casual ultimate » 2007 » August

Here are some pictures (poached from Bea’s blog) of Wyatt Riot’s show last Friday. It was at Pier 23 which is a bar that they named an entire pier after - talk about unoriginal - and it happens to be next to the bay which is where we play and make things out of clay. It was a damn good time and the alcohol tasted like a giant glass of “freedom” (which is a concept and now also a taste). Damien showed up and convinced the barstaff to concoct a long island iced tea in a bucket because who wants to get a bunch of glasses dirty? He then proceeded to allegedly tell the girl I was chatting with that on a scale of 3 to 13, she was a 7. Thanks, buddy. Glad I didn’t even invite you so that you could show up, drink my bonus and insult the girl I am hitting on. Good looking out.

In other news, the Labor Day Ultimate Champies are this weekend with coed up in SF and Open/Women down in Santa Cruz. It should be a pretty solid tournament as usual and if nothing else changes this weekend, I will be living in a place called the Pink Palace when it’s over. Nothing gay about that. Let’s a do a quick recap of my life as a straight male since last spring:

In the beginning, I am in a long-term relationship with a woman (Dr. Welsh) in the heartland.

Then….

1) I move to San Francisco, gay mecca, to “explore something new”.
2) My relationship quickly falls apart.
3) I move to the city to “explore something new.”
4) I begin biking a lot and drinking cocktails when I go out.
5) I move to a bright pink house.
6) I put some of my hanging clothes in the closet.
7) I come out of the closet.

So anyway, I live in a pink house in the Sunset and I love Extreme Frisbee. As Joe Ferrari would say, sweet. (Here’s a picture of me hanging out with my guy friends in San Francisco. That guy in the shades is definitely checking me out.)

“Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he’s carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he’s carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you’re drunk.” -Jack Handey

while it pains me that tobias funke can no longer be the first thing i see on casualultimate, this is a great post from our very own brady, who just returned to chicago after a year in china. check it out to learn more about summer league, beijing-style:
——————————-
Sunday began like many in the past 6 weeks. Plenty of heat, time spent
cramming some food into myself in the early afternoon to make it thru the
long summer league day; and hoping that I remembered to wash my summer
league jersey before the crowded van ride to the fields (not that Beijing
doesn’t provide enough smells to mask any offending odor my jersey may
contain).

As i blogged about before, Peggy and I really lucked out with the location of our apartment. As it turns out, ‘carpooling’ for ultimate meets a mere 10 minute walk from our apartment building. The meeting place for all trips ultimate in nature is in front of the local Dongzhimen mall. There we all pile up on the steps, creating quite the staring feature for the locals, and wait for everyone to show up 30 minutes late (ultimate time being
universal).

Transportation in China is relatively cheap, but people still prefer to pinch maos when they can, especially when the directions to the place we are going are rather difficult to explain to your average cab driver (who will still act like he/she knows where he/she is going). Also, since getting fields is even tougher here than in Chicago and only a few people are on top of where we are going this month; we rent 3 vans (13 people fit in each) and cram into them for what is always a ‘bonding moment’ of a trip to some
hopefully grassy area. We have pretty nice fields for summer league as it turns out, just past Happy valley Amusment Park (haven’t been yet, but Im planning to go). The fields are big enough for our 4 team league to have both games going simultaneously (though with a shared sideline and about 35 yard wide fields only).

The fields we’ve been playing on have one flaw, they are near enough to a factory that more often then not we are running around and breathing in what smells like burning perfume, sulfur, or something. Forget playing at altitude, try playing when the local factory has the one day a week when they burn off all the chemicals they are done using. Yuck.

However there are a lot of great things about Beijing Summer League. Thanks to the hard work of several ex-pats in particular, ultimate has started to spread to the locals and there are even a few local club teams that competed at tournaments this past year. While many of these players are from local universities and go back home for summer, there is still a good contingent of local players on every summer league team. Its really exciting to witness the growth and excitement of the local ultimate community. Another great thing is we draw and audience everywhere we play.

These fields happen to be stuck right next to the local neighborhood’s public park. When the local guy with the 15 foot whip isn’t spending his Sunday cracking the whip in the middle of the park, we are public entertainment #1 (I can now understand why whipping people is a devastating punishment.the whip cracks sound like LOUD fireworks. Quite something to see). The locals (mostly kids) line up along the old fence and watch us from the moment we show up and stretch until the moment we pack up and go home. Sometimes they even tear the wiring that is keeping old fence holes closed and sneak in to watch us at a closer distance…at least until the guy overseeing the fields comes to scare them away and rewire the holes closed. (This repeats pretty much every week with no tactical improvements by either side, this is pretty typical of Beijing life.)

