casual ultimate » 2007 » June

well as you can see from out super technical map here the weekend is shaping up to be lovely. there is a high crunk system moving in from the west … the rwip party is lurking on the horizon. so tonight theres a slight chance of pbr with the winds shifting tomorrow to bring in a sparxx front at irving park in the evening. with ms. ultimate still out of town it will be a tough weekend for casual ultimate but well get out the rain gear and batten down the hatches.

also we need to send a get well shout to mr. tristan who got hit on his bike yesterday. thats three of our friends who have gotten hit in the last two weeks and hopefully thats the end to this spree. best wishes for speedy recovery and good painkillers to tristan, neil, and jessi (of c’n'd fame.)

your long term forecast is a steady drizzle of antics throughout the holiday week with a hurricane of activity beginning thursday when the dego teas start rolling in from the west coast and the dirty souf. stay tuned for flash flood warnings and torrential shennanigans.

xoxo
miss casual

I am blogging live from Wimbledon. I just nearly ran into Serena Williams on the stairs - literally. i can’t tell if she looks tougher or like a regular (of course world-class) athlete in person. Laura won her second match handily; I would say she destroyed her Austrian opponent’s soul, but I think tennis is more polite from that. but for the record, she did. It’s looking like she’ll be playing Hingis next. I’d make her blog nickname casual tennis but, you know, she’s hardly casual going into teh third round and all. The all-white dress code is also making me think briefcase may want to make Sunday whites an all-weekend thing.

so, yeah, things are exciting here. i have to say an all-access pass is the best way to see the greatest tennis tourney in the world. i feel like i’ve been in the cafeteria line next to every major player; too bad i can only recognize a few of them. i could get used to this. and cheering for laura is so fun!!! i’m her no. 4 fan, besides her parents and sis.

the city of london ain’t too bad either. Meet the london fixed gear boys (of course no girls) for a few pints was fun, of course, and the tour de france prologue et al is going to be a blast. I hear there are some pics posted on their site; I want to say it’s lfgss.com, miss casual please correct me if i’m wrong. sorry no pics, i forgot my cable.

heres a picture, hot off the presses, of ms. ultimate with some friends from the london fixed gear / single speed bike forum. we miss you so much here! and im so jealous of your all access pass to wimbeldon! please slap high fives with andy roddick and report back. also you are no longer allowed to go to yale. i forgot to tell you. we voted and youll be attending u of c in the fall.

in other casual world news… this weekend looks like a throwdown in honor of this country we love so much at the house of the rwip. saturday could be dangerous. bring your beer pong helmet.

and last but certainly not least… the voting is going down as we speak for the cusl board. with all the animated conversations that have occurred in the forum over new policies in the last year… you all better vote. casual ultimate is endorsing our very own russell, the ja rule to miss casual’s ashanti. so get on it people. vote for rick… four times even.

well ms. ultimate left town for europa for almost three weeks leaving me steering this blogging ship alone. judging by the sweaty palms and nervous finger tapping on my space bar… its not going to be good when she leaves for the ivy league. but here goes nothin and hopefully shell post from wimbeldon where shes hanging out with andy roddick and biking around with our london ss/fg counterparts.

this weekend was a parade of bike events. friday night was the ali g cat. j dot and i worked the crunkest checkpoint on harrison and lower wacker. it was all fun and games until one of our chicks and drinks ladies went down in the race and broke her collar bone. here she is looking hardcore in the er looks like wednesday well be hanging with jessi and doing less tricks and more drinks. not that we mind… michelle took second and emily took third for the females so c’n'd still came out way ahead on friday night at gold star at the awards ceremony.

then saturday was track racing. the picture at the top is emily and michelle (on her miami sound machine bike) busting around the velodrome in kenosha. it was hot outside the chi and miss casual needed a nap to recoup for the after party. unfortunately i recovered too quickly and had time for a few beers before i somehow ended doing a sprint against michelle which i only won because michelle was tired from the track. after the sprints adam decided to pick julio up over his shoulders and run around the block and that was how we knew it was time to go home. brunch today at cozy corner with the new humboldt homeboys was just what the dr. ordered to recover from such a fun and tiring weekend. thanks to val and the rest of the velo city people.

