casual ultimate » beach

the games are starting in four minutes… march 20, 2008, approximately 7pm - scandal has converged to the hotel Milton in rimini, italy and are waiting patiently in a first floor hallway, excited to see for the first time what the titcombs have in store for this year’s dress code. as has come to be expected, scandal was the best-dressed team at the tournament. the in-game uniform: collared polo shirts (made from the latest technical fiber) in pink and baby blue, paired with plaid shorts (again, technical) in blue and brown. the pre-game warm-up attire: an argyle print longsleeve shirt, and a pair of linen-type pants. the off-the-field attire: a sweater vest, a black sportcoat, and some aviator sunglasses to protect us from the glare from the paparazzi camera flashes. we are dressed for success.

the games are starting in one minute… march 20, 2008, approximately 11pm – scandal has put some food in its belly, and heads for the opening party on the beach. time for the paga-rookies to pay their team dues, acting as wine stewards fighting through the crowd to scoop up the cups of (free) red wine being dispensed from behind a row of tables. the rookies prove to be exceptionally good at their job, which led to some personnel/roster issues the following day, but we’ll get to that later. soon enough, the crowd tires of wine and sand and the cold evening air, and the party moves across the street to the paga staple, a place where the beer flows like wine, and the people flock like the salmon of capistrano; a little place called - the barge. setting the tone for the weekend, car bombs are ordered by the dozen, and most of scandal is out well into the early morning hours.

the time is running… but, unfortunately, many on scandal are not, despite our rather late first round start time of 11:30am. it seems our rookies started us off with a little too much wine, and we all finished the job with plenty of car bombs. but our savvy leader, having been through this before, assembled a team of 16 players, ensuring that we could afford to be down a few players at various times on the weekend. so day one begins with yours truly watching (i use that term loosely) from the sidelines, and i wasn’t the only one to suffer this fate. despite the self-handicapping, scandal takes care of a young british team, super mannschaft, with a score of 14-3. mannschaft had been talking a whole bunch of shit the night previous on the beach, but they couldn’t back it up on the pitch. probably because their jerseys didn’t feature a large phallus. next game starts in a couple hours, so we’ve got time to head back to hotel to deal with some incidents at the hotel for which we’re being held accountable. a meeting with the hotel manager, and one player eviction later, we’re free to take much needed naps to sleep off some hangovers. [that situation sounds worse than it was; basically, one player was asked to leave the hotel as an example to everyone that the hotel was doing something about the incident. but the manager was very reasonable with the whole situation; he made a reservation at a hotel around the corner, paid for it (as we had already paid for our rooms), and allowed the player to still come over to the hotel to hang out and eat breakfast.]

the rest of day one plays as expected – we beat the other teams (10-7 and 13-2 respectively), while playing hungover and missing a few guys. i played game 2, but not really in game 3, as my pounding headache returned later in the afternoon. awesome.

friday night comes and goes, and is generally low-key for most. that was both a planned thing to do, as saturday’s games determine whether a team plays up to 1-8 bracket or not, and the natural side-effect of the entire team getting completely shit-housed the night before. but, the night is not completely free from scandalous activity, as one teammate does not return to the hotel that night, and when he does show up the next day, he is without half his clothing and does not have a wallet. these items are delivered to him later that day by the object of the previous night’s affection. most of the team, and a lot of the tournament, has the good fortune to witness this exchange as it occurs in the front row of the stadium bleachers. comedy ensues.

