It was nice to see a few friends that I had not seen in a long while. That part was really good.

Yesterday, I went with the Goldfingers (or Fast Switchers, I am not sure) to Leipzig to play in a 1-day beach tournament.  The tournament consisted of 24 teams from all over Germany.    The team consisted of a few people with multiple years experience and a few more people with only a year or so experience.  We were definitely an inbetween-er team – too experienced to play in the junior division (which we did) and not good enough to be really competitive in the more competitive division.   I went in with very low expectations – just wanting to throw, swim, and run a bit for a day – and I was not disappointed in the least.  A very good and fun day.

The day started out pretty cool and cloudy (I started out with a jacket on in the morning).  I was not in the least prepared the sun and heat that came about noon.  I ended up getting pretty baked – my face, arms, and legs are quite lobster red looking now – not as bad was my sunburn in Florida – but still pretty bad.

Our team did pretty well.  I don’t think we lost any games, although we tied a few.  Our first few games were pretty competitive, our last few were not very competitive at all.  A few things I liked that were a bit different – the score was kept by hanging socks (white and black) on a clothes line (see image at the top of the post) and games ended on a whistle.  The whistle signaled three passes remaining – play stopped afterward.  No hard or soft caps, no adding points, just three passes and finished. Done.  Clean and simple.  I guess you have to have it that way when you are running a 24 team tournament in 1 day on 4 fields.

The girl haning socks in the top picture is Jenny from Leipzig. I have played with her with the Mother Tongue team before. She is much different condition than the last time I saw her.

The rest of the pictures can be found here.

Last weekend, I met up Ryan and Hil in Darmstadt (close to Frankfurt) to play some ultimate with the Mother Tongue. Delays were the theme of my weekend. Delays as follows: 1) extra trip home before the weekend started because I forgot my passport; 2) I had to send some emails out after my arrival in Darmstadt; 3) Ryan and Hil left their passports and other goodies on the train in Darmstadt. Their stuff ended up in Frankfurt; 4) Getting lost on our way to the fields – after going directly to where we were supposed to be, but not seeing the stairs that led to the fields, we proceeded to wander around the woods a while. We made it to our first game by about 5 minutes; 6) Finally, after thinking I was quite clever in getting an airplane ticket home so I could get a decent night of sleep, my airplane was delayed by over 3 hours. I was planning to be home by 10 p.m. — I made it shortly after 1 a.m.!

The frisbee was fun. A little different than other MT teams I have played with. But I guess that is the point of playing with MT. April showed up for an afternoon with the newest and future MT player. It was nice to see her again. We placed 7th out of 12 teams. On Saturday, we won our first 2 games, then lost our last 3. Sunday we played only twice, losing our first and winning the second. It was nice to play well at the end of the tournament. Hil’s post of the tournament can be found here.

It was great hanging out with Ryan, Hil, and Sophie again. Even though we don’t see each other so often, it is great everytime we do. It is pretty obvious we have played a lot together. Every tournament, I know that Ryan is going to throw me some crap that and I will have to make a SPECTACULAR (sarcasm intended) catch – or 3 or 4. But after playing together for soooo long, I know ahead of time when he is going to throw me shit and about where it is going to land. Telepathy or something — maybe just being too familiar with each other. The other thing that ALWAYS happens is that I manage to overthrow Hil in the endzone by about 1.5 cm. It had been a while since I had played in a tournament – Barcelona I think – and it showed. I felt quite rusty, dropped a number of passes that I normally would have caught, poorly executing some throws that I normally would be able to make (or know better not to attempt). But I guess that is the way it goes sometimes. I have only 2 more tournaments in my near future. This weekend I am going to a 1-day beach tournament in Leipzig and sometime in September, Potsdam is hosting a hat tournament that looks like fun.

German TV was at the field. I was interviewed, but I did not make the cut. I can’t say that I am disappointed though. Pictures – mostly of family Woodard, but some playing as well – can be found here.

Last weekend, I met up with Ryan, Hil, and Sophie in Barcelona to play some beach ultimate frisbee with Strange Blue (from Cambridge, England). I had a fantastic weekend! By far the best I have had in a very long time. It was a great weekend that was good for my soul.

Getting to Barcelona was fairly amusing and long process. It all started on Thursday night while packing. I had gone to the Costa Brava website and printed out all the information I thought I would need to get myself to the tournament. Without looking at the printouts, I finished my packing and stuffed my “information” into an envelope thinking I would have time to figure out my logistics in the airport or at the worst, on the airplane.