happy monday

this is going to be quick because i have to go to the airport in a little bit. if i can i’ll be blogging live from wimbledon and then the tour de france, but more likely miss casual will be taking things over for the next couple of weeks. it’ll be like training wheels for august (sniffle sniffle).

there are no pics from beach last night, so we’re posting this stock footage of sand. a ton of people were out: all the regulars plus some newbies that brown bear and dan knew, and rachel who is apparently the newest addition to briefcase….this is what happens when you don’t go to practice, you have to learn about your former team on the streets. there might have been over a dozen boys out; kind of sucks when you’re playing 5-2, but people we’re trying to attract and retain women to thursday beach, and we all have to make some p.t. sacrifices. tiger asked if we blog about beach: yes, we do, every single week - where do you think your girlfriend got her gchat picture?

after the game ms. ulty, morgan, the viking, brown bear, c(b)r and prof. berg hightailed it over to corcoran’s for some fat tire and burgers. the waitress there was…not good. she forgot the bacon on my burger and got all confused when i asked about it; then she came out five minutes later to bring our beers (finally) and gave me a face/attitude and said, “your bacon’s on the way, they are actually cooking it” - emphasis on ‘actually cooking it’. as opposed to what? defrosting already cooked bacon? anyways, we needed the grub to fuel brown bear storytime…ask him the one about kolb. hee hee.

there was also a bit of talk about sandblast 2007: glass shards in your feet. only time will tell, but briefcase will have a tough time overcoming bjorn/chuck/becky’s team, also known as quite possibly the hottest beach team known to humankind. it should be a killer tournament, definitely worth spectating for the finals/semis/quarters even. too bad ms. ulty will be biking along with the prologue and 1st stage of the tour….oh wait, no, that might be kind of cool too.

so its a big week for birthdays because today there are two more. not only is it my brother’s birthday, mr. chucktown, who is kind of a big deal (better reckidnize), but its our friend amy’s (of chicks and drinks fame) birthday too. miss casual spent an hour on the phone last night with mama town trying to scan and email some baby pictures to chuck in honor of his big bday. clearly miss casual is not cut out for i.t. phone support. happy birthday mr. town. cant wait to see you for sandblast.

also im not sure if we made it clear but chicks and drinks is big in hungary. ms. ultimate better look our for our fans on her european tour. amy’s picture of chicks and drinks last week got some more rousing responses from our admirers overseas. im sure tonight’s photographic evidence will be equally compelling. therell be some birthday shennanigans for amy… and some tricks and drinks of course. since regular tricks night imploded chicks is the new tricks. should be good times.

and i almost forgot… ultimate. monday night team close your eyes faced off against baker’s team in the rain and wind. i believe our entire roster showed up which was weird and we saw a huge rainbow when the sun came out. the disc slipped through lyrica’s hands at one point because it was wet and adam had the encouraging speech at halftime that included ‘just get in front of it. if it slips through your fingers… you have airbags.’ nice. we pulled out a win just in time to get one piece of pizza. thankfully. ciao.

the blog birthday party on friday night was a riot - thank for coming, everyone. the OG crew was there in force: tbrizzle, who brought an amazingly casual cupcake cake, bk, joe, baker, professor berg, hanging with mr. cooper, the boss, akira, roadhouse, candice, hendude, brownbear, anderson, the d.a., liz - all those guys. we saw paulina liz later on in the evening, at pfil’s; she got a little carried away at the air guitar championships. play freebird! kolb played the part of the viking, who had to be at a wedding out of town. poor excuse, but he looked good in the homemade backstreet boys-style t-shirt we made.

