Chicago, Day 2

Wait... Where the hell am I?

I seem to be in a bed. Not my own. Why is someone sleeping on the floor? Oh... must be ultimate. Hmmm.... I think it's Chicago. Yup. Time to shower and stretch. Rounded up the troops and ambled down to the van.

Got going a little bit later than Saturday, but still within the acceptable margin of error. That's what good planning is all about. Allowing yourself a solid margin of error. I had to try the Bacon Lover's Supreme sandwich at Dunkin Donuts because, well, I mean there's bacon, love and supreme. How could I go wrong? While not fantastic it scratch the bacon-itch. A theme of the weekend was trying to come up with some food-item which bacon does not improve. I couldn't come up with anything. Someone said "Ice Cream" as a suggestion which is just erroneous. I, for one, bet ice cream with bacon would be fantastic.

Anyway, we got the fields at ~7:50 and started warmups at 8. Nice jog, active stretching, drills, throwing and live play. It was pretty solid. This led us to play our first game:

vs Chuckwagon, 13-3
Focus in this game was the D-Team's early-game energy. Coming out of the gate firing on all cylinders and not letting the wagon think that they're in the game. It was a matter of getting that confidence on full display. That fighting, clawing feeling of "every pass must be challenged." As we rode out a 7-1 lead at half, we seemed to accomplish our goals. Coming out of half, we started on O, the O scored, and then the O team stayed on for D. Well, they didn't get one, so they had to stay on for another point. Clowns. That's a pretty poor 0% scoring rate on D points. I guess that's why they're the O-team...

vs SD United, 10-12
This was not my best game, by far. When playing defense, (Like against the last 4 teams) I was basically standing around watching someone else put it up deep. This time it was Kubiak. Yup, he's still good. On offense, I ripped some upwind hucks that I felt were pretty much perfect, but none of them connected. One came back on a foul call (on our receiver), one had confusion between receivers on my team, and another (actually, this was in the Chuck game) was to a cutter who I didn't realize was being covered by a defender about a foot taller than him. Whoops. I had one other TO in this game, which was on the goal line. I broke the mark around as we were being forced backhand, and it bounced off of my receiver's hands (although he had to make a bid to get to it because it was a bit low). Gotta balance the risk/reward over the course of the game. Shooter's gotta shoot and all, but we would have won this game if I didn't throw three turns. That sucked.

Overall, the 5-2 weekend was pretty bad, but there were encouraging signs. The O-Team was no longer hemorrhaging points. The D team looked very solid on D, but not as smooth on O. Personally, I played well overall, but my pulls sucked ass. I had ~10 OB pulls. That's completely unacceptable. It won't happen again because I won't let it. Pulling is a matter of focus and concentration on picturing the throw that you want before the pull and then emptying your mind of anything but that image just before you pull. At least, that's what happens when I'm pulling well. I match the real world to the image in my mind.

As a defender, there was only one guy that I had a hard time covering. It was some white-hatted handler on Frontline. That guy was given a lot of space by his team and always cut full-speed. I loved covering him because it was a challenge. There were some other guys that beat me on a cut or a throw or two, but he was hands-down the hardest to cover of my matchups. I got a couple of Ds over the weekend, which was fine as any Ds that you get while covering handlers are gravy for the D team.

My best play on the weekend was actually not a D! I was covering a Madcow handler in his endzone, and as he was cutting back, I knew the disc was not going to be led out as far as it needed to be. I bid for it and tried to catch it, but it hit me in the fingers and I couldn't wrap it up. Instead, I tipped it up, the guy caught it and threw a break. If only I could have grabbed it, CALLAHAN! If only I could have slapped it down, TO IN THE ENDZONE! Instead, they scored in 3 passes. Boo.

After the game ended, the van knew that we needed to get to a bar to watch football. I mean, with no games left to play, what am I doing at an ultimate tournament? Exactly. Nothing. Get thee to a bar! Buffalo Wild Wings it is. Apparently, this is a chain. I'd never seen it before and haven't since. In any case, my feelings on the place are summed up thusly, after I looked around the huge-screen filled establishment, "I'm so overwhelmed... I love it."

Eagles lost, Randy Moss outran a triple team and some other games happened too. I'm happy that football is back. I'm upset with the Eagles punt returners, but that'll pass. The problem is that they've given up their "one dumb loss" this year and can't afford another. Ah well.

The journey home was pretty bland for me, but Dan Yi had an exciting time of it. There was a ton of traffic on the way to O'Hare and he, sadly, missed his flight. My flight landed at 11:50 or something. Got on a NJTransit train, got on the PATH train and got home at ~1:45. Damn. Exhausted. Can't sleep... Ah well... so goes another weekend of ultimate...
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workout total:
2 games ultimate