"Return of the Buzzards"...not just a bad sequel

It’s been “Return of the Buzzards” for the past week as some past season players have returned for visits or extended stays. Devan & Leroy have both showed up and increased the average team speed a great deal but also perhaps the risk of injury as I’ve been ducking bodies flying through the air that aren’t usually there.

On the less fleet but still highly revered Buzzard list we were paid the rare visit of the headbanded one – Rodney for a game last week. He showed up in my cube before I’d even sent out the game invite. He said “I’m in if we’re playing”

“Not if” I replied confidently “we’ve had 7’s or better for about a week” I told him. And to not disappoint him, a rousing 16 showed up to play that day.

Then yesterday after the long Memorial Day Weekend and a forecast that was calling for showers for the next couple days I thought the attendance might be a little less enthusiastic. But Matt showed up in my cube early and asked if we were playing so I sent out the invite to see if anybody else was interested and got a relatively quick quorum to call “Game On”.

We wound up with 11 yesterday in what looked like it was going to be a drenching rain game but actually wound up a pretty pleasant day in a slight drizzle which was actually comfortable. The field was a bit wet and it was a little breezy but our shorthanded green team held its own against the speed of the gold team.

Birthday game

It wasn’t our typical Monday game yesterday which usually means a lot of sloppy passing and some trouble getting all the muscles to act in concert with each other to get up and down the field. But despite the pretty steady breeze we played in yesterday which alternatively knocked passes down a bit or carried them about 10 yards farther, play yesterday was pretty good.

It was a birthday game for Thunder. I forgot that until I got home and had Facebook remind me but Happy Birthday. I apologize for missing the opportunity for us to sing to you.

It was also a Welcome Back game for JQ. I had to clear him through customs and check his ID before letting back on the field. Something about school and Africa having kept him away for so long. You looked no worse the wear for the missed time, patrolling centerfield and picking off all the throws that hung up in the air too long.

We had another nice turnout yesterday. I think it made the 6th game in a row we’ve had attendance in the teens.

For those of you interested in getting some more Ultimate in this summer. Kevin is soliciting interested players for a Summer Corporate league run in conjunction with Washington Area Frisbee Club. Please let him know if you’re interested as we need to get registered fairly quickly with play starting in June.

Hope to get another great turnout today. Weather is going to be awesome again all week.

See you on the pitch!

Kudos Erick

Want to thank Erick a lot for the great new Buzzard graphic. Look for t-shirts and discs soon.

Wrapping up a great week

Thunder - The Grill Master and Picnic mastermind.

Dennis trying to get the Geese to honk their horns.

It's been a great week of disc Buzzards. The numbers this past week have been record-shattering (if I actually kept records). With yesterday's 6 on 6 game I think gave us over 70 players for the last 5 games (including last Friday's game). Coupled with "First Annual Buzzard Picnic" the week has been one to remember. Welcome back yesterday to Todd and Karen who had missed some time this past week for travel. Yesterday's game proved to be a bit challenging with the wind gusting in the high teens and low 20's...sorry Conrad, not quite strong enough for the Wind Ribbon. Matt was able to get his Hammer to work with the wind a couple times but not many other throws worked with a lot of consistency yesterday. I think we only had 2 scores against the wind the whole game.

Scenes from a not so Italian Restaurant.

Table #2

The "Newbie", John heard there would be food and came out for a couple games this week.

Wanted to upload some pics from earlier in the week and from the cookout....Hey Brad, look! Some of them did come out! No really, nice job on these game photos.

3 big guys doing a little Rumba...or something.

Shane marking Jeana who is trying to get off 3-foot pass to Dennis.

They must have scored as they led the team in a cheer..."Give me an 'O'!"

You've heard of the Screamin' Eagles....witness a Screamin' Buzzard - "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" as Mike can't catch up to the disc and Paul watches.

I don't think Steve sees this one.

Jeana involved with more horseplay...this time The Hokey Pokey with Bill...."No, no I said put your left foot in."

"Excuse me while I pull this disc out of your skirt"

It takes two to....uh, I have no idea what this dance is actually.

Powerful pull form.

Steve looks to get off a throw.







Jeff watching one in.

Devan showing the disc...

Some of these pictures are more complimentary than others but all of them give a good representation of what goes on out at the old Buzzard pitch.

It must be time to get back to work.

15 and no rain!

Monday, 50% chance of rain was the disclaimer on the game invite yesterday morning to which I got varying responses…

“Monday Ultimate in the Rain? Of course I'm down for that. I think that's the only time you actually get a Yes response from me.” – Thunder

“Don't say "rain" or Jeana won't play (she's made of salt, apparently). There's a 50% chance of summer snow. I'm in.” – Kevin

“Yee haw a chance to get wet too!” – Brian

“What are you doing telling people it’s going to rain? Trying to keep them away?” – Matt

Well, as it turns out, the Pillar of Salt…aka Princess…aka Jeana did not show. My last IM on the way out the door was “It’s not raining”. To which I got a reply of not so cloaked cynicism.

“Not now”

Well, not then nor at all in fact through the whole game. It was cool, overcast, the grass was a little high but not really any standing water and the Buzzards came out en masse yesterday…15 of them!

We’d like to give a hearty Buzzards welcome to John joining us for the first time yesterday. He’ll be taking over for Scott in their office. That was the easy part of his check-in but as tasked, Thunder also told John his check-in included coming out for a game of disc. Okay John, so we may not technically be on your check-in sheet but thanks for giving us your time. We hope you had fun and will come back out.

