to get open at will. I'm not tooting my own horn here, it was just nice to be a little more open than in Open, and to be playing with people that were familiar with how we cut, where we expect the disc, and when to deliver, even if we haven't played together in years. It was like putting on a pair of broken in jeans.

Our schedule was definitely the most difficult of the 3 top teams. I had had numerous discussions with Jim during the prior week about his battles with the UPA personnel who had to approve the various schedules. The first schedule was actually perfect with easy, tough, bye, easy and tough games. Unfortunately, we ended up with easy, tough, tough, bye, easy. Of the top 3, we were the only ones that had to play the two tough games in a row. NY was bye, easy, tough, easy, tough. Tombstone was easy, tough, bye, easy, tough. So a little annoying, and wondering exactly what the #1 seed got us, but whatever.

Saturday was GORGEOUS (actually a little too hot, hitting the mid-80s'). Our first game was against Mt. Crushmore from New Hampshire. Naturally, being masters, people were filtering in throughout the day. In the initial huddle, I said that we would be calling substitutes during the big games today, with myself calling the O and Jeff Brown calling the D. But in the first game, go free-form BUT only play the side that you will be called in on (we had very few two-way players, at least at this level). We rolled without too much difficulty, winning 15-4. Meanwhile over in the other game, Tombstone was having an equally easy time against Not Dead Yet, winning 15-3. I did take the opportunity to watch their game when I could, having had zero experience against them. They played mostly ho stack and nothing tricky on defense. Dan Fassina had mentioned after Sectionals that at Masters, we would never play teams that had pressured us as much as New Noise had on defense, but that the offenses would be better for the best teams.

The next game against Tombstone was the first of two big games. The game started out reasonably even with both teams trading goals. I think they got a quick break to start which we got back soon after and then got a few more. We were playing a mix of man, zone, and clam, all adroitly managed by D puppetmaster Jeff. We ended up taking half maybe 8-6, 8-5, and didn't really give much of it back in the second half before pulling away 15-10. It didn't feel like that much of a dominating victory despite the score.

On to round 3, important game 2 against A&B. Same pattern as tombstone. Close early, finally pulling away very late for a 15-11 victory. This one felt even less certain than the Tombstone game despite the score. Jim mentioned in his blog that he noticed that Arnold hadn't matched up on him very much. I had noticed in earlier games that Arnold was getting put in on O much more than D which explains Jim missing his hip buddy. However, Arnold did get the opportunity to make numerous d's in our game, including an almost d on the final point of the game, a hanging hammer to somebody wide open in the opposite corner who made a great one-handed grab over Arnold after he appeared from out of nowhere to JUST miss making the D.

This brought on the 4th round bye, at which point a bunch of us took off to check out the other fields only to find out that the top bracket ALSO had a bye the same round. Talk about a crappy schedule, the top 4 seeds were game, bye, game, bye, game. Ugh. Malingered some more, caught up with people, and then back for our last round of the day against Not Dead Yet, who was in the process of giving A&B a reasonably tough game, finally losing 15-10. Having watched them earlier, they clearly seemed to be a better team than Mt. Crushmore, but they ended up being very generous during the game, submitting to us 15-5 without too much exercise on our part. This gave us a good amount of time to watch the Tombstone-A&B game for the right to play us in the first round. The game was pretty exciting, with Tombstone finally pulling away to win 14-10. This set up the rematch at 10:45 the following morning (although I told the team 10:30 trying to make sure we had enough people there).

After this was all done, headed off to the Devens Grill to hang out with Dennis, Dan Fassina and a few others for a few rounds before heading off to Maynard (?!) for a party with Dennis and friends. We ran into quite the neighborly gathering as a row of houses were having a backyard party to celebrate Maynard Day. We got there just as the main plaza was clearing out people after the fireworks. After having a few beers and hanging out at a portable firepit, we headed into town to a bar where Pete Best (formerly Beatles) was playing. Unfortunately, they were running a charity and wanted $25 a head, to which we said no way of course. We ended up walking a little further to Morey's Tavern, closed that, walked across the street to the Blue Coyote Grill, closed that, and then off to crash on a couch.