saturday, scandal picks up where is left off, winning it’s first two games 15-4 and 13-5. in the first game, i realized i might be a better thrower when i have a hangover. despite feeling much better this day, i was chucking up pure garbage; whereas the previous day i threw a couple goals and no turnovers. awesome. that 13-5 game was our first of four games played on the arena field, and we used that opportunity to show the rest of tournament that we were for real. freespeed, our opponent, is a solid team and having beaten us in a previous year, thought they might be able to do it again. we answered that question by getting out to a 5-0 lead and never looked back. as the afternoon rolls into evening, scandal plays its final game of the day, a potential trap game against a fiery bologna team. for the first time in 6 games, scandal finds itself trailing by one for a span of a couple points. the italians are playing well, connecting on some well contested hucks, and scandal is off our game a bit. but one mark of a good team is being able to win despite not playing its best, and we were able to do just that, winning our closest game of the weekend 10-9. scandal is in the quarters. have fun tonight kids, but not too much, tomorrow morning we play sexxxspensive; then it’s on to quarterfinals.

saturday night’s party is back at the club, la otro mundo, after a few year hiatus. scandal scores a booth to chill in while the freestyle competition is going on. this party is, frankly, rather boring, so we leave. we go hit up the two brother’s gelato place , and head back to the barge, our home away from home.

scandal is up for an early game (9am) sunday morning, and we’re greeted by a cold, windy, and occasionally rainy, italian spring day. our first game is a placement game versus sexxxspensive; winner gets the better seed in the quarterfinals. given our history with this team, especially after the events of last year, they have no chance against us. no team with a sexxxspensive player on it will ever beat a team that i am on. its not going to happen. anyway, scandal proves that weather will not hold us back, and we beat the euro all-star squad 9-6. the weather continues to go downhill as the day goes on, with our quarterfinal game against hardfisch (germans?) a zone-heavy, super windy game. our offense plays great, working hard up-wind, scoring after having to complete a few dozen passes; and they do it point after point. we may not have been broken that game, which is a real accomplishment in that wind. scandal wins 12-6, with the final goal coming minutes after the real heavy rain started falling. soaking wet, but feeling great to have that monkey off our backs, we pack up our stuff and head for the shelter of the big tent. scandal is in the semis.

4:40pm sunday; it’s cold, windy, and raining hard. sexxxspensive is beating up on no tsu oh in the first semi-final of the open division. scandal is huddled together in the main tent, trying to be warm and dry, yet still somehow prepare for the upcoming game that starts in 20 minutes. sexxxspensive has just beaten no tsu oh to earn a spot in the final game. and then the we hear that familiar jingle.. the games are starting in four minutes… our semi-final game has been moved up 10 minutes, but no one had the courtesy to let us know. but it cold and pouring rain outside, no one wants to go out there until we absolutely have to, still, we have to warm-up somehow. well, there’s a crappy band playing on stage.. dance warm-up. and so it goes. scandal dances around while the young brits, huck & sea, are out doing a proper warm-up of running and throwing. the games are starting in one minute.. we finally head outside and put 5 on the line. the second semi is under way. the kids from england play a hard fought game, but scandal is better, playing a superb game as if we were playing in the sun while the brits were stuck in the rain. we continue our streak of convincing victories, winning this game by a score of 14-7, and taking the second spot in the open final. holy shit.

scandal, you’ve just won your way into the finals of paganello, you’re cold and soaking wet, what are you going to do now? we’re going to the barge! what better way to recover your body after a hard day of playing than by dividing up for boat races of jager bombs versus car bombs? yeah, i can’t think of anything better either, bottoms up; tomorrow you’re playing for a world championship…

hey blog! how’re things? i guess its been a while.. a month? well i guess i’m a bit embarrassed. but honestly i haven’t had anything to blog about except love and romance and the total absurd money pit that is wedding planning. exciting yes. affordable? doubtful. poor papa town. at least i’m the only daughter. i’ll try not to post about wedding stuff but i can’t make any promises.

in other news.. guess who won paganello? bjorn. single handedly i might add.

this just in from our casual ultimate quality control : bjorn had a team. a team called scandal. who knew? i figured he just went out there by himself and ripped beach ultimate apart. either way i believe we can now say chicago is the home of the beach ultimate champions of the world.

the entire globe. think about it.

and in even other other news.. mr. brizzle and miss casual are breaking up their happy home. mr. brizzle has bought himself some real estate. a real home for slider which he so truly deserves.