unfortunately for the ultimate folks the bike kids got there earlier and drank the lion’s share of the free pbr. adam, oren and public emily initiated a frosting fight with the aforementioned cupcake cake. good times, but a bit of a mess to clean up. you know ms. ulty got into trouble doing something similar with ice cream on her 12th bday at zephyrs. we should have seen it coming, especially since she did the same thing to carlo about six months ago. someday we’re going to play ultimate with ben vc, simon and all the other fixed gear kids so that the blog worlds can truly unite. a few of our respective (former) coworkers rounded out the group - way to represent, ladies, kolb loved meeting all of you. the manager of high dive went so far as to say it was a great group, come back any time. too bad he didn’t show his affection with free drinks.

this is one of the few photos the c.u. staff has of the evening, as our new staff photographer was snapping professional pics left and right. you can check out his flickr album here. thanks triple-a! we’re not sure if it’s reality or the filter on his camera, but take a peek - you all are very good-looking people.

of course we had to pour a little out for the out-of-towners who couldn’t be with us: becky, dr. welsh, denardis, cho and of course chucktown. c(b)r and ms. mmms were out of town too, and rick and ea….well, we’re not sure about them but i’m sure the excuses are good.

the rest of the weekend was recovery and fathers day. saturday night the c.u. staff, tbrizzle and morgan made a fantastic meal that included pork chops draped in bacon and a twenty six dollar apple pie, served a la mode with klondike bars. casualultimate, inc., a subsidiary of let’s get crunk llc, is thinking of launching a brunch spot if only to serve our newest creation: an apple pie with a thick granola crust and a lattice top made of bacon. i think everyone here can agree there aren’t enough places in wicker park to eat brunch. ms. ulty spent sunday in the warm glow of her family and had to miss briefcase tryouts….not like i’ll be playing this year, but i miss playing with you guys. thank goodness for competitive league tomorrow - cross your fingers for no rain.

last night was a great night for beach. lots of people came out which was very nice indeed. also it was tigers birthday and the weather was perfect. i mean perfect. the only issue was that herds… troops… armies of people who used our beach field as a path to the sidewalk. no matter that we asked them to go around the cones, or that dr. liz had to pick a child up at one point and carry her to the sideline to avoid being run over, or that we were all running at high speeds… sigh. we needed sidelines last night for the first time. definitely.

highlights… lyrica skied colb. no joke. ripped the disc right out of the air in front of him even though hes like a foot taller than her. all the guys who play for duffy’s dodge ball team are now in love with her. mr. cooper was not wearing underwear. hence the post title in which ms. ulty gave him the nfl butt pat and got more than she bargained for. tbrizzle and the boss both had some sick nasty layouts. at the top is a picture of hellyer (who is the total package) and lyrica (who runs so much liz and i are convinced she is, in fact, a cyborg of some kind) facing off nemesis style.

tonight is the casual ultimate birthday party as you already know. its gonna be bananas so come early if you want some of the free beer. and to fully celebrate this first year of the blog we figured we better throwback to our first post. thanks to tbr we really brought our leisure time into focus in the last year. and tonight will be no exception. cant wait to see you all!

last night was a good night for chicks and drinks. lots of ladies showed up. and by lots i mean 7. but still thats more than the 5 or so that normally turn out. at dinner we had nine whole people! crazy! we got to check out emily#1’s new bike (which is h.o.t.) and then do some trickery (which i have no photos of right now) and then headed to el cid for margaritas under the stars. rolling up in logan square a group of boys walked up and told us we all had colored rims. which we actually already knew. and then they stole our table. but it turns out it was the guys from boulevard bikes. maybe if they give us a discount well let it go… we still invited them all to the party on friday. looks like the cu bday party is gonna be bananas. dont say we didnt warn you…

also we spent some time last night working on special surprises for some of our regulars on the blog. arts and crafts is obviously our second calling after blogging. but the trip to el cid reminds us of another trip to that culinary powerhouse during sandblast last year. were getting excited for sandblast this year already cause its only a few weeks away! lots of reinforcements coming in for that… better catch up on sleep now…

but not tonight cause its beach and its also tiger’s birthday so there should be some shennanigans afterwards. well keep you posted obviously. if you wanna know about the post title youll have to ask public emily. happy thursday.

