frisbee in the cold

this saturday, i drove up to bowdoin, maine (site of many swim meets!) for a little frisbee and a LOT of cold.

thanks to sam (i really can't say enough how great this guy is), stew (that's our team) has managed to create a solid tradition of sending fun (and good) boston players to very cold tournaments, where we beat up on college kids and sort of try against other hastily-put-together teams of club players.

this year's frozen butterball (named after the frozen turkey that is the winning team's prize) featured snow flurries and a deep understanding of the phrase "wind-chill factor". sam, steve, zirui, amanda, ellen and i arrived at the fields only 20 minutes after the games were scheduled to start. steve had spent much of the ride up devising strategies for 6 on 7, but bowdoin thankfully agreed to donate X (his real name was arnab, but he seemed to prefer X).

we fought off the cold with many layers of clothing, amanda's sleeping bag, lots of huddling, and delicious stew (remember that guy sam? he made the stew). darah and dana arrived right when we needed them, in our third game, against a pretty solid team. and the moment when i came off the field and darah handed me a cup of hot cider with rum - priceless.

we won our pool, then the semifinal game and were discussing forfeiting the finals, when the other semifinal winner forfeited first! then the other semifinal loser (who we had alreay beaten earlier) insisted that we play them again, so we squeaked out another win 5-4 (game to 5) as the sun went down. our first butterball victory!

frankly, the only really disappointing moment was when i realized the turkey we had won was going to be donated to charity, and not eaten by us at a fun, post-butterball get-together. darn.

when we got home, i got into bed immeadiately and fell asleep with my body still thawing out. i slept for the next 10 hours, missing the saturday night events i was supposed to attend.

all in all, pretty great. i love ultimate.

ps. tom daschle's hair has gone completely white! he looks a lot older than i remember. also 538 is projecting al franken to win by 27 votes.