Tinker Bell and one ring to bring them to their knees.

I’m writing about Ultimate when I should be writing my Comparative Education paper. But yesterday’s game warrants at least a few paragraphs.

I had sent out a precursor invitation to play on Facebook on Sunday, noting that the temperatures were supposed to be approaching 60 and it should be a great week to play. Sending out an invitation for activities at work on a Sunday got me labeled a “fanatic” by Marianne.

At any rate, the invitation at work went out late because I was down in Medical getting my annual physical and dental exam done. The doctor wanted to know why I didn’t get more sleep which led to a whole discussion about the value of traveling between Richmond, D.C., & Charlottesville every week, sometimes all 3 in the same day. Listen, I know it’s not the “healthy optimum” but it’s not going to change in the foreseeable future so can we just let it go.

When I finally got back up to my cube nobody else had sent out an game invite either and only 1 email in my inbox from a Buzzard wondering where I might be. I was suddenly worried we might not have any interest for a game but I sent out the email anyway and immediately had 8 responses. Scott replied twice, once in proxy for Phil who apparently was coming into work only to play but was running just a little late.

In fact, by the time Phil got here, Scott and I had already hooked up on two scoring passes which he made really nice catches on both. The first stretched out sprinting to the side of the end zone line after a very nice “Chiefly finger point” call for the throw. The second was a really nice grab of a Hammer that didn’t quite flatten out and was falling more like a guillotine in the windy conditions.

Phil finally showed up and as we pointed him toward green to join Todd, George, Paul, Kevin, & Matt. Meanwhile, Scott & I were joined by Jeff, Bob, Jason, & Brian. Both teams were finding challenges with the wind that was gusting upwards of 30 mph but not all the time so occasionally one would think they could throw it the length of the field and watch their teammates tripping through pot holes to get it and the next we were throwing our first pass backwards.

Phil barely even got a sweat up today though because not long after he got there I was falling back into defense watching Matt try and sneak behind me. When I turned back up field, I saw the other 10 players on the ground. “What the heck just happened?” I wondered. “Must be an injury, who went down?” I thought trying to see who was holding anything and writhing in pain. Then I noticed they were all moving and rubbing their hands on the ground. “Ah, I deduced, lost contact lens I guess.” As I walked back toward the scrum on the ground I heard Paul explaining where we was when it came off, the trajectory of his hand and what force it was thrown with….”Hmmmm, this wasn’t a contact lens” --- lost wedding band ---

“This reminds me of a Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street story” I chimed in as I got down on my knees to help in the search.

“Did that story lead to a pawn shop?” Kevin asked and the whole conversation quickly degraded to replacement rings, replacement wives, replacement body parts…and other things but unfortunately no found ring. Paul, under threat of being battle axed (apparently the weapon of choice of his in-laws) decided to head back to building security to get some of those cool metal detector wands. The rest of us (well except for Phil who nobody really knew or cared was at work anyway) headed to the showers.

Normally I don’t relate what it’s like standing with a bunch of naked men partially wrapped in towels or wash cloths, or drying off with paper towels because they’ve forgotten one. In fact, Jason joined me (as a proud owner) today in finishing the purchase of his 2nd set of “Exchange towels” because he’d forgotten one…Anyway, I don’t normally bring this up but yesterday was special because Matt was showing off his “Tinker Bell” towel. The product of living in a house with all women/girls… apparently it was either that, “Hello Kitty” or “Hanna Montana”….good call on Tink there Matty.

About an hour later, we all got an email from Paul. On the last sweep across the field, Phil found the ring which saves Paul a severing from Nordic weaponry but indebts him to help Phil remember his anniversary next year. It was, in fact, the most productive thing Phil accomplished yesterday. On the precipice of dissolving its first marriage, the Buzzards Point Ultimate club backed away slowly from the edge.

This is October???

-posted by Bill

Water bottles strewn under the tree, shirts soaking through with sweat, sun beating down on the field and enough players to play substitutes with almost everybody glad for the chance to catch their breath in the high humidity.

Sounds like August eh? Well here we are in the third week of October and the temperatures soaring back into the 80’s and in our first post-Columbus day game, we drew 17 players out today. I thought we only had 11 on the way out and then a whole new team of 6 showed up. We decided to play 8’s with a sub on one side but it was still pretty crowded.

Welcome out to Jeana. Not sure if it’s your first time out with the Buzzards or not (it’s obviously not your first time out throwing a disc) but it’s certainly the first blog entry since you’ve been coming out. Thunder (or Scooter if you like)….or Thunder Scooter (you could be a new Mario Kart bike)…anyway he was wondering if the Blog had somehow been on the negative side of the DOW collapse last week and been shut down.

Fear not, even without a government bailout, the blog is back! You know what I’d like to hear addressed in tonight’s debate? If you are starting play from your end zone line do you like 4 cutters at the front of your stack or do you prefer to have 3 runners going deep from the back? Do you like your dump throw to your strong hand or weak hand side? And do you prefer a domestic, import, or microbrew draft after a tough match on the pitch? I mean do we have to hear about the economy every day? Do we still have soldiers and sailors in Iraq? You’d barely know it by perusing the partisan media of CNN and Fox New respectively.