edit: thanks to amy for the photo. its an old c’n'd photo but a good one.

its so good to lay around the house when youve had a hectic week. so last night the cu staff chatted on the couch chez ulty before miss casual pealed out to do laundry and ms. ulty took off for a bbq at morgan’s. sunday afternoon proved nice on the homefront also since bjorn and tbr were working on bikes and the cu staff was lounging and making frozen cocktails. we messed around a bit and while tbrizzle was looking at old posts we remembered that haircut of carlo’s and dropping the boss’s couch over the front of his new house which is our throwback post of the day. ahh casting the casual ultimate movie. why has that not hit the big screen yet?

actually i think what brought it up was a picture of new kids on the block in which joey mcintyre looks just like cbr. check it out. guy on the right? cbr? separated at birth?

looks to be a busy couple of days with chicks and drinks tonight, beach and tiger’s bday tomorrow, and the cu birthday party friday night. lots of fun surprises are in the works for friday so you better reckidnize and come on out.

alright lets hug it out.

xoxo miss casual

today’s post title comes from one of chicago’s finest, who was overheard on his bike-mounted radio on our sideline at summer league. even we admit that some things are more important than ultimate. namely, missing children.

last night team ‘close your eyes’ had a crushing 12-15 defeat vs. team ‘baker i can’t believe you allowed our opposing team to form despite the new player rating rules’. it was a great game, though, and playing with all these fun people is beginning to make ms. ulty very sad about leaving chicago at the end of the summer. everyone on team close your eyes had hot plays, and billy only yelled “c’mon! are you kidding me?!’ at one foul call. we probably should have done a better job baiting him. here’s lyrica finishing up one of the coop’s fudgesicles; ask jake why a medical supply company sent him haribo gummy bears instead of enzymes. funny story. also ask about their next family vacation.

last night was also our experiment biking to and from wash park - we’ll be doing it from now on. what a fun ride: we got warmed up and energized to play on the way there, and it was a relaxing and traffic-free way to get home in the evening. at about 25 miles roundtrip, it’s also a nice way to put miles on our majestic steeds. we talked tun into escorting us all the way back to piece, and a chifg’er-turned-cusl’er buddy came as far as the loop. we ran into j.simon from chifg downtown, and he came to piece for a pint.

piece was…piece, of course. the only drawback to that bike ride is there’s no chance of us getting any pizza. luckily we scored some of the jacobs pie and settled in to catch up with friends. professor berg was wearing a necklace he claims to have “found” today during his summer relocation from the ‘burbs to chicago proper, but in fact it was purchased last weekend at a dave matthews band/hootie and the blowfish inventory sale. this is why his students love him.

all this talk of summer league of course means that today’s throwback post has to be dial m for passionfruit. mostly because it features one of the top three baker pics.

heres a typical sunday chez tbrizzle / casual. the girls of cu are in the kitchen, making frozen cocktails out of lemoncello and lime popsicles and the boys, tbrizzle and the viking, are in the back yard stripping the paint off their bikes. watching wes anderson movies and making fruity cocktails was all we had left after an eventful weekend.

miss casual had adam in town from nyc to squire her about town and explore the edge of culinary art. friday night the 25+ courses at alinea changed our lives. i cant even begin to truly describe how perfect the whole experience was so instead ill just post some photos of things that we ate. maybe therell be an in depth analysis on our brother site, scrumptulesence. well keep you posted. after four hours of nausea nirvana miss casual will never be the same again. the next night however… we went to moto and honestly… i want my money back. maybe alinea is too tough of an act to follow… or maybe the bread didnt really taste any better from being dyed in squid ink, frozen in liquid nitrigen, and set on fire tableside. whoever said moto was as good as alinea is dead to us.

