The wind in the willows and the piper at the gates of dawn

I woke up this morning to what sounded like somebody outside my Ft. McNair lodging window with a power washer. I had seen a crane in the parking lot the night before and wasn’t ruling out this possibility except that 0430 seems a strange time to doing that type of thing. Of course, a couple weeks ago I heard the distinctive sound of shovels scraping ice from the sidewalks and that was at 0300 so I wasn’t ruling anything out and as I woke up and oriented myself.

It turns out it wasn’t a pressure washer but instead it was just plain wind. Gusting 30-45 mph winds, the kryptonite of Ultimate players. I was a bit disappointed as I knew this may put our game today in jeopardy and I had missed yesterday’s game in the idyllic high 60’s. I have not yet gotten a report of how that game went but if it followed the pattern of Monday and Tuesday, it was just great weather, especially for February, to be throwing some disc.

In fact, the only complaint I really had about the early part of the week was the capacious coating of fresh goose feces. You know, normally during the winter it’s cold enough that it just winds up being similar to running on a freshly aerated golf course with chunks of soil spotted everywhere. It just smells a bit different and sticks in your cleats. However this week, our particular flock must have swung by Five Guys Burgers and had one too many order of fries, if you know what I mean. Instead of the freshly aerated look, it more closely resembled an I-95 tarring project gone bad. So we spent a great deal of time, trying to figure out how to stay off the ground. I failed miserably on one particular play getting sandwiched between Phil and Brad going up for one disc and coming down I threw my hand down to break my fall and stuck in right in a pile of…well I don’t want to think about it anymore.

We had our usual cast of characters out there early this week, well except for Bob who’s on some crazy road trip home from San Diego and updating his Facebook status with snippets like “I think the ‘author’ in me is about to come out. So I guess he’s having some Jack Kerouac type of experience which I’m suddenly very jealous of. I feel like Kerouac would have enjoyed a bit of Ultimate in his time particularly as the sport is often believed to evolved from the hippie culture. Jack’s beatniks would have actually been a precursor to that.

Oh, speaking of evolving, we want to acknowledge the bicentennial birthday of ol’ Chuck Darwin today.
The Buzzards are all about a little natural selection. We have certainly come a long way from the early disc players of this club who banged and traveled, double-teamed, picked, and recklessly disregarded safety of other players on the pitch…okay, well so we’re not completely evolved from these “maladapted individuals” but we’re getting there…some might even call the last couple years a period of “punctuated equilibrium” for the BPUC.

We still periodically struggle with some seemingly simple concepts like offsides, center….er…uh… “middle” (which to be fair is a house rule adapted for the regular occurrence of the odd player), and “Disc Space” … in fact, let me just stop to provide a quick on-line tutorial for this particular rule. The following is taken directly from The Official Rules of Ultimate, 11th Edition:

1. Disc-space: If a line between any two points on the marker touches the thrower or is less than one disc diameter away from the torso or pivot of the thrower, it is a disc space violation. However, if this situation is caused solely by movement of the thrower, it is not a violation.

At any rate, we’re coming along. I mean heck, some of us Buzzards even go to the “theatre” or at least I think that’s what it’s called. That’s my excuse at least for missing yesterday as I had a late night at “Broadway in Charlottesville” watching Hairspray and trying to imagine John Travolta as Edna Turnblad from the movie adaptation…talk about a strange evolution.

Cast of characters? Oh yea, that’s where I was going before all this. So Bob, we’ve missed you but coming out early in this week to make for some great game were Brad, Erick (welcome back by the way), Todd, Phil, Paul, Jordan, Dennis, George and Jeana. Perhaps yesterday we had some others as well.

We’ll see if anybody wants to play today but I’m not sure we’ve yet figured out how to throw a 175 gram disc into a 30 mph wind.

Handlers, runners, and a taste of spring...

Monday was a teaser for Spring. Beautiful weather and it brought a good turnout for the game. We had 11 Buzzards wander out to the field. It was so nice that people were taking off layers before we even started and periodically through the game after scores, somebody would run to the sideline to peel something else off.

Speaking of clothes coming off, everybody can breathe easy….Kevin got a new pair of sweats and so we don’t have to worry about seeing him running down the field with his pant around his ankles…well at least not due to his broken string now.

John, this must have easily been the nicest day you’d been out so far, right? As the current “Newbie” (new to the Buzzards but not to Ultimate) you had come out on some of the most frigid days we’d played this winter for your first games with us. To your credit, you’re still coming out and if I haven’t done so already let me give you the official Buzzards Welcome!

More new players are on the horizon. This morning we’re having some trouble getting enough to answer email for today’s game but one new player has and for Arthur’s sake, I hope we run today. I also got an email from a guy named Jeff who apparently “lives right next to Fort McNair” but has no military affiliation and wants to play with us. I think he may have found out about us through our new Facebook group but I’m not sure yet. The other possibility is that he’s been scoping us out from an apartment window telescope but that seems less likely as somehow he got my email address. If anybody’s got any ideas about how I can get Jeff onto the base continue his reconnaissance…uh…I mean begin playing disc with us, please let me know.