and in other other other news… our own chicago son, mr. chuckworth townington, is headed to chicago. soon even. stay tuned because im sure shennanigans will ensue and we want you there.

okay thats it. i feel so much closer to you now blog. really. this time has been special.

edit: i expect all the people / events mentioned in this post to be blogged about by their respective casual ultimate staff memebers.

so after getting my stem and riser bars stolen off my bike two weeks ago i have not ridden my bike to work again. its starting to get frickin rediculous so i thought id buy another bike for commuting. something less flashy and track bike-y for bad weather. well my new baby is on its way. its an empella bonfire cross bike i found on ebay. pretty but still pretty rough and tumble. ill get some locking screws and cross my fingers that it will be safe outside my work.

on another note im getting lasik on thursday morning. the magic of science is going to make me able to see in less than a week. this is profoundly scary for some reason.. mostly because ive never had surgery of any kind but also because everyone knows that when you want creepy medical stuff to go away you close your eyes (and possibly cry or whimper) but for lasik you have to be wide eyed and awake. i hope they have lots of valium on hand.

friday i had my preliminary appointment and they super dialated my eyes to the point where i went back to work and couldn’t read at all. also my eye doctor berated me for wearing someone else’s glasses. my prescription was so old and it was only for two weeks so i didnt want to buy new ones.. and my friend ben had some old glasses that were close to my prescription. they work fine. but the doc thought i was a total nut. her actual words were ‘wow i’ve never seen something like that from an educated person.’ wait wait.. i’m educated? werd.

also friday night we had a little going away fete for simon and amy (of chicks and drinks fame) at delilahs. this was one of the better parties ive been to lately. great crowd. great beer for cheap. well miss chivolvos premiere couple.

im hoping well get an update from lei out when everyone gets back. yall are lucky youre in la. its a degree outside her. a. degree. burrrr….

sandblast weekend is drawing to a close. as i type this i am sitting in my living room with the bulk of team dego tea who took it to the finals today and then lost by 3 in a tight game against hurt locker. tyson and georgia’s team took home the title again this year but it was a good day of ultimate for the dego team regardless. the semi final against briefcase was an especially good game. it came down to two points between case and their former teammates and friends. we spotted the lovely maxine on the briefcase sideline and dr. welsh was in town holding it down with the other usual beach suspects.

dego had faced some serious competition from friends and family earlier in the day also. becky scored the game winning point in quarters going up against her own sister with her brother close by. if theres a more gifted family in ultimate we at casual ultimate have yet to see it. the pool play on saturday was a bit more easy going although it was a bit hotter and the water was closed because of ecoli so we almost melted. here’s chucktown pulling down the disc in spite of the heat.

in the final game dego tea was dropping players left and right due to sickness and injury. megin was tough as nails when her shoulder dislocated. kolb was all over the beach until he got sidelined by cramps. even chucktown hit a wall with the heat and had to come back chez casual / brizzle for an ice bath before our current viewing of anchorman. here are two of our chitown peeps who were uninjured - becky working it out on d and bjorn getting up in the air. chicago represent.

outside of the ultimate field… the town kids ate some burgers at kumas on friday night after putting down some dego tea chez casual with bjorn, jess cookie, foxy, brian, and goetz (who you might remember from spring break). dego tea is a concoction developed by bjorn and becky which consists of a special proportion of ice tea and lemoncello. danger. saturday at the fields we established our supremacy in the ‘most parented sideline’ category with the towns and the merce-dogs in attendance. we missed having bjorns mom and pops but theres always next year.

looks like ms. ultimate will be back in the chi-tizzle tomorrow night so well be getting back to bizness as usual around here. it was nice to hang with such a great group of west coasters and southerners this weekend on the dego sideline. hopefully well see them all again next year on the sand.

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.

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.

