The Ones That Never Knock: Part Two

One of the nice things about staying at a relatively nice hotel like the Hilton in Oxnard is the free made-to-order breakfast. You know,the one they start serving ... at 7 AM. Our early start time meant no free breakfast, dammit, so we scrounged what we could from the grocery trip the night before and headed down to Santa Barbara. To a field that, we had been told, was "less than ideal."

Hmmm ... indeed. Our first game was on a beachside softball field full of ruts and divots and bare mud patches. The field was sloped at odd angles in different areas and hosted a number of homeless campers*. The bathrooms were terrible and all locked up besides. In other words, it was a wreck. But I've had experience with this kind of thing, so I pulled a trick out of the Mike "Verbal" Bright and asked everyone to complain about the field for 60 seconds. When they were done, I said, "alright, good - we all know it suck, it sucks for both teams, so drop it from now on - no talking about the field." it removed the distraction quickly, and we ran through our normal warmup team and got ready for our first opponent, Recess**, AKA the UCLA college team

* - We were warned by one of the hosting Condors players to watch our bags and, in one of the more callous comments I've heard, not to feed the homeless as "they are like seagulls and will flock to you if you do." I mean, I get the advice, but there had to be a more sensitive way to put that, no?

** - I'm pretty sure that yes, I went with the lame joke and said something along the lines of "we're starting the schooling with recess." I can't resist!

Recess was solid, for a college team, but we started the day with a game very reminiscent of some of our sectionals games - our O essentially didn't turn it, our D played tough and made their own share of goofy turns, and we fairly easily ran away with it 13-2 or so. I spent the bulk of the time keeping the team's focus - we knew we'd be running into more challenging opponents later in the day - but this did not stop some abject goofiness from breaking through. Rob dropped a one-handed sky only to come up with it off the rebound. Griesy put up one of the nuttiest, double-helix hammers into a crowd that I've seen in a while - it was grabbed by Cole - only to be outdone by Ian Newton, who got *heckled* to throw a hammer by some Sprawlers on the sideline and actually did it! His flew wayward into a crowd, to, missing its mark by a good fifteen yards or so, but fortunately Tim was there to grab the trash. On the plus side, Paul delivered a legitimate, good-decision hammer for a score to Trant, so we weren't all about the idiocy here. And somewhere in there Griesy made up for his wackiness by swatting the CRAP out of a huck from point blank range for a huge D. Like I said, not much of a challenge, and I certainly didn't get worn out - I played three O points, and that was that. We packed up our gear afterwards and headed on to the site of our next fields. We did so leisurely - the fast game plus the fact that we had a second round bye meant we had three hours until we would play our next opponent at the next set of fields.

We got to the next locale and watched Southwest Region stalwart Johnny Bravo* warm up and devour Inception, the three seed in our pool. Interesting to see the JB in warm-ups - they practiced their physical D, up the line throws, and timing cuts, displaying a coordination across the team that we lack with our top lines. Yikes. Doubly, triply scary to realize that it's not like JB is anywhere near the top team in the country, and they look like a Platonic ideal archetype out there. Sheesh. That's probably enough JB praise for one paragraph, but note that it makes me feel like a complete idiot to realize that however good I think my throws are, pretty much everybody on JB has equal and better. Sigh...

* - Things to know about JB - one, they are all 6"2" or taller, I swear, and most of them are 6'4". Two, they all are fast and have nasty throws of all types. And three, one of the bigger jackasses in the known universe, #0, has a tramp stamp. JB is a perennial Nationals qualifier and stands head and shoulders above everyone else in the region; they run a freaking buttery offense, play tight, physical D, and generally turn 50-50 discs into 90-10 discs. They're quite good, thanks. They also carry themselves like a crew of arrogant bastards, for lack of a less ale-ish term. We hate them for all the obvious-probably-jealousy-based reasons, but this year at CO Cup they gave us a new motive to loathe. Studer went to frisbee central to grab some bananas and procured three from the table. He was walking back to our field when #0 from JB walked up to him and stole a banana right out of his hands, laughing all the while. This offense has garnered more than one joke in Sprawl circles, and I'm not entirely sure what would happen if Studer encountered the guy in a dark alley. The whole situation provided quite a lot of speculation as to what would happen in our game later in the day, so stay tuned for that ...

After the bye, we went back through the warm up routine and awaited our opponents - they had been moved due to yet another field snafu*, so we got started a bit late. Turned out not to matter a whole lot - they were a very green (though tall, lanky) team, and it became obvious pretty quickly that we were going to win easily. I honestly don't remember a whole lot about this one outside of the fact that we played decidedly down to their level - some unnecessary turns, and they connected on some "what the hell?" type deep throws and actually scored some goals on us. We won 13-4, but it just felt stupid. I actually jumped in on a couple of D points on this one to try to get the legs moving / lead our team by example in the running-hard department. Oh, and I missed Dhein on a deep shot in this one, missing homes by just a hair too long. Ugh, and ugly game, but another sectionals-level easy win for the Phoenix ballers.