Summer league involves more than just the games here. It was setup particularly to help expand the number of people playing in Beijing and their skills. On alternate weeks we warm up as one big group of about 70 people and then split into beginner and advanced skill sessions / drills. The other weeks we work as individual teams on the basics of game play (stacks, dump n swing, etc.). Next we play your standard ultimate game to 13 with about an hour an a half time cap to save some time at the end for us to mix it up and break into one or two pickup games. Many of the people end up going out for a big dinner at a restaurant after the game (once we squeeze back into vans for the ride home). Its quite a complete day, running from about 2pm to 9pm if one stays for dinner.

This particular week my team was again undermanned/womanned with low turnout. We were matched up against Peggy’s team, certainly a bitter rival. Somehow we found ourselves battling all the way to double game point, with us receiving. My team, employing a horizontal stack that we just learned, ends up with the two middle receivers both taking off deep after I get the disc centered off of the pull. Both of the players had a few inches and a few steps on their defenders, so I decided to push it and let a forehand fly. Alas, not the trajectory one would want as the throw hangs and arcs a bit too much. Somehow all four players manage to misread it (summer league),
however one of our players makes a great grab falling over while trying to chase the disc arcing over his head. We patiently work the disc the last few yards and put it in the endzone for our first win of the season. Peggy will never let me live that throw down, but Ill never let her live down the loss. so all is well.

(The game in question above was about three weeks ago.our team finished with only that win in the 6 games of play before the playoffs. However we pulled out our semi-final last week against the top team (who only had one loss). The forehands looked a lot better last week . Peggy’s team won the other semi-final so tomorrow its put up or shut up in Beijing as we decide which one of us will have bragging rights for all eternity).

So when I walk into the gym (every 3rd month unless it’s got a tuesday) and head for the locker room during busy hours, I run into this same scenario. Locker rooms are fully of sweaty naked men, and while that’s fine and necessary after a fashion, I like to give them their space while I’m changing. So as I enter the room I do a quick, eyes-above-belt level sweep of the space to see where the nudists are in order that I may pick a little private space and not have to have some guy’s junk hovering a biscuit away from my forehead while I’m furiously tying my shoes (velcro was made for these situations). These calculations are quite black and white: any garment is acceptable; a towel, a pair of pants, even jockey shorts will suffice to prevent that scenario from happening.

But every so often I run into this same guy (and I’m never looking too carefully at anyone in the room, so I’ve never learned to avoid him) wearing a big sweaty t-shirt around and looking like a sane, rational human being with no outward signs of exhibitionism. Trustingly I end up grabbing a locker next to him, and proceed to pack, unpack, hang things up, turn off my phone, and basically go through the small ritual tasks that prepare one for exercise. And at some point, near the end of all this, I sit down to tie my gym shoes. And inevitably, without fail, this guy, this hairy sweaty, clueless, racquetball playing hog of a man standing adjacent to me, chooses that moment to lean in and reach up to his top-row locker extending his apelike arms to remove his pants from their hook or grab some deodorant or pluck an imaginary apple from the sky and, in doing so, suddenly hikes up his enormous sweaty shirt which reveals his complete nudeness below the waist. And once again, the eerie silence of his junk just hovering there for that infinite stretch as he roots around, unable to find what he’s looking for, perhaps unable to remember why he reached up in the first place, and me getting tunnel vision on my shoelaces, which refuse to behave and end up as one massive jumble of failed knots. And though I know I need to look up at this guy, to look him full in the face so that I know who he is and can avoid him in the future, I don’t—I can’t confront what I might see there. I assume that face to be lined with the creases of guilt for the torment he wreaks on those around him, but just as likely it might be devoid of any recognizable human countenance whatsoever, simian and dull, empty, waiting for the world to change so he doesn’t have to. In the end I sit there until I see his feet shuffle a few steps away, stand up by rotating myself away from him, kick my locker shut and bolt out the door to sort out the mess of my shoes in the stretching area.

I know this may smack of some immature phobia or inability to accept the human body, but I maintain that what this man is doing is just wrong, and violates an unwritten rule of the gym. Men should not wear shirts as their only garment. Absolutely unacceptable. A shirt alone offers no practical function to a man unless it is there in cooperation with pants. I submit that those who violate this simple concept should be universally shunned, kicked out of the gym, and made to wear cutoffs at all times.

turns out one common feature of ultimate frisbee around this world is that casual pickup games suck. i woke up on sunday in a bit of a mood, possibly because i haven’t gotten to do anything recreational that’s non-orientation related in weeks, and I miss playing frisbee. i went online to scope the scene and found a pickup game happening that afternoon. i joined the yahoo group and posted a comment asking if folks were indeed playing today, heard nothing back but decided to show up anyway.

