casual ultimate » east coast

well, from what i’ve heard no one took me up on making casualultimate tgif happen, so i don’t know what to say other than that i’m starting a new blog called serioushappyhour. i had to take matters into my own hands, and guess what the cat dragged in to the hayve this weekend:

that’s right, the brothers jacobs were in town for a wedding and they called me up to hang out at richters. and thank goodness they did call, because i was sitting at my laptop staring down the barrel of a midterm paper at 10 pm on a saturday night. i know that being a good student is cool, but being a good student on late saturday night is not cool. my roomie haley and friend esteban got a taste of these two crazy kids, shutting down the bar and heading to louis’ lunch for a late-night burger.

for those of you who don’t know, which is probably all of you unless you’ve ever lived in this town, louis’ claims to have invented the hamburger in 1900. it’s stilled served the same way 107 years later: between two slices of toasted white bread, with tomatoes and onions. no ketchup, no mustard, no nuthin else. i have to say it was a good patty (they grind their own meat every day) but i’ll take a kuma’s burger piled high with grilled onions, bbq sauce and the works any day of the week.

today i finally got out to play a little ultimate with the grad school pickup group. it was so fun, and the weather here is gorgeous: cool but sunny fall day. we had some skills on the field, especially this one super fast guy who kept defending me.

on one point i was standing in the endzone lazily waiting for a floating disc to get to me, when he started running straight at me/the disc from 30 yards across the endzone. he caught up and d’d the disc mightily. on the next point he came out of nowhere and almost killed me d’ing a disc. i mentioned on the line that he seems pretty aggressive - apparently that’s because he ran the mile in the olympics in 2004. so there’s that. needless to say i made it a point to step up my game after learning that i was playing an olympian. i think olympic-caliber mile runners would make pretty sweet conversions to ultimate, given that they have the acceleration needed to get open all the time but more endurance than shorter sprinters. actually, what olympian wouldn’t you want on your team? maybe the biathalon guys, i’m not sure what they’re up to.

what’s up with fall league? public news team? it’s pledge drive time here on the east coast, but i hope you’re taking a break to kick some ass.

There’s been a lot of communication back and forth with Chicago this week, particularly about the headless horseman scavenger hunt & bi-cycle race in two weeks, which is going to be fantastic. word on the street is that the peach pit is sponsoring with beer- and pizza-related prizes and rodan is hosting the afterparty. let’s spend some time on this blog talking about how fantastic their mojitos are. but for real: all my peeps in chicago need to congregate and have the happy hour to end all happy hours tonight.

back in eastern standard time, ms. ulty is excited about the prospect of getting back on her iron horse like the chicks n’ drinks ladies in chicity….eventually. the bruises from my battle with a biology professor’s hood are pretty much gone, but my right knee still has this weird swelling on it, it’s a little hurty, etc. now you know. i can’t help but think that if i’d gone to berkeley i would have had doctor welsh’s expert consultation. maybe grandma’s right, maybe i do need to start hanging out with the medical school.

since this accident kept me away from regionals last weekend (so frustrating), i picked up a new pastime to cheer myself up: stump. this game is what it sounds and looks like: you put a bunch of nails into a tree stump in a circle, with one in the middle. everybody playing picks a nail and the object of the game is to be the last nail standing. you achieve this by flipping a forester-sized hammer end over end, cactching it on the fly and immediately striking your opponents’ nails/the stump/miss catching it and permanently maim a bystander. i got pretty into it, and finally won a round by the end of happy hour. needless to say every aspect of the competition improved over time since it was part of our weekly outdoor happy hour.

speaking of which, miss casual, i seem to remember us making a graph of crunkedness over time at one point. last friday, at the as-close-as-new-haven-gets-to-a-bicycle-bar bar, we were doing something similar and my friend esteban came up with a complex version involving four axes. general consensus at the table was that he’s a shoe-in for the nobel prize. turns out that went to al gore instead, but maybe next year we’ll get his submission in on time.

but back to ultimate. congratuf’inglations to machine, and my heart goes out to everyone else. while no one wanted their seasons to end in the sooner state, the good news is that, while machine is having two-a-days in 50 degree drizzle, you’ll be inside watching football, eating steak and drinking beer. same goes for happy hour: do it up chicago, make some happy hour magic so miss casual has something to post about on monday. rally the troops - i want shenanigans, hijinx and pictures. remember that time bp and miss casual got into a fight at that crappy indoor beergarden? remember when that kids got headbutted by the crazy bartender at the hole-in-the-wall on armitage? avoid those places, and instead go to lemming’s, order a kind midwestern brew and catch up with your friends. do it or else i’ll come at you with my hammer.

i don’t know what to say about this weekend other than (a) puppet regime is an awesome team to play with and (b) we won our section. i am so psyched to be able to play this fall - i realized at around 10 am on saturday morning, as i was changing my pants on a sideline filled with strangers, that i would have gone nuts without playing some sort of organized ultimate. plus, it was great to play with justin again (same attitude, different glasses) - no carrie this weekend but i’m looking forward to seeing that lady again. i also ran into tucker of 30-year-old spring break fame, although apparently i’m blacklisted because i couldn’t score her a sandwich. sorry.

enough mushy stuff, onto the weekend. thankfully we had a first-round bye saturday, because it was raining cats and dogs and quite cold. we pulled up to the fields just as the sun was coming out. after a round of introduction, running, stretching, tossing etc. we played mako (15-4 - they seemed to do better in other games later that day), then levitation holmes (15-6), then a long delay followed by sandwiches and then AMOB out of brooklyn (12-3) and harpoon, the new haven team (12-6). it was windy as hell, every point was upwind-downwind. puppet’s offense did very well against the wind, aided by a number of h.o.t. lady and gent handlers.

a bunch of us went for dinner at el bandito, a killer local mexican joint in middletown, ny that serves tequila shots with the check. luckily we didn’t have to pick up that check, because the TD was with us and bought us dinner in exchange for garbage and cone pickup on sunday. we drank the tequila shots anyways, then watched men in black II and went to bed.

the best thing about going into the finals game on sunday morning was the 11:30 start time. the hotel crew ate a hearty meal of pancakes, french toast, oatmeal and lots and lots of butter at a local diner. seriously we each had a half a stick of butter on our meals. that gave us all the energy we needed to power through a game of long and windless points against crafty, another brooklyn team and the #2 seed (shocking sectionals spoiler: top 3 held seeds). we ended up beating them 15-11. i felt like there was a bit more competition than we had last year in the
central plains section. apparently there are a few former puppeteers playing for crafty.

that’s it for the east coast correspondent. the surprise in the region was in the east new england tourney, where slow white lost to quiet coyote and had to play through the 2nd place bracket on sunday, eventually beating quiet coyote to take 2nd place overall (tandem was first).

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.

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.