Thanks, body

Somehow, some way, my body answered my pleas, at least for the weekend. It might have been the sand or it might have been a miracle. I'd gone to Wildwood expecting only to play a few token points, but I managed to stay in the rotation in every game.

Although this was the seventh consecutive year I've been to the tournament, this year was full of changes. As we packed up to hit the road, the most glaring difference was in who wasn't coming. Alan and Megan were missing. It's been five years since that happened. The second difference was that there had been no last minute scramble to the thrift store to supplement a silly outfit. Instead, we donned crisp white jerseys. Tracie designed a hideous zombie hand holding an engagement ring. We were "Death Do Us Part" lovingly shortened to D-Dup. We were a celebration of beach, Ultimate, fun, and the upcoming nuptials of Jim and Tracie. And the undead.

Matts, Sam and I piled into Sam's swanky van with the automatic everything and hit the road. We stopped mere blocks away for some semi-fancy grub at Smith Commons. Later we worked our way into the traffic. There's always traffic. It should be on that list with death and taxes. Ben Franklin probably left it out because he had a side job with the Wildwood chamber of commerce. FACT. Or something resembling fact.

We arrived at the Bolero sometime well after Arin and Alan would usually be a few drinks past thirsty and howling at the moon. This year, that duo was not around; so we found a zillion Ultimate players hanging on every balcony of our hotel instead. I wondered what exactly we'd gotten ourselves into, but our suite turned out to have thicker walls than I'd imagined. Eight on Friday and nine on Sunday called the suite home. (Suite home).

Saturday morning, we found more changes afoot. The beach and boardwalk remained, but we were entered in the 2-2 beer division. It'd been years since I'd been in the beer division and I'd been clamoring for a try at 2-2 for almost as long. We faced off well against our opponents. We often led, but rarely by much. Tracie's friend Em was a sweet handler and lots of fun to play with.

Speaking of fun to play with, I had managed to convince Amanda to join us. We last played Ultimate together in Lawrence, Kansas in 2002. Nine years had passed and Amanda was awesomer than I remembered. I don't even think that's a word, but it doesn't matter. It felt pretty special to be able to take the field/sand with her again. I never would have guessed that our friendship would survive this long, but man, look at it sailing.

Kyle helped us with some sweet cheers and we turned to musical numbers that replaced "love" and "marriage" with "brains". Going to the chapel and we're gonna get BRAINS" or "brains and marriage, brains and marriage"

Despite our musical stylings, we won all 4 games on Saturday, but we lost Jim. He went down hard and broke his collar bone. Tracie put up a disc to him, he went after it, ran out of field, saw the wooden walkway to the ocean, dove over the walkway, and then came the writhing and the "I broke my fiancee" shout. A doctor, a nurse, and a fiancee all converged on Jim, but we still needed the EMTs.

Amanda lent us some help from Bawlmer and we closed out the day with victories. Natalie helped us focus on beer league with a bottle of tasty liquid, but most of us couldn't get our minds off the score. Nat just shook her head and went off to find someone with a more understanding palate. Later in the evening, a group of us meandered off boardwalk and finally discovered a splendid Italian restaurant. We savored it, conversation, wine, dessert, waitresses who told personal stories. The food and company were standing equal to the Ultimate.

Sunday, we were looking for help again, but soon decided to go with what we had. Stills was back in the mix and he was rested. The previous day, he'd had a nice layout from a floater from Jim, but on Sunday he had more giddy-up. His throws were crisper and we were looking good. Up 7-3, we hadn't turned the disc over, until I tested out a hammer. We got a little sloppy after that. Hopefully, I made up for it with a layout D. It was my only one this year. We looked great and cruised to victory.

Our semi-final battle would not be so easy. We were challenged at every spot. We made a few mistakes, one of them perhaps being in score-keeping. Down by 2, with the sounds of the closing horn in the air, we had to find a way to go full field for 2 points to tie. We hadn't scored a 2 all weekend. We hadn't even taken that many shots. The team we were playing was a bit taller, and had some really good players, but without the 2 we were bound to lose. Somehow they let me slide back to the end zone to catch a dump. I saw Matt B. working his way toward the endzone. I knew a flat throw would be dicey, so I put the disc outside in and hoped Matt would out read his man. The throw worked out perfectly. Matt dove for it as it was bending toward the back line and the defender didn't seem to have a chance.

We had a shot on universe point, but came up short. With no finals match-up, we ended up on the boardwalk as a team, eating pizza, and fried goods (Boardwalk Treats!), and in the go-karts. That felt like quite a prize.

That prize was nearly outdone by my three best of seven victories in the game of trees. Wildwood weekend is such a great weekend.