i tossed with a good woman and guy for a bit and then three more people showed up so we played three-on-three. now, i know from experience that the only game i like to play with a frisbee is ultimate - none of that 3-on-3, box, etc. sure it was fun to run around (but steamy! more humid than chicago i think) and meet ulty players out here, but pickup can be so painful. there was this one guy who was all, “i’m from such-and-such town, but i drive out to new haven because it’s the only decent pickup game around.” he and i didn’t have a single connection in 20 losing points, and i’m not saying i’m perfect, but his throws were crazytown. i stopped cutting to him, which is bad news when there’s only one other cutter.

i’m sure it’ll get better - apparently there are usually a ton of people, maybe folks are just on vacation. still….it made me long for chicago ultimate all that much more. remember that time you went away for easter? well, i missed you, i really missed you. i don’t know why i’ve never said that before but it’s true. i love you, and i should be saying that every day.

and in case you didn’t figure it out, that picture has nothing to do with this post, it’s from orientation last week. i just thought it was kind of neat-o.

with chicago’s first-ever recorded hurricane passing through town last night, things got a little dicey for folks in the chicago area. i have to say, i do like me some severe weather, it’s pretty cool to watch. i mean, if it’s going to knock out my satellite reception, it better offer something in return. there’ve got to be a bunch of stories, good (tbr enjoying a 4wd vehicle) and bad (mercedog losing his roof), but this was my bout with the bad weather.

driving through that hurricane last night was awesome. i left my company’s lincolnshire office at about 3:20pm, just as the first front of the storm approached; i saw it coming and made a beeline to my car to get on the road asap. i -just- made it to the dry confines of the car before the rain started coming down. within a couple minutes, it was like driving through a carwash. the 60+ mph winds power-washed my car with the buckets of rain coming down. once on the freeway, i couldn’t see a damn thing at any speed above 40mph, even with the wipers on high. and it felt like i could start hydroplaning at any moment, there was that much water on the roads. people were stopping under underpasses to wait it out, which i thought was a bad idea because i bet at least a few of them got caught in high water. water was pouring off overpasses like waterfalls. there were lightning strikes all around me, super close on some; using the old “count one second between lightning and thunder equals how many miles away the strike was” rule, there were at least a handful of strikes under a mile away. and the winds had ripped apart the trees along the roads, i’ve never seen that much pulverized tree debris on the freeway.

soon enough though, the first wave of rain stopped, and i settled in for the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the edens trying to get back downtown. i made it back to my river north office in about an hour and a half, actually not bad considering what happened later on with all the flooding and road closures.

i got back to the apartment just as the second round of heavy stuff started coming down, so i sat in the car for a while, hoping to wait it out and not get totally soaked on the 20 yard walk to the front door. not gonna happen. so i changed into my gym clothes, which i had ready in the car since i was supposed to run track last night, and made a mad dash to shelter.

after reading about the extent of the damage and such this morning, and hearing about merce’s roof, i’m feeling pretty lucky about how well we escaped over on my street. fortunately, there weren’t any trees ripped down, and we didn’t get flooded out. but just to be safe, i parked on top of a speed hump, trying to get on high ground as best i can. i’ve had a car get flooded once, and i don’t want it again. that shit stinks.

I have nothing useful to report but i wanted to post this pic of Slider being our test subject for our first in-office green screen shoot. He’s even happier in person than he looks in this photo. If that’s possible.

So at ECC this weekend, the Buzz Bullets descended on the US. They won worlds in Perth, AUS last November, and everybody kind of wrote that win off since a lot of the top men’s teams didn’t make it down to Worlds. They came to ECC this weekend though and really frustrated teams. I saw some of their semifinal against Jam and most of their final against Sockeye (which they lost on double-game-point after being up the whole game).

On D, they run a transition zone-man-zone that my friend Stephen was trying to describe to me, having played against them before in international competitions. They apparently come down in zone, flip to man, and then they go BACK into zone or something like that. It’s pretty confusing, and I’m no strategist, so you’ll have to read more about it from the “thinkers” out there. One other thing they do is bid huuuuge. They are springy and explode on their lay-outs.

On O, they force throws through traffic and jam it up the line and throw outside-in hucks that don’t hang in the air and just are faster than their opponents a lot of the time. A couple of throws went up in the final that just looked like poor choices really, but BB read them well and were really effective even against the big guys. In the rain, they all had these really cool gloves too. I’ve gotta look into these gloves because the catches they were making in traffic were pretty fantastic.

They are sponsored by a “shutter company” (not sure if it’s camera shutters or window shutters), and most of them work there. They’re all really tight and play and work together, and they all have all the skills. That was a really noticeable difference: they’re not specialized like US teams. (Note to self: move to Japan for that reason alone.) On Sockeye, you’ve got Chase and Nord dominating in the air, Ben Wiggins and Jeremy Cram exclusively behind the disc, and a bunch of other highly specialized O and D players. The Buzz Bullets all have great skills, all play both sides of the disc well, and are all EXTREMELY FAST and hyper-intelligent…and hairless.

