It was a short break

Beach Ultimate. The words are an engraved invitation for flight. Churning legs and soft landing spots beckon the bodies to take off. Soaring after plastic, someone seems to be flying by in every direction at every moment. Had gravity gone missing at any given instant, 50 people would have floated into space. Instead, soft thuds reverberated through Wildwood, New Jersey for two hot days.

Sand comes in two flavors. There's the empty sweetness of a completed pass or a successful block and there's the grainy dryness of an effort that falls just a little short. I tasted the sweetness and the dryness. I covered myself in sand. I played in it. Bathed in it. Wore it like a suit or a hundred thousand itsy-bitsy badges of honor. I had a blast! My team played without the usual distractions and personality conflicts. That's not to say we didn't make mistakes or get beat, but we played with more trust and more peace than I've played with in quite some time. We played like we were having a good time. The teams we played seemed to share that attitude. It's been a long time since there was so much shared awe, shared spirit, shared good nature at an Ultimate Tournament. Wildwood reminded me of the good old days. It's the old man in me creeping out, but I was reminded of the good things about sport. People putting it all out there opposite one another, but not against one another. There were contentious moments, but mostly there were smiles. It was glorious and hot. When it became too much of either there was salt water and waves for a refreshing change of pace.

There were many thrilling moments in the last two days, but my vanity and my blog allow me to toot a few of my own.

-There was the swing pass I plucked from the air. The throw went up and I saw it the whole way. With a mighty step and a leap at about shoulder height, I went for the disc. Arm outsretched, body trailing behind, I flew in front of my man and ripped away a pass intended for him.

-There was the momentum shift. Tiring more easily than I would have liked, I fell behind my man as he streaked for the end zone. The throw went up and I summoned my reserves to get back on defense. The disc hovered for a moment caught by some wind. I accepted my good fortune by grabbing it away from the waiting receiver, landing, pivoting, and throwing to my open teammate at the other end of the field for a score.

-There was the crowd. I'm not sure how I ended up on top of this heap, but the disc ended up in my clutches and I ended up on their haunches.

Illuminating, isn't it?

I've had green, pink, blue, purple, and the traditional yellow. Lots of the traditional yellow. I have "1-800-Collect" and "Project CHEERS," undoubtedly an acronym long-since forgotten like the designated driver they acknowledged now sitting alone in the corner of the bar, his drunken friends wandering off with women of questionable mores. It isn't that I didn't understand their purpose or even that I had not attempted to use them to fulfill their destiny. I knew what a highlighter was. I knew why one might wield said instrument. But knowing and truly highlighting are two very different things. I don't know what the Bible says about highlighting, but in seventeen years of school, after countless thousands of dollars, through more highlighters than digits, highlighting still remained a mystery to me. Once in college, during an experimental phase, I had marked a passage of The Golden Ass in orange, but without my highlighter decoder ring, without my powers of deduction a la Sherlock Holmes, or my gritty crime-fighting wit like so many Hardy Boys, and even without that super-sleuthing boyish prowess of the one and only, the legend, Encyclopedia Brown, I was just coloring. I lacked understanding. I lacked clarity. I was inside the lines, juvenile. If I highlighted a passage in the forest and no one ever reread the passage, did it make a sound? I was a war protest on the White House lawn.

Then one night, not unlike last Thursday night, I had a revelation. Fluorescent inspiration hailed me like a taxi cab. Highlighting, the art form, is a two part process. I knew that, somewhere deep inside of me, but a quesadilla awakened that knowledge, and I perceived that not unlike the strata of said quesadilla, there are also multiple layers in highlighting. The first involves applying color to a page, of course. This part is not done willy-nilly. No, no. Selection of a passage is crucial. The highlighted must capture meaning, symbolism perhaps, or a theme, or just a quote that might later be doled out like Halloween candy to greedy little ghost-impersonators. The second step is perhaps more crucial than the first. The second step is the Aboriginal step. It's the boomerang, the return to the first step. A rebirth, if I may. This rebirth, though not as painful as the first time through, should still recall some of that early awe as meaning springs to life yet again beneath the colored lines of my handiwork.

The tingling sensation that I feel; it lets me know that my highlighting and my shampoo are working.