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…

this might be my new favorite picture of ye olde beache ultimatee, even though it’s just the viking and miss casual waiting for everyone else to showe uppe. the cold weather didn’t keep the faithfuls away, and we had five-in-five almost all night. a fun time was had by all, with baker and tun showing up to everyone’s surprise. it took a while to get tun to take off his bike helmet and shoes, but he eventually joined the game. our team was the c.u. staff, baker, tun and sally, so other than sally it was good warmup for the tourney this weekend. way to squeeze in that extra practice, teamocil. baker, we promise to be good girls and not go out tonight (other than chicks n’ drinks, which is wholesome fun and games) so we’ll be ready to rock tomorrow morning, 9:00 am sharp.

the c.u. staff ducked out of beach early discuss 1st birthday party plans with the manager at lemmings. he told us something lame, like we’d get a quarter off of drinks for our friends, but we’re going to bargain with them until everyone drinks for free. or, for a dollar off drafts. ms. ulty is going to put together a posterboard matrix of bars at which to hold this party, then we’re going to do the hard work of visiting each one and weighing the pros and cons. we might have to visit some of them more than once just to be sure. quenchers, the green eye, cleos II and high dive are all on the docket.

after dinner at pennys (of course), ms. ulty persuaded miss casual to come to tricks n’ drinks by using the kryptonite-like powers of champagne: casual can’t resist it no matter how hard she tries. it’s good she came though, because her skids are dead on and we’re about ready to have a ladies skid comp. we finally met andrew, the owner of the bike baby that our bikes would make, last night at Tn’d. i know that doesn’t make much sense, but luckily we have this pic to illustrate [photo credit: morgan]. ms. ulty got the very basics of a bunny hop down and we’ll be practicing all this and more at chicks n’ drinks tonight, top secret location, etc. tricks are fun, we’re getting good at them; soon enough we’ll be able to do the two backwards circles and 720 front wheel spin that steve may or may not be able to do, we haven’t seen the proof yet. speaking of steves, work steve stopped by with the fiance while walking their pup. remember this at your desk today, steve: the only thing better than working any good job is working no job at all.

ah, wrigley field. there’s nothing better on a summer day. i suppose it would have been more fun if they had won. turns out wrigley has bicycle valet on the northwest corner of the stadium, which is pretty cool. not sure if it’s better than just locking your bike up, though, because you have to wait in line to retrieve it after the game.

after the game we convened for a little beach ultimate action. turns out you can play with just cones, and they’re a lot easier to carry to work (thanks miss casual!). it was ladies night for a while, with the c.u. staff, lyrica, leah and annie representing; cobb was there on the boys side. soon enough the rest of the regular crew showed up - ms. mmms, tbrizzle, the viking bk, etc. c(b)r, where were you? the games were pretty good - so nice to run around on an uncrowded beach on a nice day.

misses casual and ulty gorged themselves on penny’s while watching the bulls game with tbrizzle and the viking - or baby bjorn, as we’re calling him now that he’s shaved his beard. oh bulls, why do you do this to us? ms. ulty tore herself away at the start of the fourth quarter to practice her skids at tricks n’ drinks. given ulty’s sore legs and miss casual’s potential major ankle injury, we might have to take it easy at the inaugural meeting of chicks n’ drinks tonight.

as far as spring league, team teamocil is getting fans and maybe even cowbells tomorrow morning, so our opponents had better watch out.

our post title is courtesy of ben friendhugger…it’s hard to explain, especially on a family-oriented blog such as this.

where to begin? tuesday night: we forgot how much fun it is to hang out at chez tbrizzle, now chez tbrizzle-casual. if you haven’t seen it yet the apt. looks awesome; who knew lucite lamps that cost more than rent go well with cogs and pistons found in old hardware stores? the c.u. stay, the (b)r’s, j dot and ms. mmms all shared a delicious meal while watching the bulls bite it; these pistons don’t look good with our bulls.