Nord got skyed twice this weekend by guys that were about a foot shorter than him on the Buzz Bullets. Pretty sick springy bids by these guys. All in all, they really won over the crowd and everybody was rooting for them and at times booing certain members of Sockeye. It seems like BB is on to something that the rest of the world may need to get wise to or be overtaken, like in so many other areas other than sex, by the Japanese.

I guess the only other comment I wanted to make was that this game was played really cleanly. There were no cheap calls that I could see, and Sockeye did not make any calls to give themselves the edge. There were a couple of times that I expected a foul-call when the Buzz Bullets made a physical play on a high disc and in Sockeye’s defense, they did not stop play and just hustled back on D. I thought this was awesome. It inspired me to play cleaner Ultimate and really take it on myself to win the damn disc, no matter what.

In the coed division, Brass played pretty poorly. We are ironing out some things and were not short on players by any stretch (with 20 or so). We lost to Flaming Moe, Shazam, Slow White, and Mischief. We beat Horde (Whoreshack) and Flycoons (they are really good this year having picked up Tim Murray and what’s-her-face). There was a great moment where I called a foul on an accidental collision Basically, I started coming under after a deep cut and then Greenough ripped a bomb to the back of the endzone and so I turned back around and ran into my defender who was trailing by about 10 yards and didn’t see the disc go up. Timmy yelled from the sideline, “No one from Northwestern could’ve gotten that disc.” Luckily, one of his other team-mates standing close to me said I had a play on it. Nice spirit, guy.

Shazam handled everyone except Mischief who gave them the game after being up 7-2 only to lose on double-game-point. I think the rematch in the final went to Shazam as well and it was not a 1-point win. I don’t know the score though. They beat us in a rainy, zone-y, game in which we took half and then lost 11-15. Their trap zone looked pretty good, and they were trapping on both sidelines.

That’s all I have to report from ECC. I saw Becky and met her boyfriend, Pat. I approve.

you know you’re in the ivy league when there’s actually ivy growing inside your house. tomorrow i leave again for a week-long orientation trip to the wilds of connecticut, so i thought i’d post a general update on the the ultimate academic lifestyle. last night, at a keg party being held in the forestry school building, one of my new classmates described our 2-year masters program as “a landbound cruise.” that’s pretty accurate thus far, given this three-week orientation consists of driving out of town, hiking in the woods, swimming in picture perfect lakes, making s’mores around the campfire and drinking microbrews purchased by the school. oh, and we’re learning and meeting eachother and stuff.

everyone in the forestry & environmental studies program is awesome - varied backgrounds, ages, experience, nationalities, etc. and of course everyone is super nice because we’re all on our best behavior trying to make friends. my housemate haley and i have bonded over intensive house cleaning and target/ikea shopping. not that miss casual will ever be replaced, but it should be noted that last night haley returned from a trip to the wine store with a bottle of cava. yesterday i found an amazing rails-to-trails bike path and was out for two hours - you’re my inspiration, tbrizzle.

last week was the first week of orientation. we headed out of new haven in a van without power steering for the yale myers forest in union, ct. this orientation module (called ‘mods’) was focused on ecosystem measurement. here’s a picture of me measuring tree stand density with a angle meter. it’s a long story how it all works, but we got to use a bunch of fun toys with names like hypsometer, biltmore stick, clinometer, etc. the mod was run by several t.a.’s in the program and supplemented by lectures from forestry profs. the food was awesome, cooked by a ph.d. student from sri lanka, and we stayed up late every night around the campfire. unfortunately no one in the group was interested in tossing the ol’ disc around….i think it’ll be some time before i find a pickup game. i did meet a ph.d. student who plays on the connecticut mixed team; they might need practice players, hopefully i can hang.

this week i’ll be going to a spot called great mountain to practice my gis mapping and orienteering skills. i hear this week will also involve softball and more swimming. should be tough. the jacobs brothers are in town and i’ll be drinking non-piece beers with them come thursday night. i miss you all and can’t wait to hear about cooler. how’d you do, mr. briefcase? who won the ladies division, team angelina? if machine didn’t dominate i’ll be disappointed. love you guys, keep it real in chitown.

last night was a monumental success. congrats to michelle for organizing and aaron for making the best frickin trophies known to man. below is a pic of one of the winners accepting their prize. they were forks (like bike forks) with stuffed kittens impaled on them with chain rings as name plates. so funny. first place was a team in clown costumes and burkhas. our very own little ben won third with his team. nice work friendcrusher.