More Tour

Lance who? Maybe I wasn't mature enough to truly appreciate the 7 Lance Armstrong victories or maybe dynasties aren't as fun as we think. Maybe I missed the beginning of the Lance story or maybe I just didn't have OLN, but for some reason this Tour de France has me as excited about sports as I've been in I don't know how long. I'll give you the 60 second recap, but you should really read the NY Times for more.

Floyd Landis, a favorite and a Mennonite, hid his hip injury from all but his closest friends. He walks with a limp, but rides like mad. He takes the yellow jersey early and decides he doesn't want his team to defend it. He lets this rider Oscar who no one really sees as a threat get back into contention after being down by more than 30 minutes. Oscar is in a breakaway on one stage that gets him all the way back to the front and suddenly Oscar is wearing the yellow jersey. All part of the plan they say. Then Floyd rides like a machine up the mountains, takes back the yellow jersey and Oscar is down by 10 seconds. Next day of big hills, Floyd looks solid. He goes in a breakaway with the other leaders chasing this lone man Rasmussen who is climbing like no one else. Rasmussen is gone and then Carl Sastre makes a move to break away from the group Landis is in. Landis watches him go and looks like he's on a site-seeing tour. He is dropped. He can barely pedal as all the major players pull away. He is losing 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 8 minutes when it's all said and done. With three days left, the tour is over. Even Floyd says this gap is disheartening. So what does Floyd do? He comes out today and flies. He breaks away on his own and blows the doors off the last mountain stage, with bonuses he cuts Oscar's lead to 30 seconds. What the? It now comes down to time trials. Floyd is good at time trials. This is going to be fun.

Pain in the city (and also in the mountain stages)

Last night while watching the Tour de France, that's Tour DAY France according to one commentator, though I really shouldn't judge since no one in my office could say, "au bon pain" in a way that our French-speaker could understand, it was pointed out by my watching friend that many of the competitors were about the same age- 31. One of the commentators must have picked up on her statement, because he added, "these men have put in a lot of years of pain." I think he also said something about making withdrawals from a pain bank, but the whole pain bank scenario involving deposits and withdrawals of pain was a little awkward though it did convey his sentiments. By 31, these riders have had many years of training and they know what their bodies can do. Without getting all Carrie Bradshaw, I wonder if we could pick out a similar timeline for emotions. Is there a point where emotionally we figure out how hard we can go up the mountains? We've had some nasty falls, some even over the guard rail. We're talking scraped skin and broken bones. We've had some success too, maybe even won a stage win or a smaller tour, but at that certain age we reach that emotional understanding. We know what we're capable of and so on that next hill we know just how much energy to expend.

Or

Maybe we get dropped.

That doesn't look villainous

Unless I shave the beard, I won't get to join these guys, either.

France, France, France

It is so hard to lead a successful imaginary breakaway with so many stop signs and stop lights. Do you have any idea what it feels like to know that the imaginary peloton is closing in on you while you watch the little white man blink and blink and blink? It's agony. So much agony that I decided my only recourse was to head butt Reuben in the chest. Too bad he's not here yet.

By the way, I'm not wearing the yellow jersey because it's stained and there will be no doping scandal on my tour.

Moustache: That's French for moustache

Oui. Oui. Yes, I am trying to grow a handlebar moustache. Handlebar moustaches do not, despite popular belief, form themselves. They require a little coaxing. That's where moustache wax comes in. Wax, is an interesting fluid/solid/thing. Car wax is for shining a car. Candle wax is for burning. Sex wax is for a smooth ride on surfboards and skis. One could surmise that moustache wax is for ..., but then one might then be kicked out of polite society. That's why unlike one, I have chosen to follow the French directions. "Appliquer une petite quantite de cire sur les cheveux a l'aide de la basse. " My French is a little rusty, but if I had to guess I'd say this roughly translates to "Apply a little bit to your hair to aid in catching la babes." Those French, they think of everything.

I am not overly concerned about catching la babes as I have already reaped great rewards during my handlebar growing phase. Twirling my moustache has provided me with great pleasure and I have yet to master a villainous laugh. I was accused of being dramatic, but there was nothing mellow about it.