Wednesday was happy hour at the peach pit with some new customers. we forgot how good that pizza is. we were also surprised to see a new beverage on the menu: malt liquor. it’s actually quite good, and comes in a paper bag. it’s about time a classy microbrewery gave o.e. a run for its money. order the dolomite next time you’re in there - we think it would go well with the bbq chicken pizza. there’s a chance we’ll be back in there to test that theory before the weekend is up.

we’re not sure if it was the dolomite or the cubs win that went to everyone’s heads, but there was quite a bit of storytelling. two stories tied for weirdest, and only one of them is appropriate to be put into words. we’re saving el presidente’s story about pee pants and the shedd aquarium for tomorrow. morgan’s story could best be titled, “peanut butter and ladies,” and is the tale of one man’s desperate attempt to entertain himself with….perhaps we should call the story, “i love crepes,” because there were actually no ladies involved. it can’t be put into words, but let’s just say it’s related to today’s title and is also the name of the collegehumor.com summer softball team. speaking of which, if bryan plays his cards right we’ll get him one of these t-shirts to wear while blogging.

dinner was followed by a skidding lesson - my. ulty can go two and a half feet, so watch out boys. she’s hoping that learning every bike trick in the book will mask the fact that she still can’t do a track stand.

this afternoon ms. ulty and el presidente are heading to the cubs game, then booking it to beach at 6. be there or be square - word on the street is tbrizzle may be back on with casual ultimate. we’re not sure where this leaves the blog, but it does mean miss casual only had to lug cones to work today.

a haiku to working overtime

work is not so fun
tomorrow looks to be nice
lets get our beach on

this weekend was so much fun. thank heaven for sunshine and blue skies. we thought the summer of 2006 was the best it can get, but 2007 is shaping up to be fantastic.

friday night worlds collided at happy hour (hereafter to be known as h60), where bike and ultimate friends drank beer and discussed the land ethic in harmony. everyone was laughing, having fun and the bartender even poured the c.u. staff a couple of beers on the house, but a shadow was cast over the evening when we learned of a death in the family. The death of ameri-can, that is. Lemmings has *stopped serving American beer*. You heard it here first. The replacement is milwaukee’s best. Replacing American with the beast is like replacing ultimate with freestyle. If freestyle tasted like water and hated democracy, that is.

saturday was spring league, and we went 1-1. we’re still not sure what’s up with teamocil; even a saturday night viewing of “switch hitter,” our inspiration, didn’t provide any usable strategy tips. (other than sending miss casual to work for the competition for a week.) regardless of a frustrating loss, we had a ton of fun. rory showed up, finally, and turned out to be at least six inches taller than you might think at first look. baker and casual did their best chicken dance impressions; we’ll see if we can get the video up later. in the end, though, miss casual’s threat of “no burritos for losers” didn’t inspire the masses in that first game, although we rallied for the second. the c.u. staff, dp and hendude still went for burritos after the game, though. note: lemming’s may be out of american, but the margaritas at chipotle aren’t half bad. new h60 venue?

by nighttime we were too pooped from daytime fun to do anything crazy, so it was packing and a.d. for old time’s sake. it’s sad that c.u. HQ will no longer be the 1200-1400 blocks of paulina, but miss casual’s in a better place. the set-up at the former br ranch (the k-br ranch now?) is awesome, and slider’s already learning to love hip hop. miss casual already taught him to bark ‘wamp wamp’.

sunday morning was moving and brunching, respectively. miss casual cleared out the last of her household goods while ms. ulty brunched with bike friendlies. you wouldn’t think it, but oval waffles are actually better than round ones; maybe because they hold so much fruit and syrup. after brunch, while casual and tbrizzle were setting up the new place, ms. ulty peeled off ot spend the afternoon at the velodrome in northbrook. it was *awesome*. it’s like a rollercoaster you make yourself. there’s a very small chance ms. ulty might even start a new blog, www.seriouscycling.com. if you see her in a bike shop considering the purchase of spandex anything, please try to stop her. here’s a picture of two speedracers going faster than pegasi.