Up early the next day at 7AM working both ends of the candle, drive home, shower, watch Stargate Atlantis (nerd) and then head back out to the fields, getting there around 10:15 for the 10:45 game. Naturally Tombstone is all over the field while we are dribbling in. At 10:15 I have to be in the first 10 at that point, at least at the field, and NONE of us are up and throwing. By game time we have at least 15+ and start play. In this game the D asserts themselves. The O did well enough, but the D played a number of shutdown man points against the ho stack, causing Tombstone to look to their dumps at high stall counts over and over. The weather was much cooler than the previous day probably starting in the 50s and raining when we got there, though most of the game was actually dry. We ended up taking half 8-5 receiving the second half. The last point of the first half was very contentious with us on offense. I had probably my worst point of the weekend, starting with an outrageous 40+ yard hammer to Coop that ended up hanging up much longer than it should have to get D'ed. This was the first of many turnovers this point. At one point, we turned them over in our endzone, I went to pick up the disk, and then proceeded to call at least 4 straight marking fouls on my defender, who was the same upgraded defender from the second half of the prior game. He was actually marking VERY well, but each throw he either contacted my hand, or my arm BEFORE the throw that he hand blocked. The only one that I even debated taking back was a short hammer that dove into the ground after I hit his hand on the release. I thought it was during the release and affected the flight (which was why it dropped like it did, which it NEVER does) but that was the only close one. Naturally this led to a lot of heckling from both sidelines and field. We finally scored on the point, but it did cast a pall on the game for me for a bit. After half-time, I did not put myself into the game for the O point, figuring it was also time to start opening up the bench a little bit and make sure they could do it without me... :). I stayed out the next two O points, and also noticed that my D guy was out too. I went over to him to ask if my absence was icing him, and he laughed and said they were saving him for the next game. This proved prophetic as Tombstone folded like yesterday's laundry and lost 15-7. The D took advantage of the opportunities they were provided and took the game. I took some more points off and then went in the final point of the game.

After this game, we turned around to catch the end of the Boston Ultimate/GOAT game for the 1 seed. When I got to the endzone, GOAT was being pulled to up 13-11. After a number of ugly points (not spirit, just play), the game ended up tied 14-14, GOAT receiving, next point wins. Forch gets a HUGE block in the endzone, they turn it over a few points later, they get it back, and then Giora uncorks a huge backhand up the line to a streaking Forch who appears to have no chance to get it only to see him to a full extension layout, catch the disc, and then lay on the ground with the disc held in the air.

Later I caught up with Seigs and mentioned 'Where was that Forch the last few years'. Seigs mentioned that Forch was one of the ones who had helped put them in the hole in the first place, to which I responded 'OK he is STILL the same Forch then...'.

This set up the 2-3 game to go between Tombstone and A&B, who had crushed Not Dead Yet 15-3 after skating by 15-10 the previous day. The result ended up being different today, as Tombstone never got untracked. After being close early, A&B started pulling away as Tombstone kept failing to connect on long hucks, and mostly appearing to play pretty poorly. A&B up by 2 at half, and Tombstone with numerous opportunities to make the game tighter in the second half, including the opportunity to get the game to 10-9 (or 11-10) only to have their receiver drop a chest pass in the endzone for the goal. That ended up being game, as Tombstone never recovered despite our urgings for a close game.

After this game, as I was leaving the fields, I caught the end of the betty bowl between GOAT and PoNY. Talk about a barnburner. It looks like GOAT was playing down after their disappointing loss, and after a late comeback by PoNY, it ended up being double game point AGAIN with GOAT receiving. They moved it up the field, including one ugly backhand blade to a GOAT receiver whose defender ended up being in front of him in perfect position to catch the D, only to have the GOAT player catch it from behind at the same time. Call goes to the observer, tie, GOAT keeps it. Another layout block a little later that comes back, and then GOAT wins the game. Barely.

So I have been dealing with rounding up uniforms from Patagonia (which we hadn't gotten ahead of time), housing (which we are still looking for), and general organizational details. Looks like we are going to have the 'old' army down in Florida, with close to 30 on the roster, although a number of Thursday night arrivals. 16 in a row, 14 with DoG, 18 of 19, another entry in the Ultimate History Book Addendum (# total nationals moonee 20, cvh, jim, al at 18). Can't believe I'm still playing this game. And can't wait to get there. I really have NO idea how things are going to turn out, although Double Happiness, I mean Troubled Past, is going to be the #1 seed. We'll see if that affects them...

Oh yeah, forgot about the celebration. Was planning to hang in that night with the kids when I heard about the Boston Ultimate guys doing some celebrating at the Newtown Grill. Headed on over with Jim and we proceeded to tell stories, pat ourselves on the backs, and general gladhanding. On the way out, there was a full pitcher of beer on the table. Discussion ended up veering to a few years ago on the way to the airport from Santa Cruz when we stopped at a restaurant on the way. Tom Matthews had been there earlier and had been challenged to finish a pitcher of beer in two minutes for $20. He had failed miserably, spraying beer out of his stomach partway through. They challenged me to the same, I hemmed and hawed until Dutchie put in another $20, then proceeded to chug 90% in the first minute, and then coasted/sipped the remaining minute. Well, all of a sudden, the offer came on the table again. I tried to drum up support, but only ended up getting about $30 on the table plus a T pass (probably empty) and some business cards. Of course, this time they weren't willing to give me the full two minutes but only 1 minute. Crazy but I said yes. I went out strong again finishing over half in the first 20 seconds. Unlike Santa Cruz, this time I was a little more full. It took me two more rounds with Jim telling me how many seconds left in my left ear. I finally put it away with a couple of seconds left and ran off with my loot, or rather, Jim gave me a ride home...