I had to take a taxi to the airport as the buses were on strike. The traffic was horrible from the train station all the way to the airport. The trip in the taxi took nearly 60 minutes (it usually takes me about 20 minutes in a bus). I arrived just in time for the Air Berlin personnel to make the final announcement for check-in. After checking-in, I did my first real ‘German asshole’ thing by crowding to the front of the very long security line as I was close to missing my flight (crowding to the front of the line is something I have found Germans to be very good at and something I really dislike). I guess I consider this to be part of my ‘German integration’ program. Once on the airplane, I took out my information and discovered that what I had printed out was complete garbage. The only thing I really knew was that I was going to Lloret de Mar and that I was playing in a beach ultimate tournament. I had no idea of my hotel name or even how to get from the Barcelona airport to Lloret de Mar. After getting some directions from the Barcelona airport information booth, I headed out on my way. I missed my first train by 2 minutes (and had to wait another 28 minutes for the next train), I had to wait another 30 minutes in the main train station for the 90-minute train ride to Blanes. After another 30 minutes wait for the short bus ride to Lloret de Mar, I finally made it to the town. A trip that should have taken me about 90 minutes total ended up being about 4.5 hours!!!! Once in the town, I still had no idea of where to go, so I wandered down the main street for a while until I ran into a bunch of people who looked like they might have an idea of what was going on in the town. They pointed me to the beach and told me to turn left (there was not much to the right). After a short walk, I ran into a few people throwing a disk around and I knew that I found my destination. The combination of being in a good mood and being too tired to care allowed me to laugh at this entire event. Every once in a while I find myself to be pretty amusing.

Playing with Strange Blue was great fun. We placed 11th of 26 teams, winning 6 of our 9 games. I had never played in a beach tournament before. I found playing in the ‘sand’ very difficult and more tiring than normal. It was sort of slow motion ultimate played at a fast pace. It was possible to make only one hard cut at a time — each time I tried to make multiple cuts, I just seemed to bury myself deeper and deeper into the sand. Some of my personal highlights (there were many many more) included bumper cars, gelado, drinking wine on the balcony, Sunday night ‘Ring of Fire’ complete with porn cards, going to the Sunday night party and being handed a barf-bag at the entrance, LOTS and LOTS of laughing, blue face paint, hard spirited play, great team spirit, lots of layouts, a hotel courtyard that turned into a European fußball game without the fußball game, and most of all hanging out with Ryan and Hilary (and Sophie).

I think the only bad thing from the entire weekend is that my limited knowledge of the Spanish language has been displaced by my very limited knowledge of German. Every time I wanted to say ‘gracias’, ‘danke’ came out of my mouth. Every time I wanted to say ‘por favor’, ‘bitte’ came out. Ja’s replaced si’s, nein’s replaced no, and so on. I knew what I wanted to say, but what came out was completely different. It is funny how the brain works sometimes.

(clockwise): Emil, Konni, Torsten, Moritz, Maren, and Paul. I am not sure where Finny was hiding.

I was very happy when Emil left. He kept winning the games – especially the Memory game. He had close to twice the number of matches than everyone else. The memory game made me realize that my attention span capacity is slightly less than the volume of a peanut M & M. Torsten and I played some strategy game where you try to push the opponents marbles off the edge of playing surface (I don’t know how to describe it any other way.) I was told the best strategy is to keep your set of marbles grouped together to avoid being pushed off the edge. Well, it took all of about 3 turns before I seemed to be spread out all over the board. I lost this game twice (rather quickly). This game made me realize that I am entirely all too predictable. We finished the night playing a card game similar to UNO, but in a free-for-all manner. I did much better in this game, which was much more a game of reaction than strategy, skill, or luck.

I woke up early (5:30) the next morning to go to Leipzig to play with the Goldfingers in the German Masters Mixed (co-ed) National Championships. The field we played on in Leipzig is amazing. It is the size of a regulation size fußball (soccer) field with a no-slip ‘astro-turf’ surface. I heard that Leipzig was the training center of the former East Germany, so there are an abundance of great facilities there. I have now played in two different facilities here and both are very very nice.

The sport hall. There were four ultimate frisbee fields set up for play, going across the field.

While the field is great for the no-slip part, this no slip feature also applies to humans. I dove only one time the entire weekend and this is the result. This will take a while to heal.

The Goldfingers did not fair so well, placing 25th of 29 teams. It was fun to watch the good teams play. Ultimate can be such a beautiful game when played well. Unfortunately, this was not my last Goldfinger experience. Bad play, bad chemistry, team mates complaining to each other on the sideline, team mates complaining to each other in the game, rubbish calls, very physical play, trash talking (for no apparent reason) … I actually had players from other teams talk to me about the way the Goldfingers were playing, lack of spirit, etc. It was the first time in a very very long time that I had zero fun playing – possibly negative fun if that is possible. This one is going to take a while to recover from.