some briefcase peeps and the usual beach suspects played at north ave. sunday afternoon, although c.u. missed out. it was a tough call, but guiding movers and going to the track won out. this is only just the beginning of summer; there will be plenty of days wash the sand out of our toes in the coming months.

with all the excitement and 5 full hours of sleep behind us friday night, we pushed on through to saturday and our trip to miami. after a few hours on the sand in fll we packed up and drove down to our ho-tel, mo-tel, bad ass days inn… which conveniently had metered parking and the most unhelpful staff on earth including such highlights as chrisnise, who couldnt give us more than 2$ in quarters at a time, and funny joking concierge guy who tried to call miss casual a fiend when she asked where the closest coffee shop was on sunday morning. ha frickin ha ha.

everyone did their hair and fluffed their dresses and we were off. alaina and the cu staff adjorned to the delano hotel for a foo foo cocktail and awed at the beutiful interior and crowd before heading to dinner and meeting the rest of team extreme… to the max. we got more food than we knew what to do with but thankfully we had chucktown, who wasnt too full of thai donuts to help out, and tucker, who ate a shrimp tail off ms. ulty’s plate and earned the title ‘trash eater.’

then we set off south to find trouble / a bar / the meaning of life. we stopped at some kind of tiki bar for frozen cocktails and phone calls to long lost friends. expect matching outfits this weekend from our favorite twist cone, brown bear and ms. ultimate. heres alaina in the junlge looking more composed than the rest of us. after that we kept walking in search of more trouble / fun / flourescent booze. turns out though its tough to pick a destination when we have 9 people and a buzz on from drinks mixed in an alley. so we walked to the end of miami. almost to cuba. aliana threw pennys at a stranger, tucker got on a strangers motorcylce (that was coincidentally a ‘cbr’) and then the cu staff tried to break off because of massive blisters on our high heeled feet. we ended up coming back to join our cohorts, post tgi fridays, at teds hideout. what a fun sexy time for us.

ms. ultimate made friends with the new zeeland cricket team before miss casual dragged her away from their accents and big blue eyes to reconvene with our group somewhere around 5am at free spirits. another night of good times and 5 hours of sleep.

we needed to get some material out of this trip so we made the ultimate sacrifice for the blog. we went for 24 hours without sleep (besides the occasional cat nap) to pack as much awesome into our first day as possible. heres how it broke down.

day 1, part un
daybreak : chicago. 4am the casual ultimate staff is up and getting ready for our trip to ohare. 510 am. we gave a rousing cheer for denardis when he sauntered up to us at the gate for our flight. 645 cat nap on plane. ms. ulty does unibomber impression. 10am touchdown in the fll and grab becky before heading to the house and waking up chucktown for scones and coffee. 1123 first trip to the pool with papa town, the cu staff, becky, denardis and chucktown. also in attendance were various residents and their visiting grandchildren. it reminded ms. ulty of her grandmothers pool in willmette what with the old people and whatnot. miss casual lost a game of marco polo to the biggest midget in the game. 1217 pulled pork time. thank you mamatown.

day 1, part deux
146: trip to walmart for sunglasses, towels, special ed sandals for denardis, high life, and best friend forever necklaces for the ladies. 228: cu staff tosses disc for first time in four months. we forgot how much we love this game (even though we were not technically playing a game). it felt good, real good to throw again. our admittedly fantastic skills made us realize we should rename the weekend team, from el camino to team extreme. now say ‘team extreme’ like ’shake and bake,’ with the wavey arm motion and finger pistols. you could do that 100 times and i wouldn’t get tired of it. it riles me up. because we’re doers and not thinkers, we’re going to spend the rest of the trip finding a place that will make us t-shirts that say ‘team extreme’ on the front and ‘to the max!’ on the back. preference is for hypercolor, but we’ll settle for airbrush with dolphins. here are some pictures of our first trip to the beach. denardis got his hat stuck in a palm tree trying to be a smartass and it required 3/5 of team extreme to extract it. then ms. ulty and d destroyed a little boy’s dreams, and his sand castle, and buried ms. ulty in sand. it was cozy.