Clambake

2007-10-05T09:47:00.003-04:00

What happens at Clambake, stays at Clambake. That was the mantra of this years tournament, and after attending the party, I understand why. In the spirit of the tournament, I started my weekend early by heading up to New Hampshire Friday night to hang out with Dennis "kinesthesia" McCarthy. We partied in Portsmouth until 3AM and then I had to get up at 8AM the next morning. Best part of the tournament so far? The first-round bye giving us our first game at 10:45.

First game was against JMU Hellfish, apparently a reunion team from James Madison. They were interestingly dressed, and had maybe 10 dudes. The game wasn't particularly exciting, we played sloppily, and they scored less than 10. Game 2 was against Jerk Factory, a team from Canada that had beaten the #2 seed in our pool the first round. They proved to be pretty scrappy, keeping it close through the first half, before we finally pulled away for a 3-5 point victor in the second half. The last game was against Bowdoin Stoned Clown who we had beaten handily the prior week at Sectionals on Saturday. More of the same, although the game was closer because they played better and we continued some sloppy play.

We were definitely a different team from the previous week in terms of personnel. At one point I had looked at the roster of people going, and had told Jim that basically we were leaving the defense at home. This proved mostly true as we put together a hodge-podge of man and zone lines on throughout the weekend. I think we only subbed a line once, on the first point of the second half in the semifinals. Otherwise it was free subbing all weekend.

After malingering after our last game for awhile watching some chick games because the weather was GORGEOUS, I finally get on the road to Simon Verghese's Econolodge hotel to shower up. There were four of us in 4 cars, Simon, Dennis, myself, and Dan Fassina from Canada. Naturally, Dan got lost while following us and ended up just getting on 295 south and going straight to the party after he missed the U-turn. I jumped in the shower while Dennis went to the Mobil to buy some nasty fruit flavored beer. Hung out a little longer, then I headed down to the party. The party site was in the middle of nowhere, maybe 20 minutes off the highway off a lonely road.

And now the party... I had brought a tent and thermarest and requested teammates to bring up a sleeping bag because I fully intended to sleep at the campsite instead of even contemplating driving to a hotel from the party. In the back of my mind, I was also assuming that I was just going to end up in my car as it was going to be too much labor to set up the tent, find it in the middle of the night, put it away in the morning, etc. I had the foresight to put my passenger seat down prior to going into the party.

This was hands down the biggest and best tournament party I have ever been to. No question, no competition, no nothing. About the only issue was that the party site was the distance from the fields. When I pulled in, there was a line of about 4 cars, and they were guiding traffic (and had torches lining the field for directions). They asked whether you were staying overnight (go left), or leaving early (go straight). I went left, around the party site, and then pulled in next to a bunch of cars. After a quick primp and getting my warm clothes on, into the party. There were huge barns and outdoor pavilions set up. Basically, there was a large pavilion of about 20 round tables, a much smaller tent that served the beer, including one area with 4 different taps, and another area serving beer directly from kegs/pitchers. They were very strict with the bracelets, which made sense considering the number of under aged people at the tournament. Then you entered the barn where there was a large open space with a DJ. Walk through that barn into another barn that had a bunch of long tables set up for food. To the left from there was an outdoor covered site where they had a band setup that played for hours (different bands I believe but not positive). To the right outside was the grill where they were serving burgers, dogs, chicken, etc with all the fixings, salad, late night ice cream, firepit lobsters for those who had pre-ordered them. Basically it was a food extravaganza.

A lot of tournament bids involved party favors. For instance, for the second straight year Lady Godiva offered in the bid to do a 'party' shotgun. In the large outdoor pavilion, they spent a half hour preparing bud cans for a mass shotgun, at least 7-8 cases, just lining them up one after another. This happened around 10:30PM. While they were getting ready, Tony Leonardo started blah blahing about me being a good gunner, me mentioning that I hadn't lost in maybe 15 years. He wanted to see how fast, I was a little nervous about doing a pregun gun, but finally talked me into it. I went a little too fast, put the can down early, watched him still drinking, put the can back up and finished the beer, then spiked it a couple of seconds ahead of him. A little embarrassing for him. Then it was Ryan Scribner's turn. He had said that Saturday night at Nationals last year, when I was 8 sheets to the wind at the outdoor beach party at our condo that he had beaten, or at worst tied me. Naturally I remember nothing of the sort (well, nothing really at all). He acknowledged that I could barely move, and wanted to race me. I had just finished with Tony, and all of a sudden everyone was about to do the mass gun. So we raced each other as part of the mass gun and I destroyed him. Probably my fastest ever. Unfortunately I had selected a can that had lost a little beer, and he said that it was impossible for me to finish that fast. I finally acknowledged that my can had been a little short, so then I offered to do a third gun unassisted and he could let me know if it was fast enough. So I do a third gun, literally almost as fast as the emptier one (<2.5 seconds) and he acknowledged that he would not have a chance. So, got that out of the way. Now back to the party.

