Ultimate Frisbee Hat Tournament

Did the Sacramento Ultimate Frisbee Full Moon Hat Tournament last weekend.
Super fun. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures. I was hoping someone from the tournament would send a link to pics, but that didn't happen.

How the hat tournament works is this:
Anyone interested in playing signs up.
Instead of signing up for a team, you fill out a questionaire that describes how you play. Questions are along the lines of: have you ever played before, what kind throws can you do (backhand, forehand, hammer), how often do you use what throws, how often do you complete throws, (% wise), how good of shape are you in, how likely are you to lay out for a catch, ect.

Based on your answers, every player is categorized to an ability level. On the morning of the tournament, team captains randomly pick names from the different "hats" to create supposedly even teams. The idea works out rather well, because then anyone can join, you get to meet new people, and since all the teams are nonpracticed, there's a much more relaxed attitude thoughout the games. To make it more fun, the tournament was held at night, under the full moon.

It only cost $20, which was well worth it. That paid for the cost of having the park lit, and many "moon shaped" snacks. These snacks consisted of lots and lots of mellons, (various varieties, extremely good, all from a local organic farm), bagels, and pancakes. Yeah, they had a camp grill, with someone frying up flapjacks all night long. Also included was all the coffee you could drink, in various different flavors.

I haven't really played much frisbee in two years, with the exception of playing pick-up games a little in the last couple of months. I used to play pick-up back in Madison a couple times a week during the summer. Our style was much different from league players though. We'd play hard, run hard, catch hard, and throw crappy. (Actually, I developed a mediocre arm by the end, and some guys were pretty good) We would never bother with any sort of defensive strategy for blocking home or away, would only play zone for kicks, and considered an offensive stack as a waste of time that took away the fun. Still, when ever our pick-up team would scrimage league teams, we could usually beat with our off the wall antics, leaving them confused.

This kind of play doesn't mesh well with the guys I play with now. I begruddingly started learning proper team methods while playing pickup, because everyone kind of expects it. Most people except a throw to be on the mark, and go to them, instead of just a general area. This means I have to aim more, which means I have to learn to throw a tight pass through a defender, instead of just lobbing crap up behind my back.

As a result, I didn't get nearly as much disk time as I would have liked, but that's ok, I really didn't deserve it either. My throwing is really down from what it used to be. I ended up mainly shining on defense, although I did get a couple of good catches in. Generally, who ever I guarded didn't get the disk, so my team didn't mind me. Actually, my team was really cool. I think we had the most laid back attitude, got along great, and had much more spirit than the others. We won our first two games, and lost our second and third games to really good teams, both games were by one or two points (out of 13). We lost our last game also, but we weren't really trying at that point. We had a lot of speed on our team, but that meant that by the last game, we were spent. Our receivers and hard defenders were spent.

If you did the math, that means we played 5 games, all in one night. Started at about 6:45pm, finshed our last game a little after 1:30am. At first I thought it wouldn't be a big deal to play frisbee all night. In general, I'm always disspointed when the sun goes down, and we have to stop playing pickup. What I didn't consider though, is that 5 games is alot of games. That's probably close to 5 hours of play, on the field half of the time, sprinting when ever on the field. It turned out to really be an endurance event. By the end of the night, by legs felt like had been doing some sort of an endruance race. To top it off I had a collision part way into the second game, which left me with a very strange quad injury. The muscle on the inside of my right leg just above my knee was hit, and swelled up significantly. Not the knee, just the muscle it self. I had never had an injury like that before. To really top it off, I had done triathlon training earlier that afternoon, so that really didn't help the tired feeling in the legs.

Anyway, it was a really fun event, and I met a bunch of fun people.

spin class (A little late in posting)

I went to my first spin class three weeks ago.
Holy crap.
Wait, that doesn't quite emphasize it properly.
HOLY CRAP.
Much better.

The longest I've ever biked continuously, is probably somewhere around 50+ miles. What I never really thought of though, is that I'm not actually pedaling the entire time. There's a definite measurable amount of time that is spent costing.
Enter spin class. One hour. Pedaling the entire time. Basically, its the equivalent of going up an hour long hill.

I got to the class a couple minutes late, so I just kind of jumped on one of the bikes, and started pedaling along. (Half of the machines even SPD pedals on them!) The entire idea of spinning is very simple, and I never thought I'd see the point of needing an instructor, since you could do the same by yourself. The instructors are really motivational though, and when class is going on, they have control over the music in the gym. They each have a CD mix with different beat techno songs that are coordinated with their work outs. They tell you when to pick up the gear, and when to stand up. They really get you going. One of the neat things about it, is that no one gets left behind. (Obviously, since you're not going anywhere!) This allows all skill levels to join in. She'll tell you when what level of resistance you should be pedaling with, on a scale of 1 to 10, but that's relative for each person. There aren't actually numbers on the tensioner of the machine, though, so its up to you to decide how hard you want to go. Since you can't possibly know what other people are set at, there's no way of judging yourself against others, so no one has to be left with feeling inferior.

By the time I was done with the first class, I had a puddle, and I mean a puddle, under my bike. I was dripping about a drop ever second for the last half of the class. Petty nasty, but pretty sweet at the same time.

Best of all, unlimited spin and and yoga is included with my climbing membership at the gym Pipeworks Climbing gym

I've gone a couple of times since then and plan on doing it once a week. I had to skip it this week; I ended up working late the day I planned on going. The rest of week it didn't mesh well with my triathlon taper. (Actually, I guess "taper" isn't proper word since it insinuates some sort of training before hand. "Learning how to swim", is probably a more appropiate word.

Triathlon in the works

Yeah, so I kind of signed up to do a triathlon next week.

The campus of the Company in Folsom that I work for has enough people that they hold site games every fall, accurately labeled the "Folsom Games." They have tournaments that last the entire 6 weeks in multiple team events; softball, pool, pingpong, soccer, vollerball..ect. They also have individual events, like a 10k run and a sprint triathlon. While I was debating on whether I wanted to do the 10k, or the tri, I forgot to sign up for either, and missed the deadline, which was a few weeks back. I wasn't to heartbroken about missing it though, because I was considering going to San Fransisco that weekend to do San Fransisco critical mass.

Then, last Wednesday, the we had an RCG (Recent College Graduate) board meeting after lunch to discuss some events we were planning. We decided to hold a large picnic the afternoon of the 27th. Since I hadn't actually made concrete plans for the weekend, I decided to stay in town, and do the picnic. Then I figured, if I'm in town, I might as well see if I can still do the triathlon. So after emailing the coordinator, I was signed up, and now have one week to prepare. Fun times.

Oh yeah, its only 500m, 12 miles, and 5k. Nothing I shouldn't be able handle, accept fot the minor "not being able to really swim" thing.

Sexuality, rollerblading, and Ven Diagrams

One of my female friends made the comment that rollerblading is a very "gay" activity. By "gay activity," she didn't mean stupid, she meant "an activity usually associated with homosexual men." I told her that I like rollerblading, although I haven't really done it all in the last three years. I would if I had more time. To demonstrate to her why labeling activities is wrong, I later drew her a ven diagram and emailed it to her. (Click on the picture to zoom and read it completely)




On the larger subject, this has to do with the fact the California girls have extremely mal-tuned gaydar. They drastically increase their type II errors to an extremely high level. Although this does significantly decrease their chance of letting a positive result go unnoticed, it drastically increases the chance of making a false positive. I can understand to some degree, if they've gotten their hearts broken by confused guys, but still take chance! This makes them miss out on all the cool guys.