day 1, part trois: interlude
604 pm: we get back to the house after driving around a bit. chucktown at the wheel was delirious from lack of sleep. 617 pm: we eat denardis’s body weight (playing weight) in beef fajitas and fresh guacamole. ms. ulty declares this best vacation ever. 7:14: showers and talladega nights. lainers came over around 9 and got us off the couch with mike’s help.

day 1, part quatre
1130: lainers leads us to coyote ugly; we owe her an apology for doubting her skills at finding a bar, because we end up at this awesome place with swinging bench seats overlooking a lagoon and a freight train route, but this place is frightening when you first drive up people. ms. ulty thought there was nothing but prostitutes and college boys on the streets, but apparently that’s the way they roll down here during spring break. jesus. 131 am: ferrari’s flight lands at fll, and the rest of team extreme heads to mardi gras. 213 am: all eight members of team extreme are together at the same swinging bench for the first time. we elect tucker rookie of the year for suggesting we drink a couple sparkers to get the party started. (note: the original five had already done this in the parking lot about 3 hours before. there are zero laws regarding alcohol consumption in florida; there actually might not be any laws at all, but lainers actually works for a judge so we know that to be false.) 247 am: discussion of whyte noise, the club immediately behind us. ask us about this one when we’re off the clock.

day 1, part cinq
318 am: c.u. staff gets margaritas made in their mouths at a bar called bricks, shortly before almost getting vomited upon by a total stranger. you’re going to have to go to the vip folder folder to see these pictures, because they’re going to get us kicked out of the miss america pageant. i motherfucking love this country. 357 am: we steal denardis for a minute, much to the dismay of his new dance partner, and flee from the scene. the gps system leads us straight to the mcdonald’s drive thru before heading home for the night. 423 am: sleep at last.

and that was only day 1. needless to say we bailed on any ultimate-related activities previously scheduled for saturday morning. just ask yourself this… what does the dolphin want?

miami is going to be bananas. i think george micheal bluth said it best when he gave us our post title. at left youll see an actual dramatic reenactment of denardis and ferrari coming up from the pool. while the casual ultimate staff failed to get airbrush tans we are still bringing our a-game to this weekend of sun, naps, eating and naps. oh and frisbee. i think theres gonna be some frisbee. and naps. on the beach.

monday night we had an installment of casual dining with bk, akira, and the boss playing the part of an under the weather ms. ultimate. while the wine was lovely and the vegetables were yummy, a curtain that was supposed to be ‘ambiance’ was all up in miss casual’s grill and our waitress was like pat with a weird little purse she carried around. over all i give it a b-. thats right b m-i-n-e-s. i didnt even study. but im partial to la sardine. look out for a more articulate review on our favorite food blog.

mama town is already cooking and papa town is undoubtedly laying on the couch napping and watching golf so its on. we’ll try and post from south beach and by ‘try and post’ i mean well drink a margarita with becky and giggle about something blog related and then forget all about it.

here’s allison last night at beach playing a point and trying to induce labor. get ready people cause casual ultimate is having a baby…and by ‘casual ultimate’ i mean allison. but we at c.u. are so excited for our first casual baby we can’t stop talking about how adorable this kid is going to be. labor day could end up being a very literal phrase for this weekend.

and speaking of labor day, we are going to play some beach on monday and if you are in town and want in on it, email us. last night was great although we couldnt believe how early it gets dark all of a sudden. we still got in some fun points with bjorn flying through the air like MJ before hightailing it to darwins.

and speaking of darwins… that place is now dead to us. it is full of frat boy clones and anorexic chicks with bad highlights and bra straps hanging out of their ASU tshirts. plus they dont have turbo dog or oberon on tap anymore and our waitress tied the all time record for slowest land speed exhibited by a bipedal organism. we gotta come up with a new place to go. hopefully somewhere with dollar burgers for slider.