Meanwhile I was feeling really full with all the beer and food, so I went off to the cars to take care of that, and then I was ready for the rest of the party. Bounced around from beer tent to band to DJ to food tent to beer to band to food to DJ to beer to DJ to beer to DJ. Ended up the night dancing to the DJ for close to 2 hours with Melissa, another woman whose name I can't remember, some other guys, etc. Finally roll into my car at around 4AM, all this without coffee.

Oh yeah, and we didn't play until noon Sunday morning also, which ended up being key. I woke up in the car at 9:45 (I had brought the eye Bucky covers, which were KEY to staying dark and asleep late). I poked my head up, and there were maybe 10 cars left out of the 300 that had been there the night before. And I had heard almost nothing. Breakfast was over of course, so I got on the road to the field. Get to the field to find out that we aren't playing until 1PM because the first round started too late. Ugh. So now I have to dick around for 1.5 hours. Watch 'ding' frisbee for awhile with some teammates before we finally head over to our field and try and start the game early. We end up starting maybe 12:45, against yEUTH-ANd-ASIA the Amherst/Boston team headlined by the Pitts (James and Darden). Closer than it should be although we finally put it away.

This sets up the semi against Harvard Red Line, and everything has held to seed so far. We end up receiving the pull and quickly drop to 0-3. The turnovers are ugly, we are out of sync, and we aren't really stopping them, letting them score deep at will. We finally tighten it up although they take half 8-6. They score out of half to make it 9-6 before we finally struggle back and tie it at 10s and 11s. They score again to make it 12-11 and the wheels come off. 3 stupid turnovers and lame D later and Harvard wins the semi 15-11. They definitely played well, we did not play so well, and we would have beaten them handily with our full squad, but you play with what brung ya. The other semi was a barn-burner between Chuckwagon and Red Tide, with Red Tide eeking it out at the end. Harvard then beat Red Tide in the finals, 'validating' our loss (not really). Kudos to them for bringing it this weekend. The side benefit to losing in the semis was that I was able to get home at a reasonable hour around 6:30 to actually see my kids before they went to sleep.

Regionals tomorrow, and I have no idea how we are going to do. On the one hand I can see us winning the region handily, on the other hand I can see us losing it handily. Should be an exciting weekend, and I can't remember the last time there was any doubt about making nationals. Hopefully I won't tighten up as a result, but play in the moment (Peaceful Warrior for those of you who have seen it, GREAT movie).

Sectionals Day 2

2007-09-25T10:55:00.000-04:00

Seigs did a good writeup on the overall tournament over here. On a more BEU/DoG-centric perspective, I have prepared the following:

So, if we didn't have a grudge against New Noise before, we do now. After we beat our seed on Saturday with the huge win over Red Tide to win our pool, we ended up playing A2=NN in the winners bracket semis. They had eked out a close victory over us at the Boston Invitational back in June after we had eked out an even closer victory over Gunslingers. They were definitely a different (and better) team than at BI, and we were definitely different (still figuring out whether we are better, though we definitely have the potential to be significantly better).

The game started out and we started on defense and quickly went down a break. We eventually got that break back with a good mix of man and zone. We got another one to take the lead, and then the wheels fell off. We kept the lead for a few points, then we got sloppy. We had opportunities to extend the lead, but had some uncharacteristic turnovers. NN went up a couple of breaks late before we got a final break back and forced double game point with them receiving the pull. They moved the disc slowly but surely down the field before ending up on the left sideline just out of the endzone. At stall 9, they threw an inside out backhand to a cutter who had actually just fallen down. Fortunately for them he was able to recover and catch the game-winner. Very frustrating but overall I think we were happy with our play. The pleasant surprise on the weekend was how well we were able to apply pressure on the man D against much younger teams. We definitely earned a number of turnovers including layout blocks on pressure man to man. The zone was also effective at times, although it remains to be seen how it will do against theoretically wiser masters teams. The one thing that we need to work on big-time (and will do at Clambake) is zone to man. we probably tried it 4 or 5 times, mostly Sunday, and it was DREADFUL. People weren't picking up man to save their lives.

So our loss to NN set up a 3-4 game against Red Tide, who had gotten smoked by Boston Ultimate x-x. While I was sad that I wasn't going to be able to match up against my ex-mates and try and score the most points off them on the weekend, playing Red Tide again was probably far more valuable in terms of playing experience. Red Tide played much better than they had the previous day, but we were able to keep pace. While the final score was not as lopsided as the pool play game, we won reasonably comfortably at 15-12. This game saw the continued effective mix of in-your-face man and an effective zone, although the zone to man continued to elude us. We made fewer stupid mistakes this game than in the NN game, and we were able to close it out.