the race itself drew a huge crowd. 110 participants! 30+ teams! at each chicks and drinks run checkpoint teams had to do tasks to get points and they could return to the same checkpoints as many times as they wanted. j dot and i got the ‘find the bubblegum in the flour without using your hands and blow a bubble’ checkpoint on division and damen. the thursday night bar crowd on damen enjoyed the screeching breaks and clouds of flour im sure. the trick was to blow the flour everywhere cause if you took a big mouthful your chances of blowing a bubble were slim to none.

the after party was great too. weegees never disappoints. every time i go there it gets tougher to leave. i think they put something in the water… or beer. or whatevs. this morning came early.

tbrizzle got home last night which was a nice surprise. hopefully he’ll post about his life altering epiphanies on the road. hes skinny as a rail. seriously. ms. ultimate is also back on the radar after spending a week in the woods with the yalies. the weekend looks like a circus of napping, biking, and movie watching. superbad anyone? plus the bike film fest of course. good luck to our friends headed out to cooler this weekend. we’re hoping for a post from our favorite viking next week to recap the action. happy friday yall.

last night was the kickoff party for the bicycle film festival in chicago. unfortunately it started passed my bed time so instead of partying like a rockstar the chicks and drinks ladies gathered chez casual to make spoke cards for tonight’s alleykitten. the triplets of belmont is a bike film festival sponsored scanvenger hunt and michelle and jessi are co-chairing the event so we all got together to drink some beers and do arts and crafts. everyone should come out and participate in the shennanigans. its gonna be lots of fun and its free for goodness sakes! the teams will have to do all kinds of stunts to earn points plus theres extra discretionary points for badassity. and the after party is at weegee’s, a cu favorite since july.

therell probably be some film watching this weekend too obviously and hopefully a long ride at some point since i got my confirmation for the apple cider century at the end of september. looks like tbrizzle’s return to the chi is imminent so also house cleaning is on the agenda. what does one buy a br for their birthday? i have an idea but any additional thoughts are appreciated.

I saw this Muppet show once where Dr. Bunson Honeydew makes a machine that can combine things. Shortly following the exposition of this novelty, Beaker ends up sticking his arm in at the same time a puppy dog is placed inside; machine turns on, and suddenly Beaker has a living puppy head instead of a hand. The effect was disorienting and horrific, and left me, as a child, rather afraid of the inarticulate Beaker thereafter.

Today I experienced just this same sort of shudder when I came across this pillow resting on the windowsill of my hotel. And while I like to think that I support innovation in nearly all it’s forms, my heart goes out to the unfortunate pillow, stuffed lion, soccerball and crucifix that were jammed into Dr. Honeydew’s machine this time around.

the first competitive summer league tourny went down in history with bill finn’s team beating team pizza pizza beer in crushing final on saturday. it was a long day (3 pool play games then semis and finals) and hot as blazes but the games were fun and mr. baker deserves accolades for the season and tournament.

unfortunately russel’s team had to forfeit their game after he drove miss casual all the way out to naperville. so he took off into the air conditioned truck just as pizza pizza beer finished up their first victorious game against the benjamin team. second game was bill finns team and ppb lost a tough fight in this game. last game ppb squeaked out a win against professor berg’s team. so being the 2 seed in our pool put ppb in the semis against the clark team.

we had expected to face the 1 seed from the other pool, a team with many cu friends on it lead by jake cooper. there was some drama in the pool play however which left three teams going 2-1 and cooper’s team being eliminated from afternoon play by point differential.

ppb won their semi game with lots of time to sit in the shade and wait for finns team to battle out a long game against bakers team. both teams were playing hard and trading points but eventually bakers team lost out and we faced our earlier opponents in the final. we played a great first half and were up 7-6 but the second half was all theirs and they beat us by 4 points i think too be the first competitve league summer champs.

highlights included : lyrica handblocking the s%!t out of bill finn himself in the final game and then scoring for pizza pizza beer which gave brown bear material against his new roommate for the rest of his natural life. a great blob tag game with team pizza pizza beer as a warm up for the semis. rick bollinger and joe little being absolutely everywhere at once. and bk showing up in time for semis with tons of cold stuff and those spooky demon eye contacts.

miss casual was too wiped out to enjoy the post tournament festivities at rwip and brown bear’s but it was a great time and hopefully someone will post some comments about the after parties.

on a last note cu will dearly miss two of our friends lyrica and tiger who are taking off for the east coast very shortly. you guys are the bee’s knees. send us posts from the east coast.

(this just in for ms. mimms, our nemesis correspondant)

It’s been an exciting week to be a Nemesis player.

Last Friday, the eleven of us that got into Boulder early went on a rafting trip where we almost, but not quite, managed to launch Candice out of the raft going over a class IV rapid. That girl is tenacious.