well have a good weekend our casual brothers and sisters. the c.u. staff will be in town and probably up to our usual brand of trouble so call us with suggestions for either new bars to go to or tactics for world domination.
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230 addition
speaking of the flying viking… heres some more mustache porn to get you through the brutal afternoon before the holiday weekend. sent in by the viking himself.

last night beach was so casual that at one point on the sideline nate knew the score but didn’t know what we were playing to. it was awesome. ms. ultimate was off on date-night (ahem, if we cant gossip about ourselves who’s left?) so i had to hold it down for the blog.

the post title came from cho who said he doesnt want to say anything in front of me anymore for fear of it ending up on the blog but also thinks dan baker is getting too much press from the c.u. i say cho is just jealous and all he has to do is show up to beach drunk more often to regain his c.u. stardom because when he shows up…it’s momentous.

oh and he has to show up to sandburst on saturday night too. all of you do. and if you read the blog but arent on our mailing list yet, email us at casualultimate@gmail.com so you can get invited to all future meetings of the C.R.A.F.T. club.

last night at beach….nothing really happened. which was weird becuase two weeks before sanblast it seemed like lots of people would be out. but it was still gorgeous out and we had enough people to play fives so alls well that ends well.

the best things going on….ms. ultimate threw another fierce hammer, tony and bjorn sized up the people on the path based on whether they could beat them up or not (’him, not him, maybe him if he’s not fast’), bjorn left early for a mystery non-date type thing (i know this is not really gossip but this week is slow), and there was some freaky guy that literally had the worst sunburn ive ever seen passed out a few yards outside the endzone. it was fascinating and painful to watch.

the other topic of conversation seemed to be a general grumble about the lack of of respect given to the returning champions of sandblast. the post title actually comes from steve who figured briefcase could secede from the tournament and have their own beach throw down. yall know where i’d be…i already bought brown face paint to put a tie on my belly…not really but i should. or allison should. big time.

moral of the story…kicking ass is the best revenge so im lookin for briefcase to bring their a-game next weekend. totes.

UPDATE - sandburst is turning into a sandblast after party at tony and carlo’s saturday night. email us at casualultimate@gmail.com for details.

‘if you’ve ever wanted to know what its like to look into the face of god and see him looking back saying, you are my most perfect creation’ you shouldve been out at beach last night. lots of people turned out, the weather was perfect, and the sky lit up like magic. it made me stop, wipe the sweat off my forehead onto my lil kim shirt, and be thankful that the friends of casual ultimate are hilarious (not to mention stunningly attractive) and give us lots of ammunition to keep the blog rolling.

unfortunately carlo broke a toe early on in the evening so he might not be playing sandblast. which would suck big time. i think this means he’s on the free beer list for happy hour tonight. also the first person to email us at casualutlimate@gmail.com with the person who said the quote at the beginning of this post gets a beer courtesy of miss casual.

and speaking of happy hour…you better show up. if you dont come we’ll be talking about you. you’ve been warned.

last night was all about sarah and drunk cho. bryan put it like this… ‘if i had to choose between hanging out with will ferrell and drunk cho, i’d have to really think about it.’ strong words…strong words. although it was pretty much right on. somewhere between getting wrestled to the ground by rick and being the only one to get carded at darwins, cho gave me a long lecture about how i was doomed because i have shoes made out of baby pandas.

after lots of the crowd had left tony and monica showed up….and then so did carrie. this was actually totally drama free but it did get everyone who was still around to get another beer and wait to see if anything crazy would go down. no dice. and i missed the best photo op of the night while i was at the bar…tony with monica and carrie flanking him on the banquet.

it was a great night. too bad it’s because sarah’s leaving. here are some more pictures…bryan throwing his blue steel into the mix, rick and sally getting tired, claire accosting a stranger in a suspisciously briefcase looking shirt, bjorn and sarah engrossed in dialogue…