If the wax works particularly well and my moustache cooperates, I look forward to tying damsels to the railroad tracks and copious amounts of fast-paced piano music. I will also be donning a black and red cape and mastering that laugh. Like the box says, "TENIR HORS DE LA PORTEE DES ENFANTS" or for those that didn't fake three years of French, "Protect the women and children."

I'll disappear in a cloud of smoke. Laugh. Cry. Love me. Hate me. No one ever said this relationship would be simple. Au revoir.

tales from the road

Missouri is not a fly-over state. I checked it out just to be certain. I spent three days searching for the point where deep green farmland met bright blue sky, but every time I looked up from pedaling my bike it seemed to be further away. I came across some interesting places on the ride, the Wal-Mart in Boonville comes to mind, but perhaps none as entertaining as Tebbetts. The town of Tebbetts, like a number of towns we passed through, looked like it could have been in a stage production of "Our Town." The post office was in the same building as Jim's Country Store. Jim's Country Store would turn out to be an entertaining place in it's own right, but the main reason for our stop in Tebbetts was Mrs. Turner. Not bad for a dead lady. I may be a little fuzzy on my facts, but I think I've got the gist of it. The Turner family had a store where Jim's now resides. Mrs. Turner set up a foundation and left that foundation a house to be turned into a hostel. This hostel has two stories, about 20 bunk beds, three showers, two dilapidated ping pong tables, a refrigerator, various old magazines, air conditioning units, fans, and a picnic table. For five dollars a night on the honor system, all of those luxuries were available for passers-through. In theory, the place is amazing. In practice, it was kind of neat. A little something got lost for me between the mildew of the shower curtain, the continual squeaking of the plastic cover on the mattress, and the bright red glow of the EXIT signs. A shower, a bed and a fan for five dollars is tough to beat these days though, so I need to banish my complaints. I wonder if Jim's had something for that.

Jim's Country Store was a treat. Both times we entered we found three or four regulars smoking and drinking the evening away. Except for one, they were different regulars. On our first pass, we asked the man behind the bar about finding some dinner. The man, who not surprisingly turned out to be Jim, offered us "Five-star pizza." He then added, "It's frozen."
We finished our liquid refreshment with the promise to return for the pizza. Before we left a woman tugged on my father's sleeve and launched into a lengthy diatribe that seemed to contain details about her many dogs and about their propensity for barking. I don't recall seeing or hearing the dogs during our stay in Tebbetts. Good dogs. We actually only encountered good dogs on our trip. I was a little nervous at one point when I spotted a dog just outside of a junkyard. Fortunately, the dog redeemed the late Leroy Brown.

After we settled into the expansive hostel, we returned to Jim's for some of that five-star pizza. As we waited at the bar for Jim to heat our pizza, my cousin spied an electric guitar propped up against the wall. Displaying a confidence that would continually surprise me, he asked Jim if he could play. Jim wasn't keen on hooking up an amp, but asked as he pulled another guitar from under the bar if acoustic would be ok. My cousin quietly strummed for a few minutes and refused requests to play loud enough for other folks to hear. It seems the store's whistle was whetted for some music, because another gentleman proceeded to pick up the guitar and serenade us all through dinner and beyond. Most of the songs I didn't recognize, but could still enjoy. I'm not sure if Jim recognized the tunes either, but he proceeded to pull out spoons and play them for at least thirty seconds. Not a minute later he pulled out his harmonica for another rousing thirty seconds of accompaniment. Jim also offered up a mandolin, but unfortunately none of us could play. I'm still not clear if Jim could play. My dad wanted me to ask for a banjo, but I was fearful that Jim would have one. I wasn't sure this crowd wanted to hear one of my four songs.

We left Tebbetts quietly the next morning. Jim wasn't up yet to serve breakfast. Left to our own singing, we went spinning on to the east. The skies had not even spit in our general direction until we neared our final destination, the sprawling metropolis of Washington, Missouri.

Another year

Another mile. 4:49. Last place. The good hurt.

On mortality

Do you ever worry that your kids may not have a Vanna White? Who will turn their letters? Who will blind them with her white smile?

Happy 4th!

There's something special and worldy about watching the thrilling finish of the Italy v. Germany World Cup game and then immediately flipping between the Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest and Le Tour de France.