This led to a proposed 2nd place game against New Noise, who had lost to BU again, 15-7. We had enough people that were willing to play if the game HAD to be played, but we ended up trying to get out of the game, as NN wasn't thrilled to play us again either. No word on whether it was because they were afraid to lose... However, it took a lot of research to figure out whether it was acceptable, including having one guy dial up the UPA website on his crackberry to check the UPA series guidelines. There was one set of verbiage that we figured would allow us to back out of the game, pending approval from the UPA representative at the tournament, Seigs. When we broached the topic with him, he ended up calling Matt Bourland to get the final word on whether it was acceptable, and it was. NN ended up playing Red Tide for bragging rights in a no seeding impact game. Red Tide went up early, and we heckled for a little bit before leaving without seeing the ending.

All in all, a very good weekend that saw us accomplish almost all of our goals. We got almost everyone together at a tournament, we improved very much as a team, were able to play all facets of the game, effective O, man and zone D's. We got a far better turnout playing Sectionals than if we had tried to have a couple of practices. And also FAR more playing time/games. Looking forward to Clambake next weekend for more of the same.

Sectionals Day 1

2007-09-22T20:20:00.000-04:00

I originally wasn't going to post until after the entire tournament, but after today's events, I feel like I should pen to paper while it is still reasonably fresh in my mind. This was a day of extremes. Now to the details.

After my last post, apparently that helped engender a change in the tourney format. They first went with two 5 team pools with a much better schedule. Then, when one team dropped out, they went to 4 and 5 team pools with us in the 5 team pool, which we were more than happy with, as we were out there to practice. First game at 9, while the pool of 4 didn't even start until 12:30. Naturally the sectionals director was in the pool of 4, though it didn't help him because he had to be there early. (cue Nelson laugh).

Our first game pitted us against Gunslingers, a young team from the Boston (and Amherst?) area that we had beaten in a contested double-game point victory. Our forces trickled in before (and after 9AM). This gathering of people had definitely not played together in any real way ever, and it showed. We proceeded to hand the Gunslingers the disk time after time after time on poor decisions, poor execution, lazy defense. Basically there was nothing good in this game. It was bad enough that I was really beginning to question whether this whole Masters thing was going to be a good idea. They beat us 13-9, and we were lucky to be that close. Truly.

The next game was against the Tufts E-Men. They had shockingly just lost a double game point squeaker to the Bowdoin college team, but we didn't know that at first. We started out MUCH better this game, jumping out to a large half-time lead, and then the wheels came off. With the large lead in hand, we started getting lazy on both D and O, and frittered away our huge lead, finally winning in the end 13-10. The third round bye was spent in the shade watching the Rude Boys play their first game in Div II Sectionals. Wow, I thought I was old. THEY were old, but they were still moving and playing reasonably well. The best was that they were able to field almost a full 7 of children, and a number of their kids were pretty good players in their own right.

Finally game 3 against the Bowdoin Stone Clowns or something like that. We finally started hitting our stride in this game, and ran away with it 13-6. This set up a key final game against the first seed in our pool, Red Tide. They had crushed Gunslingers 13-6 the round after us. Going into the game, Jim had stated that we had to win by 2 to make it into the next round (2nd place) and by 7 to win the pool. I had watched Red Tide during some points, and they were running VERY well. I was not sanguine about winning the game, much less worrying about the points. I tried to rally the troops during the opening huddle, but take no credit for what followed. We started by playing man, got the quick stuff and szcore. A few more points, and all of a sudden, I think we might have a chance. We are playing as well as we played poorly the first game. The offense is playing within themselves, the defense is mixing man and zone VERY effectively, with numerous Ds in both defenses. We go up 4-2, have the disk to take half 7-3 and eventually take half 7-4 AND we are receiving. Naturally it was too good to be true, and we get scored on out of half. Somewhere in here, we play one point of zone and each team has 4 turnovers. VERY ugly point. But that was our only MTP that I remember. I contributed two turnovers with the sideline shouting timeout leading into each one. Fortunately we did not crumble, proceeded to score the next point, and actually got some more D's to win 13-7, which was shocking. It was shortly after that Bim pointed out that Jim was wrong, and Jim reached the same conclusion. We had actually WON the pool at +2 with Red Tide at +1, and Gunslingers being sent down to the B pool at -3. Woohoo! Our games tomorrow will be meaningful and challenging now, which is why we are at this tournament. We start with a game against New Noise, who we owe from the Boston Invitational, and if we win that one, we play Boston Ultimate for the Sectional championship. If we lose, we play Red Tide again, and I'm sure they'll be hungry for revenge.

