End of the 20/20 days?

Finally the wind subsided a bit and we got enough for a game yesterday. Those 20/20 days (temps in the 20’s/wind in the 20’s) are winter’s equivalent to the summer’s 90/90 (temps in the 90’s/humidity in the 90’s) and just as difficult to play in and lure people out in. But yesterday the temperature crept above 40 by lunch time and the wind had pretty much died down.

I want to give a big Buzzard’s welcome to Shane who was joining us for the first time yesterday. Usually you can find him on the volleyball courts but yesterday they weren’t playing and as he told me “anything is better than the treadmill”. I did caution him though that it might not be any less running but certainly more fun and interesting. Shane made some great grabs yesterday particularly on some lousy throws by Kevin. Hey, that was their own description of the plays, not mine.

Paul also came up with some unlikely catches yesterday off tips either from his hands or somebody else’s. I think JQ was enjoying having somebody just run down to the end zone and see if he would throw it to him.

Our gold team of myself, Bob (after a bit of a layoff), Matt, Brian, & Jason couldn’t seem to get everything clicking in sync, especially on defense where we found ourselves getting to a lot of passes but not being able to either make the interception or knock down (re: Shane’s and Paul’s catches). Bridgette offered to let us go take cold showers in the women’s locker room…wait, I’m not sure if those two things are actually related or not.

Today’s game time temperatures should be approaching the 50’s with more sun so it promises to be another great day on the pitch. Looking forward to a great turnout before I take off all next week.

Trifecta - Weather prediction, Vegas omen, or the truck I ran into?

Yesterday was a day off for the Buzzards – We hit the weather trifecta of cold temps (feels like 28 according to weather.com), precipitation (mixture of rain/snow), and high winds (18 mph). Usually hoping that only one of those surfaces though we often play in two of the conditions, three just felt like too much to me yesterday morning as I was recovering from my near concussive state of the day before. So I didn’t even send an email out to see who might be interested.

Often times when I do this, in fact, most times I don’t, somebody else will pipe up and ask what’s going on and clamor for a game. There was no such clamoring yesterday. At about 9, Todd sent me a message “How are you feeling today?” I gave him the update, explained that I was trying to get some school work done, turned down his invitation for racquetball and just generally went back into hiding in my cube.

"Where's Swinny when I need him" was Todd's diappointed reply.

1030 – Kevin sends me a message wondering if he would be the 8th…that he might talk himself into playing. Kevin, by the way was who I dove into the day before sending my head into the hinterlands. He suggested I must have hit him in some more…uh…tissuey area…

“No” I assured him “Whatever I hit definitely was bone.”

And that’s almost all I remember from the game on Tuesday. It was one of Scott’s bi-monthly games which made for some good story telling. I don’t remember the whole thing but his wife’s friends, vodka, lap dances, and flatulence were involved. Oh yea, and Scott slapped Todd with the disc at one point on the field. Did we mention we miss you not being out there more often Thunder?

You know if you’re looking for a club that’s right for your needs you should really consider the Buzzards Point Ultimate Club. In a gesture of flexibility afforded to one of its most “seasoned” members, we moved the game to noon on Tuesday because Matt was driving into work (off leave?) for a medical appointment or some other such business and asked if we could delay the start time.

“Send me a text if we’re playing” said the voice mail.

“Game On ~ 1200” I sent to him after conferring with the other 7 confirmed players for the day. Oh, so we mentioned Matt was actually the 8th and I wouldn’t have been able to call the game without him? Still, we’re pretty darn lenient in this group. Don’t let it be a habit though because I really don’t like having to shuffle around all the soccer players and vie for shower space with them when we get back the same time they do in the locker room.

Anyway, hoping to get in a game today. Paul, who can’t seem to find our Facebook page is hoping to find a Vegas jackpot and won’t be with us. But let’s shake a bunch of feathers from the nest today. Hey Brian, I see you’re already in as I’m writing this morning, you’ve been ducking us the last couple weeks. Grab John and Doug and come on out today. Tom – I’m no doctor but I think your snowboarding injury is healed enough to come back out. Bridgette? Jeana? How about some of you who are in danger of having to take the driving test again if you don’t get back out soon….Tim? Mike? Bo? Fred?

Todd, Kevin, Matt, Phil, Jason – I’ll be counting on you guys if you’re here today. Should be a nice soft field for soft landings assuming I can avoid contact with other players today.

Pull!

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!

A slapdash kind of game...

There was indeed slapping and dashing going on yesterday…and kicking apparently. Some of the kicking was legal; I was actually able to kick block a pass which I will try from time to time when I don’t really feel like bending that far. The other kicking was compared to mule-like activity so I’ll assume there may have been some physical contact involved which, by the way, is not legal.

Apparently there was also some mocking going on when I explained that double-teaming was also not legal (even when you are down a player). The mocker in question shall remain nameless but he’s the one with the accent. George (so much for nameless) despite your incredulity there are, in fact, a set of rules for Ultimate and a (some would argue more than one) ruling Association. I’ll remind folks or tell them for the first time about the Ultimate Players Association where you can find all things Ultimate. For a small fee, you can join up which will allow you to play in most organized leagues and tournaments should you find yourself wanting something to supplement your daily fix with the Buzzards. In fact, I just got my renewal notice in the mail a couple weeks ago…it’s next to the Comcast bill. If this economic crunch starts to hit me too hard and I have to decide between the two, I’m sending in the UPA renewal and turning off cable and internet.