Outright lies and other generalizations

I took an early lunch to watch the second half of the U.S. soccer game. I'm not an enormous soccer fan, but I have an appreciation for the game and when the world gets a little excited, sometimes I get caught up in it. We watched the game in Spanish as sport is apparently the other universal language. I pulled up to a table after 6 minutes had elapsed. At that point there were probably 8 people watching the U.S. try to dig themselves out of a 2-1 hole. There were another 3 people conversing near the TV. At about the 30 minute mark, there was nearly a goal by the U.S. and the growing crowd groaned together. At that point the 3 people conversing turned toward the TV and I heard one say, "Oh. Is that soccer?"

Now, I realize that soccer is not the most popular American sport. But. But. This woman had been standing within 3 feet of the television for almost 20 minutes. Surely she felt the room shrinking as more and more men and the occasional woman crowded around the TV. There were people sitting on the floor in the lunch room. No one else in the room was saying more than three words at a time. All of our eyes were focused just to the right of her head. We watched as Ghana players seemed to zip around the field and their passes always seemed to find another man in red. We watched as the U.S. worked the ball across the field and back, before trying to play over the top of Ghana. Failing and then just as suddenly getting a move, a shot, a genuine opportunity to make something happen. Some balls went wide. Some balls high. The best chance for a late tie ended in a disappointing pass. Why couldn't they be more selfish like that guy we just saw from Italy that wouldn't pass to his open teammate and instead took his second shot off the goalkeeper's hands? It worked for him, but we passed. How had all of that escaped her notice?

Fifty minutes elapsed with a few more groans and moans from the crowd. There was some hand wringing, maybe a curse or two, but in the end Ghana advanced with a final score of 2-1.

Yes. That's soccer.

Catching flying objects and the overuse of the adjective awesome

June is a blur. It's hurtling by in a blaze of awesomeness and it's taking a good bit of my energy and a freaking huge pile of laundry to get me to sit down and reflect on that for a moment. It's summer today. Officially. 100% Grade A scientist approved summer. Today. But summer never started June 21. Summer started when school ended. When school stopped ending, summer started when there was more sweating than not. That might explain why it feels like summer so often in my arm pits and between my toes. Vacation destinations one and all...

So. Summer. Hotness. My first big adventure was to Honfest. Honfest had more Beehive hair-dos and bouffants than I ever knew I wanted to see. "Welcome to Balmer, hon" said through the gum-chomping jaws of women of all ages will stick with me long after my new cat's eye sunglasses break. Thanks, hon.

From there I wound up at this shindig that never ended. It might still be going on right now. I've never been to a party where I wanted to talk to more people. Usually I want to talk to less. And when the talking got old, out came the singing. You may think you've heard "Crazy in love," but honey, you ain't heard nothing until you've heard me cruise through "oh no, oh no ohnono" and then proceed to screech out ear-piercing verses of numerous other popular songs in duet with other *ahem* awesome singers. Eleven years I've been practicing my falsetto at high volumes in the car. Karaoke revolution allows me to unleash it on the world.

I'm sorry, world, but awesome gifts need to be shared.

Summer also means the draft league for the local Ultimate league. It's meeting new people and remembering how much teammates help in the quest to be good at Ultimate. I've been touting the advantage of the expectation-less Ultimate game in this space, but there's a flip-side to that. It's being flat out ignored by people that don't think I'm open, don't know where I'm headed, and don't know that I can catch. The early summer breeds a hesitant brand of Ultimate. It also breeds over throws, and I'm looking to pick up as many of those as possible until we can find balance.

For lack of a better transition, balance not unlike the balance of man and wife. Or so I've heard.

Summer weddings are popular sport. There's something about mosquitoes that make people want to spend forever together. I hit up my first summer wedding last weekend. It required a bit of travel, but it was all kinds of fun. I like my trips like I like my rooms- multi-purpose. This trip was part road trip , part reunion, and part gooey wedding goodness. The road trip worked out well. It helped that I wasn't driving. In case I haven't said it before, if you can get your best friends to marry each other, you should go ahead and do that. If that means supporting same sex marriage, do it. If it means more drunken trips to Reno, get thee to Reno. Whatever it takes. Marry those two kids and make like a fairy tale.