So a day that started in infamy and really made me question our chances to make Nationals, much less actually do well, turned around in a single game and showed us what we could achieve. Granted, the challenge ahead is tough, and could still end in misery, but at least we now have an example of how to play. See you on the field...

Sectionals/Masters

2007-09-18T14:04:00.000-04:00

So my first national series outside the Open division fast approaches. While Sectionals is not required for masters attendance, we are going to use it as an opportunity to get the team together and actually play against someone else. A number of us were able to get together for the Hingham Cup in August, but other than a few practices, that is all we have done tournament-wise. The next 3 weekends will define our fate and determine whether I will be staying home from Nationals for the first time since 1991.

I was poking around the score reporter, looking at a number of Sectionals tournaments that happened last weekend. I was searching for masters teams in particular. It seemed the most successful one was OLDSAG from Philly. In their section, they were undefeated until playing Pike in the finals, to whom they lost 15-13. Even if Pike is not the powerhouse they used to be, this is a respectable result. They ultimately lost in their loser bracket game against Burgh 13-11, whom they beat 9-8 in the winners bracket.

Above & Beyond, playing in the New York Sectional and seeded second behind PoNY, ended up losing in an upset against Wesleyan. They recovered to take second overall behind PoNY, beating Wesleyan in the losers bracket after Wesleyan got smoked by PoNY in the finals. That is two straight teams losing the 'game to go' to a team they already beat, to continue a discussion happening in other blogs and rsd at the moment.

In the Capital (DC) sectionals, Baltimore masters did very poorly, going 0-4 in pool play and losing their first game on Sunday to DC Funk.

In the Desert open section, Ironwood won out.

In Michigan open, I can only assume Fossil Fuel is a masters team, and they did OK, coming in 5th but getting smoked by BAT.

In the Rocky Mountain section, perennial masters power Old and in the Way performed respectably with reasonably close losses to Bravo and Sack Lunch, coming in 3rd overall by beating the other masters team, Postmasters.

Finally, over in Washington/BC open sectionals, Throwback did not hold their august seed and ended up 7th after a disappointing 1-3 start in pool play.

As for DoG, masters style, we are seeded 4th behind Boston Ultimate, Red Tide, and New Noise this weekend with Gunslingers right on our heels. Naturally as second seed in our pool we have the toughest schedule, with the two most important games of the day one right after the other. We begin with 3rd in our pool Gunslingers, who I imagine have to be wanting payback after our contested double game point win at Boston Invitational. Our next game is against #1 Red Tide, who must be riding last year's performance since they have not shined this year so far. We end with games against Tufts, which Alec, Damon, and Jeff should greatly enjoy, a bye, and then Bowdoin. If we come in 3rd, we will probably end up only playing 1 game Sunday morning, which would be tragic. If we come in 2nd, we start with Boston Ultimate and then have at least one more game. If we win out the pool, we would probably play New Noise, and if we don't beat them, we won't even get a chance to match up with BU, which would be tragic. I'll have to figure out whether to tank the Red Tide game... I'm sure Gunslingers, New Noise and Red Tide are better equipped than earlier this year, but then again, I hope we are two. The roster is finally starting to shape up, although we might have anywhere from 15-25 people show. Hopefully we can start to get some lines established, who are the hot D players, who will be making the O squad, etc.

As for the above masters results, who the hell knows what it means. If we do well this weekend, then have more faith in the above results. If we do poorly, then it means that none of those teams had their full squads... :)

Hingham 2007

2007-08-08T11:19:00.001-04:00

So it was a little weird playing at the Hingham Invitational this weekend while the new Boston team was playing at Colorado Cup. That was the first time that it really hit me that my elite Open career was over. Oh well. On to the fun tournament. After local massage legend Russ Robar asked me over a calf massage a couple of months ago whether the Tea Party was going to go to Hingham, I did some research and decided that it was time to get the cup back.

While this tournament was 5-2, I looked at it as an opportunity for the non-DoG masters players to get together and get some familiarity with each other. In that respect, it succeeded admirably. It was an eclectic mix, with VERY old DoGs Bim and Justin present Saturday only, Jim and I both days. We had 11-4 split on Saturday, and started with 4-3 on Sunday in the quarters before ending the day with 8 guys and 5 women.

I had emailed the tournament director earlier in the week, saying Also, for seeding purposes. I assume you are seeding MonkeyLove first. Unless there is some superstud team of which you are aware, and not knowing the tournament format, the Tea Party should probably be seeded #2, but I defer to your judgement. He didn't respond, nor did he send out any information about the upcoming tournament, so I was feeling a little out of sorts. I finally emailed him Friday just to ask about last round times, since a lot of us are in a family way. He responded that our 3rd round bye was gone, and that our fourth round was over at 5 or so.