Now back to yesterday’s game. Did I mention it was a bit sloppy? We had another great turnout though with 6’s when Jeana finally got away from her office and came out to even up the teams. By that time though, we, on the gold team, had already gotten ourselves into a bit of a hole. When I say hole, I actually mean multiple holes that seemed to be in our zone defense. Green managed a couple of nice short pass drives up the field for scores.

The slapping going on yesterday actually looked to be the result of some nice hustle. I thought we had people hitting each others arms and wrists (and ears?) as they were both going up for passes. And that kind of “incidental contact” seems to be generally okay with most of the Buzzards. In contrast to the just running through somebody because you're too slow (re:lazy) to get around them and front them on defense.

I was having some pinnie color recognition problems yesterday. On one early drive I threw a pass to the corner of the end zone that I thought I had gotten close enough to Jason that he should have caught it. Just when I was about to yell something about the lack of hustle, I realized we didn’t have the same color on. Ooops. “Hey Bill, you’re gold” Bob reminded me as we turned around after the turnover.

We got an unexpected visit from Kelly yesterday. Taking a break from the job search to concentrate on things much more important. Great to see you yesterday KG! And even though you gave a disclaimer when you got out there about not having played in “months” I saw you make several nice plays, including one really good defensive block.

But most of us noticed our own lack of execution yesterday…When I tried to pep talk gold one trip back down the field with “Okay, here we go, now we’re going to start showing them something!”

Matt replied “Does that mean you want me to leave the field? I just want to know now before I run back down there.”

Todd remarked after the game “I know I saw at least 2 discs coming straight for my hands that somehow did not wind up there.”

And Paul told me on the way back down the field after another score “You remember how yesterday we were saying what a great game it was? Today…not so much.”

“Yea” I conceded “but it still beat being in the cube.”

And you know, you all are just crazy enough that when I think we might take a day off…you know for the temperatures in the teens with the wind chill kind of days….like TODAY! I get an IM from Brian saying “Hey, we’ve got 3 (Doug, John & I) in my office ready to go today.” And I give in and send out the invite, finding two more immediate replies to take us up to 6 already.

Sloppy or not, we’re headed to the pitch.

Pull!

Muddy Monday

We’re only 2 weeks into January and really have hadn’t a long stretch of challenging winter weather but I’m encouraged by our 3 games and 39 people we’ve had come out so far. It was a great game of 7’s today. Welcome back Scott, good to see you. Soccer and basketball took the day off and we also got Doug and JQ. And while Leroy finished up his winter “break” at work with the Coast Guard last week, Carolyn is still with us as George Mason apparently doesn’t believe in school in January. Now that’s a J-term I can appreciate.

The pitch was a bit muddy today…I guess. I came into the locker room though having to carry my shoes in a Ziploc because I had played yesterday in Richmond on a completely grassless bog where my cleats were essentially useless but I wore them anyway and there was a coat of dried mud on them to start today’s game. But many of us were also in it today. I saw Carolyn diving for a catch across the end zone…or maybe that was the defensive play where she and Bridgette looked like a snowball picking up size as it goes downhill when they both hit the ground in pursuit of one throw. Jason fell straight back on another throw that was surely headed into his hands even though he was the defender. And so much so that Todd had stopped covering the deep guy and gold team got the first score of the game on a broken play.

Not all of us saw that play though. Remember the bit in the email this morning when I called the game about trying to start a few minutes earlier than we have been? Well, Brad apparently thought that was a personal affront to his civil freedoms and decided to not come out until 15 minutes later. So we, on the green team had taken our extra player advantage in George, the other late-comer, and didn’t do much with it.

It actually looked like we were gaining some reasonably approximation of a zone defense on a few plays as Paul was hustling up to get some good cup defense set. And it worked well for a while…or on some plays I guess. By the way…I noticed Mike that you were trying to exercise the “Phil” rule and swing the disc around hitting people on the arm to show that they might be in your “pivot zone”. A little clarification here may be in order. When you have a 6-foot plus wingspan or you’re able to pivot the length of a small child, you cede some of your privilege to that foul call. The defender gets to come close to you and you’re probably better off trying garlic, really strong onion or flatulence if you want to ward them off. We’re not letting you hit people with the disc anymore so just throw it already.

Brian seems to have ironed out most of the kinks of that reverse discus throw of his. It’s amazing what you can adapt to when you’re injured I guess. Now that Scott is back I can shift my missing Buzzards attention to other people. Eli, where in the world are you? I keep getting “No” responses from Tim. So much so that I wonder if he hasn’t set up an “Out of Office” rule on his email to anything Outlook sees from me. And Tom we haven’t seen you in a while though I did notice that you had RSVPd for Friday’s game which didn’t happen.

Okay everybody, don’t pass by too many opportunities to play. The weather could turn anytime (check out the 10-forecast…Thursday may be the turn day this week) so let’s take advantage while we can. Great, great turnout today!

http://bpuc.blogspot.com/