casual ultimate » dirty south

I exhaustedly returned to the dirty south after some holiday qt with friends and fam in the city and ‘burbs. Christmas was typical, with gary’s team winning the family ultimate game like every year (no matter how we change the teams around).
Emilee got back at him by being crowned the victor of Mexican train, a game that’s an enjoyable take on dominos and only takes 4 hours to play. Good thing nobody in my family is competitive at all! Christmas is more fun when there are children to spoil. If lily’s list next year included a life-sized Thomas the tank engine, she might actually get it.
Six days is a long time to be at home & away from home at the same time. After gorging ourselves, family-style, at maggiano’s, the fam caught “between barack and a hard place” at 2nd city on Saturday. Sometimes it’s weird to be sitting next to your dad laughing when the guy on state is pantomiming a motor boat. But this time it wasn’t.
The highlight of my trip was time spent and meal prepared by and shared with nate, schmal, baby max and the lovely ladies of casual ultimate. The recovering bartender mixed some magnificent martini’s and the gang caught up on recent goings and doings. Food coma from the lamb and delicious brussel sprouts meant an early end to this evening, but we managed some debauchery first, despite the lowered volume necessitated by maxine’s slumber. Throwing snaps @ pedestrians on Dearborn from the 7th floor never gets old. Nate just might have the best ass in the casual ultimate family.
2008 in Raleigh, nc arrived an hour earlier than in Chicago, weird. The redhead and I partied with some friends on nye and frolfed yesterday in the balmy, 55 degree sunny weather. Supposedly it’s good luck to eat black eyed peas on New Year’s day. We ate some alongside our perfectly grilled ribeyes, smashed potatoes and sipped on some delicious Spanish vino. Happy new year to all!

a guest post from another of our friends in the dirty south… mike d.

I’ve been playing ultimate for some 12 odd years. I love the game, love the people I’ve met, love the competition. I guess through my career I’ve been blessed with some awesome experiences: throwing the game winning goal to go to college nationals my senior year, being involved in some great back end games to get to Sarasota, coaching a sectional qualifying northwestern team. But, something I had yet to experience was a stomach punch game.

Well, that experience, I’m sorry to say happened last weekend.

As most of you know, I moved to North Carolina this past spring for a job in the big city. I started playing in Spring league and met a couple people from this team called Los(including Haley’s brother-in-law Jb, who is Hales south.) They suggested I try-out. The schedule seemed light enough and the team competitive enough to keep me interested without burning me out like in year’s past. In all honesty, by November for the last 5 years, I’ve vowed never to play this game competitively again because:
a. My body is a wreck.
b. This sport is filled with cheaters.
c. In college, I always ran into this dude on Indiana, who was roughly my size, but like 20 years my senior, 20lbs heavier, looked like Grizzly Adams, and walked with a hellacious limp. He kept playing and playing, looking more ragged everytime I crossed his path. I did not want that to be me.
…So throwing caution to the wind, I ended up trying out.

Unknown to me, there was a talent influx, including 5-6 former ring players, some out-of town ballers, and a bunch of talented college kids. I could tell within the first practice that there was a lot of unharnessed talent. It was just a question of if there was enough time to gel.

Flash forward 4 months to last Sunday…after battling in the ac regionals, including a revenge victory against a team we were 0-3 against on the season, we met up with pike for the second time on the weekend in the third place game to go.

I can’t remember the exact play-by-play, but we took half 8-5. I had a couple of scores(I play offense now, who would’ve thought), one from chasing down a play, the other off of a tipped pass on an underthrown disc. The celebration is seen here…

Dance for me monkey…

Anyway, after the first half, we turned it up, making some sick athletic plays including…

…this from a sick defensive freak named Matt Thomas. I’ve seen him get more lay-out d’s in a weekend, than most teams get in a tourney…

a sweet hammer catch off a blading hammer…

and Ray Parrish being…

…a crafty…

…veteran…Score!

Anyway, we run the score up to 14-9. And from here it is kind of a blur, but we had several scoring opps, including a couple endzone drops/throw-aways, and a game winning score called back because the thrower’s foot was in the endzone.

This is a picture after said score…

…not so fast Los.

So, Pike battles back and rattles off 5 straight, then takes two out of the final three to win 16-15…season.

So, I’ve experienced the stomach punch game and it is more painful than I could ever imagine, but unlike the past 5 years, I really have a desire to get back on the ultimate field already. This year’s experience of meeting all these young and hungry players, mixed with the crafty veteran talent you need to have a national caliber team has rekindled my fire faster than years past. Hopefully, my teammates share this desire and grow enough to bring Los to Sarasota next year.

