Is that a wet towel on me?

It’s here! You know that feeling you get when you walk outside and you feel like you’re swimming wherever you walk. When, no matter how leisurely your pace, everything you’re wearing is drenched by the time you get where you’re going? Any of you who are familiar with the D.C. area during the summer are familiar with this phenomenon called “humidity”.

As a native Northern Virginian I grew up with this and really thought nothing of it. I mean it’s what drove me away from other sports with lots more clothing and equipment like football. I remember that first summer of pee wee and having all those pads on and long pants and heavy jersey and just thinking there have to be better ways to have fun….I was 8 was playing for the Cardinals with all my other friends in Elementary school and though many of those guys went on to high school stardom at Gar-Field and Woodbridge Senior High Schools respectively, I don’t have much regret about not sticking with football. But I digress…other than the football experiment I don’t recall minding the humidity too much.

But I have to say, this July has been pretty darn nice…right up until about 3 days ago. This week, the humidity has moved up into the 90% range, the temperatures have hovered in and around 90 and evening thunderstorms have visited the area. This is summer as we metro D.C. area denizens have come to love it.

On the Ultimate pitch it means that we are in the season where the pinnies need to be taken home and washed almost every night. Please feel free to step up and volunteer for this duty occasionally. I’m pretty happy with my new Bosch washer and Dryer but I just feel funny saying that, I have a laundry room full of stray leaves that have found their way into our mesh bag, and it would just be nice to share the load (pun intended) once in a while.

We’ve had a couple decent games already this week all things considered. Thanks to those who have come out so far. July is typically a tough month to call games. Lots of people on leave, transfers just settling in or having left us, and oh, did I mention it’s humid. We want to give a bit Buzzard welcome to Marcia joining us for the first time yesterday. She’s newly arrived from Port Arthur, TX. Yes she’s the player we traded MattP for, no word yet on what type of towels she uses. Matt, did you leave her any princess motifs in the office?

Kelly was the star of yesterday’s game. She and Todd worked some great give and go drives late in the game and she make a couple great leading throws for scores. Great throws were not to be found much on the blue side as myself, Kevin, & Erick did not give Marcia a good first impression of the quality of game she can sometimes find out here.

Our theory of trying to force mark worked on and off. I remember having a really strong mark on Bob at one point and taking away the backhand completely and forcing flick. Then Bob finally relented and threw a flick that defied physics for half its flight, finally flattened out, never got more than about 2 feet off the ground and sailed into Todd’s hands for a score. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him make that throw out here before.

Low throws abounded though…ask Paul how it was affecting his pulls yesterday. Okay, so the air was a bit heavy. Did I mention the humidity? Marcia told me this wasn’t really even hot compared to Port Arthur. The flip side of that “truth is relative to the perception of the individual” theory (Mr. Bunn, 11th grade, U.S. History) is that Meaghan last week when the weather was still relatively comfortable (for around here) wondered if she hadn’t been transferred to the face of the sun. Of course she was coming from Seattle.

Welcome to D.C. everyone, welcome to summer, and just keep plugging along. Your playing in this will pay huge dividends when fall rolls around. You’ll feel like a seasoned tri-athlete…okay well at least like an 8-year old pee wee football player.

Pull!

Deep grass, humidity, & nets…

Submitted by Bill

Anybody else notice sweating from the ground up yesterday? That’s how I can tell the humidity is rising. It was heavy on the chest and lungs as the temps bumped up a little and the humidity went up a lot. It’s only April Buzzards…start conditioning now for summer.

Speaking of conditioning, I don’t know what to suggest for the grass conditions we played in yesterday. Very deep, it was a good thing Kash wasn’t still here, we might have lost him. Even though the humidity may have had more to do with it, the grass length was a great excuse for some slower running.

And we went out yesterday with only 7 (Bob saved us from 6 with a last second RSVP) until Conrad finally showed up so we went with a version of Ultimate we used to play quite regularly a few years ago…with goals instead of end zones. An added feature was the hockey-like crease that Todd decided to set up. This game theoretically favors the strong throwers. Of course it takes a few to get dialed in on range as I found out after sailing my 3rd shot at an open net just a little high. Wings was upset the new setup was having negative impact on his MVP season.

Out of common courtesy, we used to outlaw the tomahawk throw when playing with nets. The defender can really get lit up that way. But Thunder, wasn’t around in those days and may not have any common courtesy but regardless, he let loose a scoring tomahawk. I think it was one of only 2 or 3 scores we even had on the nets before the soccer folks came out to play. Anybody else notice they didn’t make it out Monday in the rain?

Anyway, by then we had 8 and went back to our regular game but team speed never really proved to be a factor. Not sure whether it was the grass, humidity or general unfit for play status but Phil & Bryan did not break away for as many running scores as they’ve been known to. In fact Phil may have had the best play of the day and it was defensive…a fantastic “Secret Service Layout” (thanks for the idea Scott) on a sure long pass score from Todd to Bill.

I heard Conrad complaining that his “Kungfoo Grip” just wasn’t what it used to be. Rest easy my friend hardly any of us have anything working as well as it used to.

Enjoy a day off everybody. I think the ACO picnic or football will keep us from having enough for a game today…of course I could be wrong so good luck Rodney in getting enough players.

Looks like we’ll have great weather again tomorrow though and hopefully the fields will have been mowed.