Saturday we mostly got whooped on by other teams (ok, all our games were actually close but we only won one, grrrr), but that night featured a pre-hot tub group shower and an exciting 45-minutes of full-contact pool keep-away. During keep-away, we learned that Candice “has no off switch” and that Val thinks it’s amusing to pretend to lick the ball.

Sunday brought one more win (Layuma - avenging a Boston Invite loss), and two other losses by small margins. It’s clear that we need to learn to close games. That night 6 of us didn’t get into Midway until 2am due to a delayed flight. Thanks to Brownbear, Bill Finn, and other Machine boyz for making the time fly by.

Wednesday featured practice followed by the Beefster’s 21st birthday celebration. I think she said it best, so I’ll just reproduce her “morning-after” email verbatim:

“First and foremost, thanks to everyone who came out and bought me drinks last night. I had a great time and it just reminded me how much I love Nemesis. Seriously. I love you guys and couldn’t have asked for better teammates.

But now to recap:

From 9pm to around 10pm I consumed more shots than I can remember. I tried to count them this morning and came to the conclusion that I consumed AT LEAST 10 drinks between 9 and a little after 10.

10:30 - Ended up in the Black Beetle bathroom (that was inevitable) at which point Yaya decides it’s a good time to head home. Good call, Yaya. So we head home and I’m going to assume we teleported back to Hyde Park because I don’t remember the 30 minute drive home AT ALL.

The next thing I know it’s 4 in the morning and I’m waking up on my bathroom floor. So, I crawl into bed and wake up 3 hours later at 7am to get ready for work. While walking to the bathroom I was shocked to discover that I didn’t have a headache and wasn’t feeling nauseous.

And that’s when I realized I was still drunk.”
Finally, Thursday involved an email exchange with the TD’s to Cooler, at which point we realized that Nemesis does not in fact have a bid. They won’t just add us because 9 teams is wacky, so we’re now exploring a situation where we split into two teams. We have no idea whether that will work out, but opposing team names are being solicited nonetheless. Meagles favors Autobots and Decepticons. Beef’s suggestions include: Unicron and Primus (more transformers), Apocalypse, nemesis of Cable (more X-Men), Ares and Cheetah, nemesises of Wonder Woman, Deacon Frost, nemesis of Blade, Doctor Doom, nemesis of the Fantastic Four, Judge Death, nemesis of Judge Dredd, Sabretooth, nemesis of Wolverine (X-Men, again), The Legion of Doom, nemesises of the Justice League. Candice votes for Dumb and Dumber. Your suggestions appreciated.

(i am putting together some of tony’s updates from the road. i think hes just leaving traverse city. for those who dont know… our very own tbrizzle is biking all the way around lake michigan for two weeks with only his iphone for company. he has all his stuff in a trailer and is camping half the time. -miss casual)

late as usual

minor crisis this morning, the skewer that holds my trailer to my bike was unfit. i couldn’t find a shop that sold only the skewer so i bought a whole new trailer and left everything other than the skewer hanging in the window at rapid transit. so i have $350 in store credit if anyone needs anything…
classic.

many thanks to jess and claire for hanging out this morning and especially to mr. rick russell for supporting me emotionally through my tomfoolery.
leaving…now.

mile 32

Flat tire in Gary, in.

Fixed, but still a bit annoying.

first day

78 miles through chicago indiana and a little of Michigan. Dinner with mom and monica. Tired.

mile 242: alonzo gives me the rest of his pizza

Day 3 was long, but finished well. Made it to silver lake mi, land of the dune buggy. My campground is packed (on a Monday no less) with every kind of 4×4. People have been consistently friendly (e.g. Giving me pizza). Looked silly strapped to my bike but no chance I was going to turn that down.

mile 304: smoothie break in manistee, mi

There’s coffee shops and wireless everywhere…what an age we live in

day 5: reality check

Tired today. Arms more sore than anything else. Roads terrible, no shoulder. Only 50 miles today but I’m beat…rewarding my capitulation with a night at the grand old wellington inn, traverse city, MI. Wifi, free beer, and tight next to downtown.

Starting the ride again will be hard.

i am a manly man

my hotel room

At the risk of sounding old, or possibly completely confusing Brown Bear with all his youth and wide-eyed innocence… I’m going to throw a suggestion out there. We’ll call it a suggestion for a rainy/ Chicago day. Did you buy CD’s in high school? Did you burn CD’s in college? Did you listen to music before there were iPods? If you did, I have to suggest listening to your CD collection, if you still have it. Hopefully it will not be under the circumstances of my recent forced rediscovery of my CD collection [may none of you ever receive iPod error message 1429 = message of death]. But all those CD’s that I never got around to putting on my iPod are pretty damn good. I’m loving the Paul Simon Rhythm of the Saints album right now. Oldie but goodie. Also, have you listened to a Wilco album recently? This Team Paulina member is super-pumped. That’s all from Ms. Paulina. Mr. Paulina is at hard at work, or hard at figuring out how to properly observe my birthday in two shopping days!