Anyway, good luck this weekend Chi-town teams and my Iowa boys and girl. Hope you all make it and maybe we’ll meet up next year…or in 10 years when I look like a hobbled garden gnome.

mike d out

Ring and Backhoe dominate their respective divisions. Ring cruises through the double-elimination format defeating Truckstop in Finals, while Backhoe’s Sunday semis and finals opponents (Scandal and Wicked) score 3 and 2 points, respectively. Tourney champs line the sidelines with some well-deserved brewskies to cheer on NC’s Los in the game-to-go. Los seemingly has the game in hand, leading 14-9 when the cap goes on. Unfortunately, Los blows the lead – maybe nerves and inexperience got the best of them. It was hard to watch and we feel for our los buddies and wish they were making the trip to ’sota with us.

Can everyone please stop moving west to play ultimate? It’s so frustrating to only see “real opponents” twice a year - sorry if this is rude or offensive to our recent opponents, but come on. Backhoe faces their serious competition only once before nationals when the team spends over $10k (and countless travel hours) to fly across the country to face all the tough teams at once at ecc, which takes place over 2 months before Sarasota. And probably more than 2 teams from the northwest region that failed to qualify could paste many of the teams that get bids from other regions – let’s spread the wealth around!

What’s the solution? How can I be casual about this?

In other news…. Nope. I have no other news. Life is ultimate right now. With the exception of griping about fast food establishments – I would normally avoid fast food at all costs, but driving to tournaments dictates otherwise. Due to a massive pile-up traffic mess on hwy 95 on Sunday, we were forced to an exit that had McD’s and Wendy’s (which had failed me on Friday) – we stop at the golden arches. Why do fast food places insist on putting cheese on burgers that don’t come with cheese? I specifically order the Big’n'Tasty b/c it doesn’t have cheese. “Do you want cheese on that?” NO. Get my burger… they’ve added cheese. I go up and get a new one. I hate doing that shit but I hate processed cheese even more. Friday’s Wendy’s experience, I order the “regular” ¼ burger whatever that doesn’t come with cheese. Do I want cheese? No, thank you. Not once, not twice, but 3 times I get the wrong order, once with cheese, once with absolutely nothing, and the 3 rd with cheese again (can I get some extra spit with that?) I’d better stick to fine dining.

BIIIIIIG shoutout to all my teams that have regionals this weekend. Obviously good luck to Machine, NEMESIS, Mr. Briefcase in TULSA-town (sorry ’bout it), and my other fave teams: Brass Monkey, Golden Spike, Ambush, Black Molly, Olio, Boneyard, list goes on. DOMINATE!

so this weekend was the most epic roadtrip miss casual has ever attempted. driving from chicago to savannah georgia is not for the weak willed. on our way out of town we heard the new britney track on b96. it starts off with her all breathy whispering ‘its britney bitch’. classy with a k for sure. i might have to put the post title as my outgoing massage on my voicemail. so it was a good start.

on the way down we spotted a weird petting zoo type thing at a gas station. heres an ostrich posing for us. we stopped into the a-town and had dinner and then went to savannah. lovely lovely savannah. it is so beautiful there when its not raining. which it was. all weekend pretty much. (this is the part where you tell me how f^&*ing gorgeous it was in chicago / san fran / new haven all weekend and i tell you to ‘wow thats awesome. really.’)

but it was so beautiful there with the fountains and our pretty little bed and breakfast and the ghosts and getting to walk around outside with beer in your hand like youre at a frat party that the rain didnt bother us too much. it cleared up for a bit on sunday so we got to bike around and do tricks and hit the marc jacobs store. we wouldve gone to the evening social at our b&b but we were younger than everyone there but about 2 decades so it seemed like we didnt have too much to share. ‘what do your kids do?’ ‘ummm…’

the ride back was no big deal really except for when a bloodthirsty cricket got into the car and miss casual screamed and cried til we pulled over and killed it. im pretty sure it was the vampire cricket variety with fangs and hair and stuff. also i think if i never go back to indiana again it will be too soon. not just because of the cricket but it also smells really bad there and we got a speeding ticket and i think we got ripped off at the popeyes just north of indianapolis. i was too scared of the people working there to complain.

anyways its certainly good to get back to normal in beautiful chicago. i love this city so much. cheers.

xoxo miss casual

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.