New Year's Fest 2003

MSP Airport - Friday PM:

I'm hanging out in the terminal with probably an hour to kill before my flight. I hear the girl sitting with her back to me say the word "frisbee" into her cell phone and my ears perk. I'm thinking cool, someone to talk to. I turn around and butt in when she's off the phone, and sure enough she's headed to Tempe too. We talk for a while about the Cities' scene, and she knows some folks on the team I'm gonna be playing on, instructing me to call Seth "Pretzel Boy" just to see what he says. Eventually it comes out that her husband is from my hometown. She tries to lump me in with the Austin boys she knows from Winona, and I ask for a bit of a crowbar separation there, 'cause I'm not the kind of guy who puts mac and cheese down another boy's pants, thank you very much. But we talk for a while about the hometown, and I'd played disc with her hub's bro, and we talked about the Gear Daddies. All in all a much cooler experience than the normal half hour pre-flight crap.

I told Pete and Jake this story last night on the way into Blockbuster. Pete (knowing exactly who I'm talking about) says "Yup. Trish the Dish." Jake doesn't even miss a beat, says simply and quickly "Nobody calls her that." That had me laughing for the next 5 minutes. And I'm still laughing at Pete's assertion that the guest star for this season of "24" will be Charles Nelson Reilly, but now I'm getting way off track.

I know you've all been waiting for a travel update from me in a Gosh he's got an amazing life - where's he going next? Lawrence, KS again? Naperville, IL? Ann Arbor, MI? sort of way. So here ya go:

I went to Phoenix last weekend to play ultimate frisbee, at the request of Randy "Porn Star" Gage. Let's see... Phoenix in February vs. a cold weekend in Minnesota. Yeah, that was about a three second decision. Within the day I'd recruited JT and Bounce, and we were rockin'. If you're wondering how the words "ultimate" and "frisbee" go together like that, click here, read the first couple paragraphs, then come right back. The rest of the weekend protagonists:

Macalester College Alums: Randy, Grady, Jon, Bennett, Mike, and Adam.
The rest of us:Alex, JT, Brian, Brian, Brian, Seth, John, and Neal.

Friday night JT picked me up at the airport, and we ran into Grady "I was a teenaged Quarterback" Hannah in the hotel lobby. Found our rooms, and had a couple brews with the crew. Definitely good to hang with some folks I hadn't seen in a long long time...

Saturday we hit the ground running. It was 80, sunny, and beautiful. Did I mention what a great decision it was to go to this thing already? Our first game was against a team from Vegas called "Disco Elvis". They had a cardboard cutout of Elvis on their sideline, and a dude with a plastic Elvis's hair mold on the field. A girl on their sidelines gave us grapes. We won pretty handily.

Game two was against "Hammer of the Gods", the Case Western reunion team. They played us pretty tight, but we came through in the end by a pretty decent margin. Game three was against a masters (old dudes) team from Tuscon. We took half at 7-1, and coasted from there.

After the first game JT and I wondered aloud whether or not we were at higher altitude or not. I think we finally decided that we weren't, but I'm convinced the dry air had an effect on me. I was definitely feeling the same kind of breathing problems that I get playing indoors. I know we both felt like crap after that first game and then kinda got acclimated...

Game four was against the Harvard reunion team. Damn they were fast. And they had an army of subs. We hung with 'em for a while, but they pulled away. They were a quality team. No shame in the loss, and pretty satisfied with the 3-1 finish on the day. Got us into the quarterfinals starting on Sunday.

Saturday night JT, Mike, and I hit the hot tub (a godsend, really), and then a bunch of us went to the neighboring area called Guadalupe for some authentic food. Tasty, tasty stuff, aside from one unfortunate incident involving an airborne burrito, and one of the citizens told us all about the neighborhood. It was really quite cool.

Sunday morning (after another glorious hot tub soak) we took the field against the infamous Chico State college team. I say infamous because of the fact that barely a month ago I saw the name of the school in a website about blue astroturf, and questioned if such a school even existed. Guess they showed me. After a couple points I turned to JT and said "If they're Chico, does that make us The Man?". He humored me with a response, but I forget what it was...

In any case... we came out strong, and then started folding like an origami festival. When the horn for the soft cap (add two to the leader's score and play to that) blew, we knew we were in trouble. At some point in this general time Mike Scott had a fabulous foot block that they cheapened with a foul call. I mean a really really bad foul call. Earlier in the game Bennett made a ridiculously groovy diving catch, and Randy got big air for one in the end zone. But we were still in trouble, playing to 12, down 11-7. Five points later, we had a 12-11 victory. Easily one of the more satisfying games I've played in quite some time. But it came at a price. We lost Bennett to a rolled ankle, Mike to a recurring foot injury, and almost Randy to an ankle...

Which is why the sight of 148 Notre Dame alums coming to our field was a little daunting. I'm not sure how many guys they had, but it was a lot. I went for a little pre-game jog and came back to see them running a full team drill with their women's reunion team starting to hang out on the sidelines. I couldn't resist, I had to yell out "They think they're so great, with their fancy drills, and their attractive sidelines!". That got me a couple good-natured smiles.

Sidebar: If you're the cute girl from Notre Dame with the cast on your left arm, and you're reading this, and you're single... well it's obviously fate. You should e-mail me. Heh.

It really felt to me like ND was killing us. So I was amazed to find out that the score was tied at four. Unfortunately it didn't get much better than that, and they pulled away with the game... final of something like 15-7. So a loss in the semifinals, and a weekend record of 4-2. I call it a successful weekend, and a complete blast.

We tried to take a team picture, but Brian's camera was broken. And then a half hour later, after a few people had left, Seth said he had a camera. I'd put the picture in here, but it was #2 on the roll, so it won't be developed until 2004 sometime.

We went and watched the A division finals, an interesting game between some dudes in jumpsuits and an actual Nationals team. I ran into Tip on the way there, and I heard a rumor Schulzie was in the area. The B division (ours) was consoling in that it was Harvard vs. Notre Dame. If you're gonna lose, might as well lose to the best. On the way to take Bounce and Mike to the airport I saw a place in a strip mall called "Long Wongs" (lack of apostrophe noted). If there's any justice in the universe it's a place that sells inflateable novelty items.

On Monday, the handful of us who'd stayed took a little hike out by Mesa. We got up a little ways, had a few beers, Randy tried to take a flash picture without a flash camera, it was fun. See above for the ETA of any pictures of the action. Then I hit the airport, read a good book, and returned to the frozen wasteland.

But it was a damn good weekend. Thanks to Randy for setting the whole thing up. I'm out. Peace.

-02/07/03