Saturday morning, I actually arrived in time to make the Captain's meeting around 8:40AM (first game at 9). The one interesting rule change was the 2-point cross-gender huck, where you scored two points if you completed a goal from more than half-field between genders. This ended up being almost exclusively from men to women, at least in the games that we played and saw. We were seeded 2nd behind MonkeyLove, a whore team from NY that John Garb has been putting together for the last 4 years and had won the last 3 times. He even went to the point of posting on rsd this summer requesting recruits. 4 pools of 4, with 3 pool play games then a round of 16 at the end of the day. One other issue of the day is that the weather was predicted to be BRUTALLY hot. Fortunately we were placed on a field next to the street that had some trees lining the sidewalk, so we set up camp under a copse of two trees, shifting position as the sun moved across during the day. There was almost NO sideline participation/help as we quickly ran to the shade when we took a sub. Even though each round was two hours long, games were to 13 with cap at 1:50. Internally I was complaining,

The first game was against Moscow State. Keep in mind that I had played numerous tournaments with Moscow State in the late 80's early 90's (and as recently as Turkey Bowl last year) and it was a team of Westchester, NY players (back in the day). Naturally, almost 20 years later, I didn't recognize a soul, and more importantly, I think someone mentioned they weren't even from NY. If that is true, they totally stole the name. REgardless, we chose to receive, and 13 points later, sat in the shade with a 13-0 victory with a 1:15 break until our next game. Much laughery on the sidelines as Tea Party has never taken themselves seriously, at least off the field. We completed one cross field huck in that game to make it 9-0. The crossfield huck rule definitely changed the defense a little, as you had much more awareness of where the women were, and whether they were cutting deep. A number of d's were made by men on 2-point hucks to women.

Finally, at 11AM we play round 2 against FNG, short for F*!!@*&& New Guys. This team was better, but still lost 15-6 or so. They made their share of mistakes that we took advantage of. This time the break was an hour and 10 minutes. Given the long break, Jim and I head into downtown Hingham and found the Snug, an Irish bar where we ate lunch (and had a drink, naturally). Back to the fields

Harpoon is warming up when we get back. This game is more of the same, as we hold them under 10 also, maybe 15-8. And finally, our break is under an hour, clocking in at 45 minutes until the next game. At this point, a beer run was made, and we start quaffing some brews as we wait in the sweltering shade. Our next opponent shows up late with a proposal. They had already discussed this with the TD. They couldn't field a full team anymore, and another team also had the same problem, so they were going to combine and play Chinstrap (the other team's opponent) and give us the bye. We said no, of course, because we were there to practice for the fall and wanted to play as much as possible. I then ran (well, walked less slowly) to find Ian from Chinstrap and start talking with him. They were in the same situation, actually playing 4-3 against 5-2 opponents in their practice for the fall. After much negotiation and hemming and hawing, mostly with the two small teams, they agreed to forfeit their games to us and scrimmage each other while Chinstrap and Tea Party would play a 'friendly' to 9. Chinstrap was a solid mixed team and yet we were able to work a little of our magic on them, not really giving them any chances to get back in the game, and we ran away to a 9-4 victory.

We basked in the heat and our victories at the field for a little longer. Meanwhile, Jim and I had our 'kitchen passes' for the weekend, and were actually planning to stay down in Hingham that night. He and I then left the fields around 5PM and headed over to the South Shore Country Club for some golf. In the last 5 years, I had played twice in 2003, once in 2004 and 2006, and that's it. And boy, did it show. I was spraying all over the place. Actually, my drives were pretty solid. My distance iron work was HORRIBLE. Putting was just OK. I think I got one par. My best (worst) hole was when I drove out of bounds to the left, then out of bounds to the right, then topped it into the water hazard in the first 50 yards, before finally booming out a good drive. Then a lost ball to the right of the green, so finished having played 5 balls. Final highlight was on the 18th hole, reached just in time, as another hole would have been pretty dark. I had a nice drive, then iron shot landed in a pot bunker front right of the green, and maybe 60 yards from the flag. I got my sand wedge, and then tried to boom it out. Naturally it got the lip and rolled back down. Second try, I topped it and it flew out and over the hole, over the hill behind the hole with the cart path. I told Jim (and the guy we had caught up with) to finish the hole. I was good...

Then off to the party around 8:30, maybe 10 minutes from the golf course. Jim and I have fond memories of the Hingham parties at the Hingham Community Center. Unfortunately, those were just memories, as this version was unfortunately mostly lame. The beer didn't show up until after 9 for a 8-11 party. Jim and I played bocce against Russ and Lenny(?) on the back lawn, lost the first game, were up 6-1 in the second before losing 7-6. Ugh. Went back inside, no beer, so we headed over to the Snug for another round. Back to the party and ran into a beerfris game in the main hall. Naturally I immediately called winners. When that game finally completed, we got on the field and then RULED, including a number of layout blocks by yours truly. Tea Party clearly won the party, with Russ getting the party extended to 11:45, then leaving to make last call at the Snug and watching Dave Foley for the next hour play some great music. Finally, we caught a taxi to a friend of Russ and slept on the floor (using my backpack as a pillow...). Next day of course, the guy says that there were two cots in the closet next to where we slept. Sweet!