Game for game..here we go

Game 1: Jam
We go up 6-3. Offense was flawless. Defense got breaks, but we never really created a turn, Jam just dropped a lot. Then there came the timeout. Jam decided to stop sucking. We decided otherwise. They went on to win 15-6 if I’m not mistaken.

Game 2: SubZero
Zero got rid of some scrubs, got rid of some old guys, and took the top half of the College Champion Wisconsin Hodags team. They were solid, and we came out like chumps. Another spanking.

Game 3: Revolver
We finally got acclimated to the mile high air. We finally got pissed off at our piss-poor performance. We decided to hurt on Revolver. Offense was literally FLAWLESS. It was beautiful to see. Defense decided to put a hurt down and got some sweet layout D’s with breaks to boot. Fun game.

Game 4: Boston Ultimate
The combo Dog/Twisted team has had a rough start so far this season. Lots of big names still. Tight game the whole way through with us trailing most of the way. At the end, Boston is up 13-12, and straight to 14. Offense scores. 13-13. We pull, Mini gets a layout D and then puts up a perfect flick to Joel Wooten streaking into the endzone. Game. First time Chicago beats Boston.

Saturday overall: 2-2. Started roughly with us craving EPO more than Floyd Landis. Ended beautifully. We got our pizza, tried to watch the showcase game b/t Rare Air and Ozone, but got rained out.

Went back to the hotel (Boulder Outlook..awesome), and jumped in the pool/hot tub with Nemesis. Well, everyone did but me. I like the first shower.

Team dinner at some restaurant that wasn’t memorable, and then most of us are too bushed from the day and the lack of oxygen to do anything that night. Except for Hens. He parties it up with the Ambush ladies and says that Jam was out in full force that night also. I hate those guys.

Sunday

Game 1: Johnny Bravo
First time I felt like a team had a bunch of dudes who just plain outran us. And I’m not talking about Beau alone. Home fields, the entire team, and acclimated to crazy thin air…recipe for success. I’m not sure what was with us either, but we were NOT ready for this game. We came out flat and timid. 15-6 or something embarrassing like that.

Game 2: Truck Stop
TS came off losing to Boston on universe point. This was our game to win. We ended up losing on universe to them. I can’t describe how disappointing this game was to us as a whole. We should have crushed this team.

Game 3: Condors
Once again a slow start buries us. To be honest I don’t remember much from this game. Offense wasn’t looking good. Defense was getting the turns but crashed and burned when it came to converting. Looking forward to a very cold Boulder Brewery beer near the end of this game.

Thoughts from the weekend (basically the real stuff that I paid attention to):

1. Mike Shiel is awesome. I mean AWESOME. Best player in Midwest?
2. Mini. Man I’m glad we stole this kid from Briefcase.
3. New guys. Awesome. Ed, Andy, Denis (and Mini, Mike S.) Made contributions all weekend. Are gonna be pivotal come Regionals/Nationals.
4. We were missing some of our BIG names…Timmy, Bill F., Kolb, Gary, Cash, IU boys (Dave Campos and Gravy). Could this have been a completely different weekend?
5. Bjorn Gunderson. He’s starting to love grass again. It ain’t all beach in his world anymore.
6. Joel Wooten. He’s good. Like better than Mike Shiel good.
7. Will I stop turning the disc over?
8. Are we doomed without a small, squirrely Asian handler? (Cho-bot and Tyson are both gone this season)
9. I’m pretty confident about this team. I think we will be better than last year. (I realize this weekend’s results are not reassuring..but trust me). However, I wonder if we can break into quarters/semis? Playing Bravo (not so much Jam) was a real awakening. These guys are solid top to bottom. And I mean SOLID.
a. Beau Kittredge. A lot of us talk about how we are athletes, etc etc. The truth is most club players are still at most, really good ex-high school athletes. (Hens is also an exception). Beau is the real deal. That dude is an ATHLETE. On 2 different occasions I saw him run down hucks where he was the 4th dude. He outran THREE guys ahead of him (including his own teammate) in a span of like 40 yards. That is nuts. I am by no means the first person to notice this, but I guess it really struck me this weekend (I was pretty drunk during semis last year at Natties…you can hear Bill and I arguing on the UV disc during the game about who is better…Beau or Alex Nord).
10. As you can tell..I have crushes on many dudes in ultimate.
11. Machine. Cooler, CHC, Sectionals, Regionals, Natties. Not much time, but I am confident that things are gonna fall in place real quick. A tourney like this creates a massive learning curve. I’m glad we started out with such intense competition; we know what we need to do now to get to the next level. Watch out Bravo. I don’t plan on ever feeling like I did after that game against you in Boulder. You’re on the shit list.

