The Festival of the New Year

The drive to Phoenix was pleasantly uneventful. I finished listening to "The Life and Times of the Thunderblot Kid" by Bill Bryson, my third of his books since leaving Cleveland including "A Walk in the Woods" and "I'm a Stranger Here Myself". I must say I left Texas after two weeks in the state and I could not have been happier to finally be rid of it. The temperature stared getting better as well as my mpg. I had been getting ~42.6 and around the time I entered New Mexico I was getting no less that 50mpg on the freeway.

I stayed at Bailey's that night. She is staying with two other teachers, Erin and Tami who are in the same district as her. They also do a bunch of climbing together, from what I understand. Friday morning I was able to get some laundry done and Bailey called off work due to not felling too well. I boosted her up by getting some Bruegger's and we eventually made our way to my new favorite store REI, I picked up some Clif Shot drink mix for the tournament that coming weekend. I convinced her to throw the disc around with me a bit before she headed off for a doctors appointment. I went back to her place to pack. I stayed the weekend with Wernet's buddy Al who lives much closer to the fields. Bailey and Erin picked me up that evening for dinner and drinks at Casey Moore's We meet up with a few of their climbing buddies there, it seemed like quite a pleasant group, not too different from a bunch of ultimate players. They eventually dropped me off back at Al's so I could get some sleep for a big weekend of ultimate.

The tournament, New Year Fest was at a new location that I was unfamiliar with. The old location, Diablo fields has been turned into luscious green baseball diamonds. I guess MLB will be using them for spring training. Well our fileds were a pleasant brown dry grass, it was surprisingly full and handled cleats much better than turfs which just slid on the grass. I meet up with my team which consisted of a couple of guys from Philly, half a dozen from the Bay area and a few other stragglers such as myself from elsewhere across the country. A total of 13, we seemed to cover the mid to late 20 to early 30 age group. We also had some decent talent with a few players who had been to either college or mixed club nationals (that I knew of). We had been seeded 4th or 5th out of the seven top open teams at the tournament. Over the next two days we would play six games against those other teams, with the top two playing in a finals afterwards. We had four games on Saturday and only scored around 6 in each of our first three of the day, those would have been against Sprawl from Phoenix, UCSD and Arson from Tucson. Our fourth game we started gelling a bit more it was against a very lubricated One Degrees a team comprised of BAT, Machine & Ring players. They were drinking quite a bit more than we were and still scoring on ridiculous hammer and behind the back throws. We clamped down, stopped making stupid turnovers and got ahead to make it 12 vs. 10 in a game to 13. They found a few of their players who were less drunk and managed to pull out the victory.

I left the fields and got some Filiberto's before getting a shower at Al's. I took a short nap and then headed over to the tournament party. I hung out with Peine for a while before starting a marathon of shuffle board games with a few of my teammates. At one point I was playing against Will D and Jason from ZippO, I so rarely play the game but I have got to say the only reason I left the table was due to my teammates incompetence.

Sunday at the tournament we played Mamabird first, they were all college kids from U of Colorado. This is a very competitive college team full of players with a lot of athleticism most with varying levels of ultimate awareness. They were able to beat us deep pretty a couple of times, our zone confused them a bit and playing man I was able to grab a callahan off a dump/swing throw. We still lost only scoring 8. Our final game was against the number one seeded team at the tournament ZippO a bunch of guys from the UPA Club Championships semi-finalists Johnny Bravo along with a few older guys from Colorado and Phoenix. I have no idea what the final score was but I think we managed to score a few against them, I probably threw and caught at least one each (it would help if I weren't doing this write up two weeks later). Well, those two teams we played that day were the two that played in the finals against each other. I was able to get a few photos and finally figured out the setting on my camera that was making my photos blue.

After the tournament I showered at Al's again and packed up my stuff. I went back to Bailey's to spend a few more days in the valley.