Foolish Ambition

Here's the deal: I've been known to play ultimate frisbee from time to time. Before I say anything else, please allow me to answer your first two questions.
1. No, that's not played with dogs.
2. No, it's not the same thing as 'Frolf'.
(Thank you, George Costanza).

No folks, ultimate frisbee is a team sport played by teams of seven (men, women, and mixed) where teams try to score points by catching the disc in the endzone. 1 point per score, no running with the disc (advance it by throwing only), an interception or incompletion is a turnover, and play continues without subs until one team scores. Game ends at a certain score, usually 13, 15, or 17, depending on the tournament.

Two weeks ago I had the chance to play at Fools Fest, in Lawrence Kansas. For those of us in snowbound states, Fest is often the first chance of the year to play outside. This is definitely a good thing. For me, Fools Fest is a little bit more than that - for me it's the time of year when I can gather together all the players who I respect and enjoy playing with and against for a fun time where we all come together and try to kick some butt against teams that play together all the time. That's another thing that's great about ultimate - most teams play enough that even players who don't normally play together can run complicated offensive and defensive sets with just a little bit of explanation beforehand. This year's iteration of the FF squad was as follows:

Matt Spillum - Roommate, former co-captain, overall fun guy; Dan Larva, Matt Gardner, Paul Norgaard, and Dan Stedman - Former teammates on Hot Action; Randy Gage - Former nemesis at Macalester College, now kickass men's player; Jeff Wiggins - Teammate on Iowa's Most Wanted; Kyle and AKWAC - Canucks (they're toe-tally ston-dard), drinkers, tough mixed players; Brian (Bounce-Bounce) Davis - new guy with a temper, former Oregoner; Jake and Loomis - Former college teammates, hired muscle; Faber and Britt - hometown boys, former teammates on Pretty Good; Aaron 'Tip' Pedersen - Former college teammate, token short guy; Wayne, Russ, and Ryan - Guys that other guys brought along (note: fresh legs are *always* welcome early in the year). So it was a big squad, and if I've forgotten anyone, you obviously didn't make enough of an impression on me... plus it was two weeks ago and I am the youngest recorded Alzheimer's case, so tough.

Jeff throws one into your living room

The overall history of our team at Fools Fest has been sketchy... sometimes we come together and play incredibly, sometimes we lose to old men from Kansas City. Part of the fun is that you never know what can happen - maybe one of these years we'll win it all. Maybe this would be the one.

Friday at noon: Bounce-Bounce, Matty, and I pile into the car, bound for Des Moines (World's Biggest Truck Stop) Iowa, to meet up with Wiggins. On the way we play our ever-popular road trip game, in search of the SuperCar. Matt and I have this theory that one day one of us will see a car that has every little car knick-knack that makes us question our faith in mankind. In no particular order, these are: personalized license plate, jesus fish - all variants (darwin, science, truth) accepted, a sticker of calvin peeing on something (popular variants include osama bin laden, and 'la migra'), any variation of a Dale Earnhardt tribute (he drove a car for a living, i'm sure he was a good man, but he was most certainly NOT your family, people. you don't see Joe DiMaggio tribute stickers because SPORTS STARS ARE NOT HEROS!) ... whew, deep breath, got off on a rant there ... continuing on: a suction cup Garfield, a 'Baby on Board' sign, anything hanging from the rearview mirror (fuzzy dice are the pinnacle, but tree fresheners, mardi gras beads, and graduation tassels are all acceptible), and finally, a flag (those crappy "Purple Pride" Vikings flags around here would be best). It would almost have to be some variety of SUV to contain all these things in one, which would likely be further proof of the overall disease indicated by the symptoms (a Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer would be most likely). What do we get when we see this "SuperCar"? One free murder. That's right, if any of you see this car, you are allowed to run them off the road. Think about it, what court would fail to back up your 'temporary insanity' plea? That's what we thought, too.

Also, we ate a lot of Twizzlers. JT is a genius.

Oddly enough, for the weekend, we saw every component of the SuperCar *except* the calvin peeing sticker. Usually the 'Baby on Board' sign is nigh on extinct these days, and the suction cup Garfield (and Fuzzy Dice) not far behind. Go figure...