So back to the game…when Brian came out he said he and John needed to be on opposing teams so when they both left for their 1300 meeting it would leave the teams balanced. He said it was up to me which team to saddle with the chicken wing throw (which by the way is becoming surprisingly accurate) or the guy with the pulled “buttocks” (John’s diagnosis, not mine). You know how when you’re making Mojitos there is that delicate balance of rum to club soda? Well, there is a similar delicacy in deciding on handlers vs runners in splitting up the teams. It’s especially difficult when your handlers are also your runners as that sometimes has a negating effect on both. I can usually be accused of putting myself on teams that are “handler-strong” or at least as I perceive them. I do this even though I know I can’t run enough to take advantage of this.

That’s a long story to say that I decided to opt for John and his buttocks over Brian (the underrated handler) but usually more of a threat to run by you. We teamed up with Todd (one of those handler/runner types who you handicap by making him do both), Bridgette (who I like to get in height mismatches with guys like Jason), Paul (who inexplicably volunteers to always run down and play cup), Jordan (joining us for his monthly game) and Dennis (also a runner who fancies himself more of a handler).

And we matched up against Kevin, Phil, Brad, Scott, Jason & “Chicken Wing”. This is a sneaky physical 5-some. They find ways to run into you and hit you without it seeming like it’s illegal.

You know, for those of you who read this and wonder why I don’t mention outcomes very often it’s because there is a strange little tidbit about the Buzzards…we very rarely keep any kind of score. I mean generally you know which team is playing better and might be ahead and when we call “Last 3” at 1125 we are able to count to 3 (usually). You know, now that Derek has left us (it was the football/softball player in him) nobody else really keeps track.

So I can’t tell you really who came out on top yesterday though my suspicion is it was probably the gold team. We were having some defensive break-downs on green that seemed to get a little better when we switched to man but not enough to overtake the gold by that point.

Looking forward to redeeming myself some today…”Bill, take a runner because you’re not one” is the voice I’ll be listening for.

I pass on greeting from Buzzards Alums (and part-time players) Kash, Travis, & Kelly who have all joined our Facebook group.

Pull!

Buzzards go Cuckoo

There are new birds in the nest! Just when you thought it was safe for the Buzzards to stay in, the Cuckoos fly in.

By the way…as a small aside here. I have this blog as an RSS feed to my Facebook (just don't try to access this from work) page but it shows up as a note (which some of you only read it as) but it does not give any indication where it’s coming from (i.e. the blog is the source). So, I’m thinking about putting the hyperlink as the first line of each blog entry. Well, at least until somebody can figure out how to have Facebook credit the source and steer people to the BPUC page. I’m sure one of my friends (Kari, I'm thinking this might be you since you had Twitter updating your Facebook status from a train the other day) can help me with that but that supposes any of them actually read this.

I didn’t want to confuse any of the Buzzards who are reading this and wondering why I’m directing them to someplace they already are.

Anyway, back to the nest interlopers…

There are a couple of great quotes from R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that I’m reminded of this morning as Brian fills in for the deranged Jack Nicholson. I got out of my car this morning at about 5:15 (that’s a.m for you Facebook readers) to walk into the building. I’m not exactly sure what the temperature was then but right now, as I write this (8:40 a.m.), it’s climbed to a “balmy” 25. Problem is, the winds are blowing from the NW at 23 miles an hour with wind gusts up to 36! That makes it feel like 10 degrees which ain’t Chicago but it’s still darn cold.

So, I figure “Okay, I’ve got my Ultimate gear today but there really won’t be anybody who wants to play.” I had already heard from a couple leaving the pitch yesterday that stated “for the record, I’m not playing tomorrow.” Thanks Todd for the heads up. You’re to be commended on your relative sanity. Unfortunately, that cannot be said of all your teammates. This is where McMurphy, a.k.a. Brian comes in.

Email at 8:03 – He wants to know if I’m calling a game for today. Or as McMurphy would have said “Which one of you nuts has got any guts?” Here’s the thing, it’s sometimes easier to ignore or assuage one loose cannon with misplaced bravado. But see Brian’s smarter than he looks, he’s got 3 other nuts with him already committed to play when he emails me (Jeana, Doug & John…you better show). Did I mention John's first two games with us will have been yesterday and today? That’s half the game right there and my obligation is to only come up with 3 more players assuming I’ve been guilted into going out myself (this is not one of the club leader perks they tell you about when you take this job).

And see I already know there is at least another one out there because Paul came out in shorts yesterday! He told me something the other day about family ancestry being tied into some Nordic fishermen or some such crazy story. Meanwhile I’m left thinking “I must be crazy to be in a loony bin like this.”

Brian chirps in a few minutes ago with another co-conspirator in Dennis and all of a sudden we’re at 7 and I have this awful feeling we’re actually going out to play today. I’m envisioning discs cracking in pieces when and if they actually land after getting caught up in the wind.

I think I’d rather face Nurse Ratched “You know Billy, what worries me is how your mother is going to take this.”

“P-p-p-please d-d-d-don’t tell my m-m-m-mother.”

Crap! There’s a positive response from Brad, now I’m going to have to send out the “Game On” email. Have the clinic standby for frost bite patients after lunch. There’s 8 flying over this Buzzards’s nest!