The reunion portion of the weekend was no slouch either. Had you been theorizing that your awesome friends from college would grow up to be awesome people, you'd be right if your friends were my friends. If they happened to go out and get awesome boyfriends, well sit down at a table, watch your buddy get married to a very sweet woman and raise those empty glasses to the sky. Lest you think my only talents are frisbee and bad singing, let me quickly tell you about my dancing. That's right. It's awesome. I couldn't pull out the traditional moves (John Travolta's from "Saturday Night Fever"), but I took to partner dancing like a fish takes to a bicycle. Grab on because you're gonna follow!

I'm getting ahead of myself. I nearly forgot to tell you that while seven groomsmen primped and preened, ushers seated 220 guests. We're talking guests down the block. We, two ushers, that's right 2, seated guests, made announcements and still didn't get a seat at the head table. Ushers are second class citizens, only with better dance moves. At least in this case. They also apparently have better hands or at least that was the theory of the other Ultimate players in the room after I snatched (another) garter out of the air. I can't help it. It was flying. It was right there. I couldn't let it hit the ground. I took a step forward reached out at waist level and pocketed another promise about the future. The girl that snagged the bouquet was 4 foot 10. I let my 6 foot friend hear an earful on that one. Where's the fire? Maybe I'm using too much of it. In my four remaining weddings this year I'm looking to come away with at least one more garter, two if I get feisty. It's not like the last one worked anyway, that's why I was in this wedding. After that I'll be taking bids or at least suggestions for alternative garter uses.

Alternative garter uses. Band name or closing to this post? A little of neither. Awesome.

Riding the rails
Plopped on a dirtied orange vinyl slab, the world stuttering by outside the window, I have recently contemplated destinationless travel. I could spend the day on the spindles inside the beltway. North, South, East, West. The Metro could take me. The evenly spaced mouths opening and closing to gulp in and spit out another crush of passengers could become my only distraction on this pointless journey. Flowing like drain water, I'd spend part of the day underground in the roots of the city. I'd occasionally emerge into the sunshine to the click-clack of train on track. Back and forth, to and fro, up and down, red, green, yellow, blue, orange. Neither here nor there, my day would be spent everywhere and nowhere. Please stand clear. The doors are closing.

Let's go cross country

It's simple to like things that I'm good at and nearly as simple to attribute liking them to success. In high school, I had immediate success in cross country. I flirted with victory on more than one occasion. Even as I protected my underdog status and often played unaware, I knew people were talking about me. That felt good. There were times when the success kept me going.

My junior year a boy named James joined our team. He had a good heart. He ran and trained every day like the rest of us. As far as I know, he was putting his all into running, or at least all he could spare like most of the team. During races, he was often near the back of the pack, even last. Week in and week out we waited and cheered James to the finish. This is not a tortoise and hare recollection. By the numbers, James lost. At the big meets his place was in the triple digits. Five runners on a team contribute to the score, James was consistently number seven. As far as I know James didn't get down on himself, at least not any more than any high schooler. He kept running. When I thought about him then, I wondered why he kept going. My collection of newspaper clips was growing. I was battling for the top spot on our team, and on the really good days a spot among the area's best. James was plugging along. "How did he do it?" I thought to myself.

Last night, I ran in a local club cross country race. I pulled my blue and grey nee white Zoom Country spikes from their original but faded, torn, orange and grey box. I went through all the motions, albeit in an abbreviated fashion, that lead to high school success. The striders, the plyos, the deep breaths, the handful of grass rubbed between open hands, and the nervous butterflies were all there. The starter signaled "Go" and a hundred runners poured off the line, with only a little less intensity than a hundred high schoolers. The lead is not often my consideration any more, but at first I battled to stay with that first bulge of runners. For 9 minutes I was feeling good and making progress. I was passing more than I was being passed. I even took a moment on the crest of one hill to look at the rays of sun poke through the remains of the thunder clouds as they shone down on a sweeping curve of runners pummeling the half-inch freshly groomed green grass.