but overall a fantastic weekend which harkens back to this other moment in our casual ultimate past. a culinary adventure of another sort… our throwback post today is that time we went out for ribs after cho came to beach drunk. drunk cho, our video game winner, we miss you.

today is our one year blog birthday! its difficult to believe we’ve been doing this for an entire revolution around the sun but here we are. it wouldnt have been possible without you. you are the wind beneath our wings.

if you didnt already know from runnning into one of us, a week from tonight at high dive (chicago and damen) from 6-9 we are throwing a happy hour birthday party. the first 50 pbr’s are on casual ultimate. after that 3$ drafts. we even got buttons made to honor the occasion. so bring friends and come help us celebrate a year of shennanigans. all week well be posting links to our favorite throwback posts in the last year so today we’ll start with the very first post to see where it all started.

last night on the eve of our anniversary we went out and saw lots of our favorite people. we stopped at beach and ran into most of team ‘close your eyes’ in addition to baker, vijay, and of course the viking. it was a lovley night for ultimate except for the 50 mph winds and some stray dodgeball hussies who wouldnt get off of our field. the cu staff left a bit early to beat the rain, which never came.

when we ran into the chifggers, oren dubbed the ‘big storm’ the ‘new cicada’ since it was talked about much but never happened. we toasted all our bike friends with free beer at weegee’s one year bday party. coincidence that their bday is one day before ours? we didnt think so either. all us geminis stick together. friendhugger spilled beer all over miss casual’s blinged out feet before we retired to streetside for burgers and champagne. here he is looking innocent. thats how we roll. a year later and still more to come…

with miss casual holding it down in chitown this past weekend/week, ms. ulty traveled to wisconsin to visit sis anna banana (yes she went to carleton, no she didn’t play for syzygy) in beautiful southwestern wisconsin and catch a couple of ballgames in milwaukee with anna, professor berg and some new friends.

spending time in the country is so relaxing, especially when your sister lives miles away from the closest internet machine and cellphone reception. highlights of the trip include moonrise s’mores over an open fire (more authentic than the s’mores we had with bacers), anna’s new puppy, baby bunnies everywhere, sunbathing, etc. we went hiking in wyalusing state park and had the first actual cicada sighting of the year (see photographic evidence, miss casual), saw the monument to wisconsin’s last passenger pigeon and dipped our toes in the mississippi huck finn style. also, ms. ulty learned the hard way that biking is not 100% fun when there are hills involved - it can actually be exercise. a 1.5 mile hill followed by many many other hills taught her that; turns out i need to go running more.

tuesday brought a trip to a ginormous bike store in madison and a long drive to milwaukee, where we met up with professor berg, his roomie, and his roomie’s 10 closest friends who were all attending the brewers-cubs game. we learned a few things in miller park:

(1) the vendors there sell sparks - here’s prof. berg as living proof
(2) it takes 18 minutes to close the roof
(3) tobacco tastes like a farm when you’re in wisconsin
(4) there are almost more cubs fans than brewers fans in the stands when they’re playing eachother
(5) brewers fans cheer for packers during baseball games

and, oh, milwaukee is a really cool town. ms. ulty loves its old industrial stylo and thinks it’s better than madison (sorry georgia). before the day game on tuesday we went to a place called comet cafe for a fantastic brunch. the bloody mary there is super good and come with bacon and a pony bottle of high life. all of our sandwiches were delish, even though our new bestie (bffn, not bff, brian) barely ate half of his mr. awesome (it would go well with piece’s baron von awesome). there are so many cool joints in that city, plus the parks, buildings, zillions of square feet of future loft space - buy real estate now, people. we were having so much fun prof. berg and ms. ulty barely made it to the train station in time. we will be organizing some trips to our neighbor to the north soon.