You want the Buzzard’s new energy plan? We put activity-charged battery cells on our cleats during the match and you store up energy by how much you run and then you plug that onto your car battery on the way home and that’s how far you get to drive that afternoon. That’s bad news of course for me since I’m used to driving to Richmond or Charlottesville and probably barely run enough to get me across the 14th street bridge but you know maybe I could buy somebody else’s energy credits? Say Will, Phil, or Bob’s today.

Welcome back out also to Bridgette & Mike today. And Bridgette gets extra points for agreeing to take the pinnies home to wash them. She admitted to finding the breaking point to her femininity… "I can stand the stench anymore”. Hmmmm, I didn’t tell her that when Todd takes them home he uses his special gardenia-scented fabric softner.

Great game today everybody. Thanks for the awesome turnout!

'ol man Winter

Okay, winter is here! Well, not officially maybe. That will be this coming Saturday, the 22nd. But the weather conditions over the last week have been winter. I had a winter league game on Sunday in Charlottesville. Read the game recaps of the Dark Grey vs Green where we finally won our first game.

The wind carried over into Monday and since I had forgotten the clean pinnies and was still trying to recover from a wicked case of face chap wind burn, we bagged the game here at McNair. Then yesterday, the winds abated and the lure of having fresh photography up on the blog, we managed to get 10 players to come out. Even though it was in the low 30’s, there was little wind and sunshine and wound up being a great game. Anybody else notice that field is starting to get chewed up though? Even with cleats, traction was tough yesterday as it was pretty wet, especially in the middle near the north end zone.

Many thanks to Bob for coming out and photographing us. As I was going back through the pics on the digital camera I was laughing to myself. Bob found out what my girlfriend, Mary experienced a couple weeks ago trying to photography Ultimate…it’s difficult to follow the action closely and get heads, feet, and the disc in the shot at the same time. Bob finally went with the strategy to zoom all the way out and hope I could edit them on the computer. I’ll let you be the judge of the results. I will be posting those soon...as soon as I can edit them, I'll put them up.

Frank was back on the field yesterday…well on parts of the field…usually the end zones. Bryan kept turning around after a turnover to use one of his patented sprints up the field, only to see Frank already drifting around the end zone waiting for the long huck. While green had a couple long scores here and there with that strategy, the gold team of Mallard, Rodney, Travis, Conrad, & Phil were a bit more consistent early on and worked the disc up nicely with short passes back and forth.

Green finally began to find some rhythm late in the game with some short cuts and a loose attempt at running some from a stack (hey, if you’re learning the terms, we might as well use them). And Wings made a stellar vertical leap (unfortunately not caught on film) for the game’s final point.

My personal favorite yesterday was the stretch of two deflected scores off of Rodney yesterday where I managed to bounce the disc off of one of his hands and into the waiting arms of Frank and Bryan. Todd was moving around a bit slowly yesterday complaining of something having to do with a tackle football game he had played over the weekend…note to Buzzards…stay away from tackle football, or as Bob can testify to, any football at all really. We can get hurt easily enough out here, we don’t need you increasing the risk factor playing other sports (as if there really are any other sports).

See you all out there today. Special game time of 1100 to accommodate one of our regulars who claims to have a meeting with mandatory attendance at 1300.

"De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"

166. That’s how many years the green team had on their 4-man team today that seemed to still manage to out run the 5-man gold team. That’s almost as old as The Police whom I saw a couple weeks ago. Granted, they’re only a 3-man team but judging from the shape Sting looked to be in, I think he could have outrun us on the field today too.

The game was not nearly as mismatched as Mallard made it out to be in the locker room during the post-game smack-fest. The wet field made for some nice sliding and probably helped us avoid some collisions today.

Apparently the rosters on the sidebar need to be updated some. The grapevine shared that Kevin “No D” is not MIA but actually also on the disabled list from another Ultimate leg injury. Sniper was back from the honeymoon and can now be taken off the disabled list. Rumor also has it that Kashyap actually had to work today during the game and couldn’t play. That’s extremely hard to imagine and the Buzzard’s Scribe is currently trying to find a secondary source to confirm that unlikely story.

We’ve had some ID issues lately. Friday, Eric who actually comes over here from Arlington, got here to discover he had forgotten his and couldn’t get on base. The remaining players were forced to go 3-3. Well done lads.

Today, Matt, claimed to have no ID at all. So let me get this straight, a Department of Homeland Security employee can get into his workplace and log onto his computer with no ID but can’t get to the Ultimate Field? Something is wrong with that picture to be sure. Anybody else go over to Jemal regularly though. I do have an ID and sometimes can’t get on and off the elevators.

It’s great weather these days folks. Get on out there and play. Bob said he saw a tournament going on in Williamsburg this weekend and I’m getting ready to start play in the Charlottesville Winter League. This is the year round sport…Check with “Billie Jean” aka Rodney and he can hook you up with a good glove recommendation.

Just Beat It!