Yes, I said tax-free weekend and welcome to the dirty south. They actually do something really cool in NC by eliminating tax for a weekend so everyone can save money on back to school supplies. So how does someone with no kids who isn’t in school benefit from that? SHOES! (now I have Ms. Casual’s attention…) Although my purchases were functional and not fashionable, I hit up the New Balance store on Friday and then Great Outdoors from some hippie sandals on Sunday. I would’ve done more shopping but my stomach kept me close to home.

How or why might one sabotage this wonderful weekend, you ask? So I accidentally got hammered Friday night. I know some of you are wondering how you “accidentally” get wasted, but it starts off with a lovely idea called First Fridays in downtown Raleigh. Art galleries, beer vendors in the streets, live music… forgetting to eat dinner, 7 hours feels like only 2, Sierra Nevadas, Big Boss beers, old pal Budweiser and his good friend Jameson. Apparently, after you turn 30, hangovers last 48 hours instead of the normal 8. I guess playing ultimate in the 98 degree heat (90 billion percent humidity) doesn’t really assist in recovery. For “fun” – we played nearly savage make-it take-it ultimate at practice on Saturday. The team had a pool party social Saturday night, it was remarked that Beckhoe lacked a beer in hand. Couldn’t choke one down…

After Sunday morning’s gnarly practice – I turned on some golf to nap to. Does anyone else think Twirly is a dead ringer for Rory Sabbatini?
The afternoon got better with a 2nd viewing of 300 (HOOH HOOH HOOH) at the dolla fitty theatre down the street. Next time I’ll bring some Febreeze for my seat. Stinky people see cheap movies.
Looking forward to the Colorado Cup updates…. Peace out from the SE side.

hey happy hour tonight chitown peoples! if you’re reading this then you already know… well probably be at lemmings with cans in our hands to start out… 6ish so holler.

i love you
frank

so much for the new blog format. we are cranky from the heat and have no good material for the blog. well, we had material on monday night, because there’s always material when tbrizzle has too many mojitos, but there’s no photographic evidence. we can tell you this much though: he didn’t rub chicken into ms. ulty’s hair or dive over an entire sidewalk cafe like he did after saturday of sectionals last year. those were good times.

so instead of a compelling narrative detailing the exploits of misses cas/ulty and the rest of our blogging crew, we’re posting our email conversation about how we don’t have anything to post. i think i saw a seinfeld episode like this once. we’re sure you’ll be as amused by our casual banter as much as we are. you aren’t? what’s wrong with you? and here’s a pic of morgan and prof. berg under the couch fort in ms. ulty stairway for good measure. you two and sister zibby are the best ever for helping me move!

xoxo
ms. ulty
p.s. i heard a remix today that paired snoop dogg with the flaming lips, with a little bit of will ferrell doing his robert goulet to spice things up. it was good and made me think of jess and brownbear and also mama lauren and her ‘goulet goulet goulet’ ringtone.

chuck daniels
Ok, I’m calling all of you out now. Someone post. I’m tired of looking at Falconer’s ass.
It doesn’t have to be a good post. Just a post. Maybe even about Ultimate.

brownbear
Post- Colorado Cup one coming fo sho. I’ve got nothing else exciting to talk about.

miss casual
i think ms. ultimate is going ot post about moving. i was gonna post about our cookout on monday and tbrizzle making salad cocktails but i dont have any pictures so it wouldnt be as funny…

the viking
i’m a little cranky this week, so anything i write is going to turn into a rant that may or may not get me fired.

my office has been overrun by corporate douchefaces this week. i wish i had a little video clip of this one guy walking around; i want to punch him the nuts, but i also can’t stop laughing at him. he wears these pleated dress slacks, and i swear he’s got the belt line halfway up to his nipples. and he’s a little guy, and he’s got this weaselly sales guy voice, and short-man syndrome strut. it’s hilarious and depressing all at once.

and the AC gave out on tuesday, and it’s hot as balls in here.

and they blocked all web mail access, but i hacked a work-around that, for the time being, allows me gmail access.

tbrizzle
that pretty much blows. i’m sorry to hear that. blocked web mail access? did we lose a war?

chuck daniels
I agree…that sucks. I’m inclined to post your email. That was pretty f*ing hillarious to read.

miss casual
seriously.. thats not america. thats not even mexico.

can we just post this email convo? i acutally love your rant and think it would be great blog material. no one knows its you…. you have an alias..

ms. ultimate
I lost the battle, but not the war, against my landlord today. I think we could all practically get our insurance to cover drinks at happy hour tomorrow as part of the mental health clause.