now it’s back to chicago, where hopefully the rain holds off and we get to play some beach n’ bikes tonight. there’s a rumor the prof. might be joining us. it’s also weegee’s 1-year anniversary and they’re giving away free drafts from 6-10; not sure how that will factor into the night’s activities.

last night was the beginning of chicago summer league and was the first night ever of competitive league for cusl. if you want to read or comment about the ups and downs of this system check out the forum, but id like to congratulate mr. baker and the cusl people cause last night was bananas. maybe its just because we have an overabundance of fun people on our team, or the fact that we won in spite of the rain, or that fact that we got to piece so early there was tons of pizza and no fighting… but summer league is looking good.

you might already know some of the lovely people on our team. bk, from such accomplishments as he cooks a mean brisquet, and joe little, from such quotes as ‘daybreak… chicago’. rachel from such posts as ‘rachel saves our lazy butts at fall league’ or lyrica from such skills as ’shes the best lady with a plastic disc in this city’, and tiger from such feats as ‘he had to guard kolb who’s a foot taller than him and still brought the pain at beach’. or even thor and liz, who youll recognize from ‘they won summer league last year and are the coolest couple ever.’

ive already warned the team that if they dont want to be on the internets they best come up with a new team to play for so its on. ill be passing out waivers next week. ms. ultimate missed our first game but we won in her honor. due to a name game played at the half with our eyes closed im dubbing the team ‘close your eyes’ until we think of something better.

cant wait for next week already.

friday evening started with some chicks and drinks with the usual ladies plus a new amy, simon’s wife. we messed around for long enough for miss casual to fall and skin her entire right side from a bad skid before retiring for dinner at handlebar with simon and amy. ms. ulty stopped for a beer with the boss, the hales, and the viking along the way. we waited out the rain discussing the phenomenon of surly waiters at handlebar and then went across town for saturrday night’s race preparty.

we were worried approaching a club in the gold coast called funk, but hey, free drinks from 9-10? we drank a few. and then took over the dancefoor and then the stage with the rest of the chifg crew. who knew coyote, adam, friendhugger, amy and emily had such fierce moves? unfortunately ms. ulty was out for the race because shes visting her sister but amy and miss casual took the viking and barreled through traffic for a couple of hours on saturday night. heres a pic of bjorn and amy with their race faces on at the last checkpoint. the viking rolls with sparxx natch. team c’n'd finished the whole course and definitely earned the beers that flowed freely at tumans. tbrizzle came out to meet us and the picture at the top is of all the racers bikes on the fence at the bar.

tomorrow night marks the beginning of summer league so heres hoping competitive league starts with a bang.

last night the cu staff regrouped chez ultimate to plan our attack on tricks and drinks at its new way up north location. after checking in with the kittens and battening down the hatches we proceded on bicycle to kumas in order to fuel up for an evening of skids. however it was super packed and we waited almost an hour for our burgers. ms. ultimate almost went blind with hunger. luckily our bartender was mr. kuma himself and he bought our burgers since they took so long. let me tell you… a burger never tasted so good. in a shocking triumph of will, miss casual annihilated her mastadon.

the wait gave us plenty of time to discuss the late-breaking competitive summer league news whereby games are switched from wednesday to monday night and south side kids have to play some games up north. switching days is no big whoop, but we’re bummed that we’ll probably have to miss some of the up north games due to work hours (miss casual) and transportation issues (ms. ulty). and it’s sounding like lady numbers will be very tight on the teams. perhaps we can organize some sort of complex carpool system. anyone have room for a bike in their car on the way home? we considered trying to switch back to regular CUSL just to ensure we’d get to play enough games this summer, but we know baker would kill us for even making the request.

well, with an after glow from red meat and alpha king we booked it up to t’n'd. we drank some beers and practiced our tricks with most of the usual suspects. miss casual had a scary skid that ended up going off road and we had some adoring fans from the surrounding neighborhood chatting us up all evening. it was a beautiful night under a blue moon and we are looking forward to another fun night of tricks with the ladies tonight.