Welcome back out to Steve and Tim who we hadn’t seen much of lately. Great to have you guys with us.

So with 15 I’m sure you’re thinking the pitch was a bit crowded, and it was but green seemed to get their short passing game working a little better than gold was able to for most of the game. I noticed they did a little better job of getting a handler on the disc for the first throw. Todd remarked that he rarely had to run much further down the field after he would make the first throw because the rest of his team was managing to get it up quickly.

Brad and Brian, in particular hooked up on a couple great looking pass and catch plays in the end zone despite what I thought was fairly decent defense.

It was a great day for Ultimate and a great week planned. For any of you who haven’t heard yet. Wednesday we have our first ever Buzzards Cookout planned. Thunder has taken the lead on this and will be acting Grill Master after our normal 1130 game. Many of the rest of you have volunteered to bring things and I want to thank everybody for their support. If you can get out and join us for the game or the cookout, come on out!

Thanks again for the great turnout yesterday! Besides those mentioned above, the usual cast of characters put on the green and gold…Tom, George, Conrad, Paul, & Jeff were all out there as well. Did I miss anybody? Because last time I did, I wound up writing the person their own column.

Going to be a great day today, see you on the pitch.

Pull!

Ode to Thunder

In light of my unfathomable omission of Scott from the blog of yesterday’s game, I’d like to offer up a little penance from the Buzzards’ Scribe in honor of Thunder.

By the way, for the record, after an initial “no” response to the “Who is playing?” email yesterday, Scott was the first one down for the game and grabbed the back on the way out to the pitch. He made a few stellar grabs for scores, three of which I threw, including the game winner. Finally managed to time the chest bump right on the last one.

Back to my penance, a Top-7 list of All Things Thunder

Thunder Road – A Springsteen anthem from the 1975 album “Born To Run”, an almost consensus selection of anybody’s Top 10 Rock & Roll albums of all time and partly inspired by the 1958 Robert Mitchum movie of the same title. Ironically Scott looks a bit like Robert Mitchum. “We’re riding out tonight, to case the promised land, oh-oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road”.

Zeus – Greek god of sky and thunder. He preferred to throw a thunderbolt from his right hand, Scott prefers the flick.

“Days of Thunder” – Quintessential guy flick…early in the movie as Tom Cruise is playing a driver trying to make the NASCAR circuit and is test driving another driver’s car for the very first time calls over the radio “I’m dropping the hammer”….it’s an obscure Ultimate reference.

Ford Thunderbird – here’s a nice T-bird of Scott’s vintage…
Blackberry Thunder 9500 – In honor of Scott’s connectedness. We love that he mobile updates his Facebook page.

“Sons of Thunder” – Perhaps better known as James & John, a couple fishermen in Galilee. One blogger suggests these two would be pretty fierce body checkers.

Celtic Thunder – something like Yani on Guinness.

The nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away

One of my favorite song writers once penned the words “You know the nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away”. And that was very much how I felt many times yesterday thinking I was making a cut for where I needed to be for the disc only to discover there wasn’t much footing and indeed the more I was slip sliding away.

With the forecast yesterday morning, and for that matter all this week calling for rain, rain, and then some more rain, I was a little surprised to get such quick response yesterday morning. The first replies coming from the usual suspects, Todd, Kevin, & Bob. Then Brian, eager to play after missing a couple games last week, rogered up. Then Joe and I started thinking to myself “Ah, he’s hooked, to be replying so early for a certain rain game”.

Not so hooked was “Princess Tiarable” who replied “I’ll play if it’s not raining” which sounded like a no to me since I knew it would be raining. So I did what I normally to when I receive cryptically worded replies…handed it over to the kangaroo court for a quick decision. The court’s decision was something akin to “Nana nana boo boo, we double dog dare you to play”, which of course she could not ignore and after a game time start without her (which sparked talk of how best to penalize her) Jeana did indeed show up giving green the extra person yesterday (arguably to no avail).

Welcome back out to Mike who had exhausted his list of excuses (many making the all-time Top 10 lame list) like “I’m too skinny”, “I don’t have enough core strength” and “I’ve got a toastmasters meeting” and joined back up with the Buzzards…the equal opportunity fitness alternative where we don’t much care about body shape or size, or give a rip about core strength and get plenty of public speaking opportunities in the showers after the game.

Conrad and Bridgette rounded out our drenched disc denizens yesterday and we had a fun game with some highlights like sliding catches through puddles and some nice defensive knock downs. And some low lights like getting hit right in the center of the core and dropping it and a few missed throws that somehow got away. Speaking of throws…Bob did anybody else mention to you that you completed more junk yesterday then I’ve seen in a while? Which brings to mind two axioms that I find a certain amount of resonance in….1) It’s better to be lucky than good and 2) You make your own luck.

On the day when two amazing hat tricks would be recorded later at Verizon Center by Alexander the Great and Sid the Kid, Bob may have had his own hat trick of missed throws that wound up in somebody’s hands for scores.

So when most fair weathered sports are hoping for some sunshine, the Buzzards were finding voice in another songwriter’s lyrics (one I’m headed to see tonight!)

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain, let it rain

Meet me at Mary's place, we're gonna have a party

Meet me at Mary's place, we're gonna have a party

Tell me how do we get this thing started

Meet me at Mary's place

Yo Boss, see you at the JPJ tonight…

Yo Buzzards see you on the pitch today?