Friday night we saw EmmyLou Harris play at some ballroom in Des Moines. And I think ballroom is a pretty loose term here. That place could have just as easily been called a VFW hall. Aside from that, and the fact that country music isn't really my bag, it was a good show. You don't become a living legend for nothing, after all.

Saturday morning we took the field full of energy... after all we were 20 strong, we're all veterans of the game, and we had the comfort of a first-round bye. We didn't really know any of the teams we were to play, but a 4-0 record certainly wasn't unreasonable. As it turned out, though...

We lost. Spectacularly. The first game, to Wyoming, we blamed on having not all played together (a not unreasonable excuse, being that it's true, but it's still pretty weak). The second game, to Will (I run this tournament) Spotts's team, we rightly accepted that we got outplayed. The third game, against Springfield... we decided that that game didn't happen. Technically, I shouldn't even be talking about it (we can't believe we lost to them). Thankfully our 4th game got wiped out by lightning before we could half-ass our way completely out of the tournament. We rescheduled for early Sunday morning - not a popular decision given the lost daylight savings hour, and the notorious laziness of ultimate players - but that's the way it went.

Bigfoot prepares to throw

Saturday night in Topeka we passed an establishment in a stip mall. The name of the establishment was "Ichabod Laundra Bar". Let's break this down. "Laundra Bar" seems to imply some sort of drinking and laundry cohabitation. But "Laundra" isn't even a word, and in any case, why Ichabod? Do headless men need to drink before being properly able to launder? Or did a man with a 19th century name merely choose to name his establishment something somewhat related to being in the English language? In the end we decided that the whole thing was merely one man's name, and that we had no idea what was actually inside the building. Ichabod Laundra Bar (and, if there's any justice in the universe, his brother Bill Laundra Bar (kinda like John Vander Wal - think about it)) probably run a fine establishment. We wouldn't know, we didn't go in. Heh. The ILB thus officially joins the obsessed about business category of the FF annals, joining the Toot-Toot cafe in Iowa (how'd you like to answer the phone there? "Hello, Toot-Toot!"), and the Chief Lamoni Hotel, in Lamoni, Iowa (I refuse to say any more about Chief Lamoni, it makes me giggle too much).

Sunday morning we arrived at the field... to find it locked. One member of the opposing team found the gate key hidden in a bush (I can't make something that good up), and we set up... problem was, there were only four of us from our team... like I said, ultimate players are lazy. Plus, the Sunday fields were at a different place than the Saturday fields, always a bad idea. We warmed up, fearing the worst, and then Paul showed up. With his cell phone, with which he quickly called the rest of the team with directions. And it was game on. As the players kept trickling in, we methodically laid a thumping on the opposing team (I forget where they were from). In the end it was just like it should have been all day Saturday... we could play!

Chris Britt gets full extension on the pull

Speaking of Britt, everyone on the sidelines was impressed by his panoply of fakes. I asked him if he practiced them, which was a yes. I should have asked if he practiced in front of a mirror... Heh.

We concluded our first game to find that no team was waiting to play us in the quarterfinals... despite it being past the scheduled time for the normal games to start for Sunday. Hey, that's ultimate. When they finally did show up, I realized that I knew half of them. Just another cool thing about ultimate - sooner or later you know most everyone in your region of the country. The game itself was... intense, and chippy. You call your own fouls in ultimate, and in a tight game, well... human nature is what it is. Due to our craptacular Saturday record, I know the other team didn't know what we had in store for them, and we fought them tooth and nail. There were a few questionable calls from both sides, but in the true spirit of the game I'd say it all worked out ok without any need for refs, and in the end we all shook hands and I doubt there was any real animosity left. They beat us 13-11, and went on to win the tournament... over that team we couldn't believe we lost to on Saturday. Funny how that all works out. I guess they really were that good. Heh.

Finally, for those of you reading this that were there (and hey, even those of you who weren't), here's a clip of Paul's amazing catch of Randy's terrible hammer. Enjoy! Paul2.mov

It's a quicktime movie - hopefully it'll work for everyone.

In the end... sure, we didn't win. But friends came together with enemies, beer was consumed, and fun was had by all. Mission accomplished. And hey, maybe we'll win next year!