Fortunately I had planned ahead and brought my Bucky eye shades, so I was able to 'sleep' in a little longer even though the room we were in was pretty light. Eat the tournament breakfast the next day, and then off to the fields for the quarterfinals.

We play FNG again, who had upset in their crossover (I knew we had the tougher pool...) to make the quarters. We had already known we were going to drop 4 of the guys from the previous day, and swap one of the women, but as game time rolls around at 11ish, we are sitting there with 4 guys and 3 women. We finally start the game playing 4-3 against 5-2. Russ Robar finally shows up, and takes his time getting ready, not realizing that he is the 5th man (and we don't tell him). Fortunately this doesn't hurt us too much as we roll to a 15-8~ victory (slightly closer than yesterday). Larry shows up in the middle of the game so we finish with a sub. During the game, I call Marshall and Simon to inform them that we will actually need them to show up today for the semis and hopefully finals just so we can have some numbers, even though the weather is not as brutal as the previous day. They both agree to come, although naturally Simon is at least a half hour late for the next game.

The semis are against WMD, apparently a fall club mixed team from Boston, formerly captained, now coached by Erik Sebesta. We receive to start for the 6th consecutive game, and WMD jumps out to a 3-2 lead. Unfortunately, that is the last goal they score for awhile as we promptly score 10 in a row to lead 12-3. There was some idle chatter about whether half-time would occur if we were leading 7-x and scored a two-pointer, because we would not have been the first time to physically reach 8, so half might not occur until the other team reached 8, and if they never did, then we would have the advantage of first receive the entire game... Interesting concept. We finally got REALLY lazy on D in the second half now that the game was in hand, and eventually won 15-7. High(low)light from this game. On Saturday, at one point Jim had gotten a quick lefty flick dump from Rick Kenyon, who continued up the line. Jim immediately threw a lefty backhand back to Rick for the goal. Well, in the middle of this game, I was on the sideline and saw exactly the same situation start. Rick dumped to Jim, and as he started cutting up the line, I screamed 'NOOOOOOOOOOOO!' even before Jim looked like he was going to throw, and yes, he threw the same lame 'air bounce' crappy lefty backhand. Then, having now thrown two junky (and completely unnecessary) throws, Jim takes the cake on the final point. He catches a pass just outside the goal on the right hand side of the field. One of our cutters is racing towards that side of the goal, away from Jim. Jim sees him and immediately throws a scoober type pass, but a vertical one released from the right side of the body, which is caught for the game-winner. He says later he didn't even consciously throw junk, it was the only thing he could release quickly enough to get it to the receiver. I apologized to the other team and we moved on. I'm sure Jim will have more to say and refer back to his junk throw post.

This set up the expected final against Chinstrap, who was taking a little more team to defeat surprise participant White Rhino in the other semi (they had upset MonkeyLove the previous day in pool play). We expected a better game now that it wasn't a 'friendly', and for the most part it was, although the final score was still not very close as we won 15-10 without too much drama. The cup was back home again.

According to Jim's notebook, the following is our history in the tournament. I had a few issues with it, but couldn't figure out where it was wrong.

2007, 7-0, 1st
2001, 6-0, 1st
1998, 6-0, 1st
1997, 7-0, 1st
1996, 5-1, 3rd
1995, 5-1,
1994, 6-0, 1st (beat CRUD 15-6, Elwood 15-9)

The tournament was very well run, if a little expensive at $350, but it was a fund-raiser for the Special Olympics, so that was OK. There was a presentation after the finals, where we got shirts, free Dunkin Donuts coffee packages, mugs, shirts, and a couple of champagne bottles chilling in the cup, pictured below.

The picture I had of my daughter in the cup couldn't be released to the public as she was crying a mean streak, but this is my boy at 5 months 'celebrating' our previous victory in the cup. Oh, and this just in for pictures of the tourney, ie., us.

So Garb talked about Hingham here but I disagree with his assessment of our team. On Saturday we had 4 old DoGs, Jim, myself, and Bim and Justin, who hadn't played in open in at least 6 years. Sunday it was just Jim, myself and Bim. And the guys we had Sunday were a mix of players, some who had been to nationals with lower level teams, and some who hadn't. We had a mix of women players from national champs Jess and Shelagh to local club players. Jim and I were trying to figure out why we won our games so easily. I think I will save that for another post though, since I have been fallow for awhile. Some upcoming topics:

The one mentioned above.
Small teams at early tournaments.
Anything someone requests.