After 9 minutes, the fun transformed into pain. After 9 minutes my body began asking certain questions, the loudest of which seemed to be, "Why?" My brain picked up on the vibe and started making suggestions as my pace slowed. "You could drop out." I took glances behind me and saw I had some time before I would be passed. But passed I was. With each group that passed me, I tried to tuck in and let their momentum carry me forward. It did manage to change my speed and keep me going a little longer. At some points, I could hear my high school coach hollering my name. I had to keep going. I don't drop out of races. I briefly wondered how I would tell this story in this space and then quickly reminded myself, "NOT NOW." I was passed some more. I'd settled in to a new slower pace, but I was still fighting myself. With 500 meters to go, I was passed yet again as I trudged up the last hill. I knew I had enough left to finish, so only one question remained.

How was I going to finish? Nobody knew me. No one was cheering for me. The only people that cared were immediately behind me and looking to move up a place and me. I cared. I didn't know what place I was in, only that their place was better. As I rounded the tennis courts I gained on the two that had passed me up the hill. I moved to pass them and the younger of the two challenged me. With 150 meters to go, I surged and put him out of sight. Then I felt the pounding foot steps of another challenger. I never saw him, but I felt what he felt- "I want to get to the line first." Everything I had left I put into staying in front of my challenger. This time I succeeded. I had successfully defended what turned out to be 20th place, nearly 2 minutes behind the winner. I contemplated none of that as I left the chute and proceeded to lose my dinner in body shaking heaves.

After the taste wore away, I started to remember that running wasn't about the newspapers', or the friends', or the families' definition of success. It was about the good feeling I was currently stumbling along with. It was about a battle against me that only I could win. Running is about testing myself, pumping my body full of endorphins, and then icing my legs when I get home. Maybe James knew that all along.

(18:38)

You all can just...

There will be times in your life where you lose sight of what you want. You'll get distracted by what your friends think, or by the status quo. There will be a dream that pulses in the back of your mind, but it will get buried under a pile of dirty clothes. The challenge is to look inside, to find that dream and to hang on. You'll have to block out the voices that say, "No." and "You can't do that." and "Listen, biotch, there ain't no way you'll ever see my fine ##$ there." At that moment you'll have to take a second to wonder why one of your voices sounds so ghetto, but I urge you to get past that.

When you do, reach deep into your pockets, pull out $9.50, step up to the counter and go see Stick it! with me. I want it. You want it. Otherwise you can stick it.

I know that I am late to the party,
but I promise to leave early.

I'm suddenly obsessed with myspace. I want to locate everyone I've ever known. If I had my yearbooks here, I might just leaf through them and use them as myspace fodder. I'm not sure what I'd do then. I don't know what to do with people when I find them. It's not that I plan on getting in touch with most of the people I find. It's just nice to know that they're alive and kicking, and quite likely sharing questionable information with all of the world. OOH! We've got that in common! But the worst part is those people lead to other people who may or may not be familiar. There's a whole world of people that people I once knew now know and/or pretend to know. I think there's a sociology project just waiting to happen. Or is it happening already?

Oh. Hello best friend's little brother. Are you sure you want the Internet to see the pictures of you drunk?

Oh. Hello prom date. I see you've cut your hair in the last 9 years.

Oh. Hi guy from track. Congrats on your move to Grenada.

Hey girl I can't quite remember. Didn't you used to run around with my sister?

Oh. Hi person I don't know. My gosh, do I come across that ridiculous?

Hey. My friend Chuck wasn't 46 or 16. Who are you?

Hmm. I wonder if we'll need a 10-year reunion. I can have one in the quiet of my room with your myspace soundtrack playing over my speakers. Gawrsh, I missed high school as much as I thought.

Thomas Edison, I am not

A hat tournament is an opportunity to reinvent yourself. Names are put into a hat, or paper sack in this case, drawn out and assigned to teams. This randomly drawn group of people spends the day together playing Ultimate and trying to defeat other randomly drawn groups of people.

This is the second hat tournament of my life. All I recall of the first is that it nearly ended in death by heat exhaustion. It definitely ended in vomiting and a brutal car trip from Columbia to St. Louis. Thanks to good friends and whatever it is that keeps me going, I survived.

This past Monday was no ice cooler filled with beer. It was more like charcoal grill just getting warmed up. I drank plenty of fluids in anticipation. Back to the reinventing...

I took the field with new people that only knew a name and the fact that I was prepared to spend my day in the heat chasing plastic like they were. I was not quiet, or fiery, or even good to them. I don't know if I'm those things to other people. I just know that in other places I sometimes feel the weight of expectations. Here, I was Dave and I was going to play. There is something refreshing and invigorating about that. My team was filled with cutters. We aren't the people that pick up the disc and make the big hucks. We aren't the tall people bringing down those long throws. We were a bunch of 6 foot or less movers with ok throws, ok hops, and decent speed. There was one true handler on our team; so for much of the day I, like many others, shared in the handling responsibilites. I also wound sharing in the leadership responsibilities. That's a mantle I take reluctantly, but somehow I think my scoring and my personal battles on defense had elevated me to leader. There are some roles that apparently can't easily be turned down. With this came cheerleader, strategy-maker, and even a little of the dreaded rules expert.

At one point I raised my rules expert mantle a bit too high. In a heated battle, as I was chasing down a long throw with my defender on my heels, as I readied to leap into the air and grab a score, my defender jumped up and swiped the disc right out of the sky above me. There is a rule called the principle of verticality. It states that a person has a right to the space immediately above him/her. The disc had been immediately above me and so I called foul based on the rule. A discussion ensued and my opponent may have mentioned not so kindly how he had played defense above my head- he had "skyed" me. I argued that I had a right to my vertical space. I stared into his eyes refusing to back down. He stared back angrily. Then he said, "If that's true, how could anyone ever sky anyone?"

At that moment I could no longer keep the anger boiling inside of me. I felt a smile creep to the corners of my mouth. Here we were nearing the end of a gorgeous day playing a game. He had probably made a spectacular jump to steal my score away. Even if the principle of verticality supported* me, I wasn't sure it mattered. Those corners quickly became a full smile and I replied, "I have no idea. Turnover."

I felt good about the call. I worried a little that I'd backed down from confrontation, but my worry quickly dissipated when he checked the disc in and immediately threw it into the ground.

They went on to win and play for the championship. My team of cutters (I love how by the end of the day "a" team becomes "my" team) proudly took third place.


*The principle of verticality actually doesn't support my argument as he didn't contact me; he just jumped over me. The UPA rules (more rules!) state: "The Principle of Verticality: All players have the right to the space immediately above them. Thus, a player cannot prevent an opponent from making an attempt on a pass by reaching over an opponent. Should contact occur before the outcome of the play is determined, it is a foul on the player restricting the vertical space."

Humility is fine in theory
From Wikipedia under the terms section of Ultimate (sport):
Callahan: When an opposing team's pass is intercepted in their end zone, scoring a point for the intercepting team. (UPA rules only)

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photo credit: Peteball

plane with a view
A good window seat on the airplane is like a really slow ViewMaster. Thursday, I awoke from my nap as the plane neared St. Louis. I began scanning my home state looking for something familiar. I saw some lakes and rivers that I wasn't sure I could identify. I saw the road split around a warehouse in a place that might be Osage Beach. Eventually I was able to identify the Missouri river. It's big and brown, even from the sky. From the river, I knew I would eventually come to Interstate 70 (my favorite-est Interstate). The question on my mind and on the minds of those like-minded was whether I had passed Columbia. Near the river I spotted a large road, one with an interstate quality; it turned to the North and crossed the big brown Missouri in a rather familiar way. I followed the road through a town and soon my eyes arrived at the big "M". Much Merrymaking Mandated Mindfulness in my Utterly Unexpected excUrsison over Utopia, MU. Soaring by my alma mater at 600 mph, I was able to make out various stadiums and arenas, Stankowski field, the South Quad, and Jesse Hall. Old Missouri, Fair Missouri, you're really small from 15,000 feet.

The glory of my window seat was not just about being up on the top, upon the top of Columbia. No, no, my window seat had more fight. And a bully for that. As I arrived in St. Louis, my ViewMaster of alabaster came through again unveiling downtown and the gateway to the West in the east, the 630-foot tall arch. Cruising into Illinois to make a u-turn, I was able to view the arch from all sides.

To cap off my day, we punched through the clouds just after dark in DC and I stared right past the Washington monument, down the mall, and into the twinkling lights of the capitol. We squealed to a stop and the circle of tiny slides was complete.