* - The tournament directors had announced that the 2nd round game between Recess and the La Jolla Bags would be played on a field TBD, but natch that field never was determinded. So the standing plan was to have them wait until 6 to play the 2nd round game. Cole, of all people, spotted a field around the corner and told the teams as much - they headed over and squeezed in their game during the originally scheduled time. We gave Cole all kinds of crap for trying to step in and do the TDs' job, but in this case it turns out he actually helped. I once again couldn't resist, though - after Cole started bragging about fixing the situation by having noticed the field, I said, "Wow, you must know a whole lot about fields, Cole. have you ever heard of Quail Run in Mesa?" That would be where we held all of our September practices, none of which Cole has attended. Passive-aggressive attendance-heckle BURN!!!

JB had a bye during this round, and a lot of their players watched our horrible game. that inspired another funny postgame speech - "On the plus side, Johnny Bravo thinks we suck" - meaning that we would surprise them later in the day - "on the minus side, we sucked." Tough to maintain focus in games against decidedly lesser opponents, but we goofed on this one. 'Twas time to lock back in and get ready for the game of the day against Inception - win and we were guaranteed a spot in the semis. Before all that, though, we had to drive over to the field site. BLAR.

The Ones That Never Knock: Part One

Sprawl 2010, Southwest Regionals Edition:

Cole, BP, Ian P, Aaron, Griesy, Trantstamp, Jim, Skunk, Dheintime, Tim, Vince, Dixon, Paul

Ian N, J-Ro, Studer, Joe, Nyet, EBay, Rob, Cisco, Josh

The pinnacle of Sprawl's season, the 2010 Southwest Regional Tournament in Oxnard Santa Barbara, CA, came and went this last weekend. Sprawl came up well short of its Nationals goal and, sadly, will probably spend a significant portion of the offseason pondering what might have been.

The party started for the Nyetverse on Friday at noon. Griesy, Paul and Ebay were scheduled to appear at la casa de floras at high time, and somehow, somehow, somehow, we all collectively convinced Cole to appear as well and make the trip to Cali with us*. We were taking Griesy's parents' minivan, and after some fun times hanging around the living room and discussing the desert tortoise Sigma that was hanging out in Beck's and my bath tub - yeah, Beck strikes again! - we headed out at roughly 12:30 for the 7+ hour drive to friggin' Oxnard, CA, the location of our hotel**.

* - Don't get me started.

** - The Southwest Regional Coordinator royally screwed up the weekend. He waited until about four weeks before the tourney to actually confirm that SoCal would be hosting regionals (there was a brief time in which we thought Tim might have to take over and host things in Scottsdale - too bad), and then told everyone he had reserved fields for all divisions (open, women's, mixed and masters'). Only he had only reserved said fields for only Saturday, which doesn't work so well for a two day tournament. About two weeks before we got a message that the national coordinator would step in to fix the mess and organize things in Santa Babara ... but we never heard where. Aaron H. had already found hotels in Oxnard, and everything in SB at that late date was $200 per night plus, with it being Columbus Day weekend and all. So we had to keep our Oxnard hotels, and eventually found out that we would be playing at four different locations over the two days, meaning we had to drive around SB between games. More on that later, but suffice it to say that we had a less than ideal housing / traveling situation for the weekend.

I packed a book for school and two books for possible pleasure reading, but of course nary a one was cracked - too much fun conversation. The trip passed relatively painlessly as we killed the time discussing innovative Ultimate strategies*, how all the Florida college Ulty player must be great athletes because "they're built just like me,**" how the Venn diagram of those who had never seen Mary Poppins and didn't know what the phrase "T and A" meant landed squarely on EBay, and how no one had a very good explanation for why country music is so popular if it really is so "obviously" stupid***. In other words, the typical meandering tales of road trip. We hit up religion and Cole's favorite cancer - skin, ftr - to round things out. Oh, and Ebay reiterated our mission to transcribe Jay-Z's "99 Problems" into some kind of formal-ish English:

If thou hast difficulties with the fairer sex, I have an announcement for thee, my male offspring

I hast four score and nineteen difficulties, but a wench does not count amongst them.

Strike me!

* - Not to give away too much, but it seems the fine people at USA U neglected to prohibit jetpacks in the 11th edition rules. We will be exploiting that loophole shortly.

** - spoken by Cole.

*** - I recently read David Lipsky's quasi-biographical account of David Foster Wallace - he had been hired by Rolling Stone to interview DFW during the latter's book tour for Infinite Jest. It's a pretty sporadic account, tracing the conversations verbatim as it does, but it gives a lot of insight into the experience of writing / delivering that book. One thing that DFW harps on a bit is how he had repeatedly noticed a tendency within himself to underestimate the intelligence of the reader / average American or what have you, which is why I bring this up now. Country - that is, modern, glossy, insipid, poppy country - clearly resonates with a lot of people. One explanation is, natch, that they and it are dumb. That's the one Cole gave, that we are educated and therefore we don't like country. Dubious at best. But in the spirit of DFW, I want to try to understand rather than just condemn. There's a passage in the book in which he tries to equate the tropes of country music with a general metaphor of regret, longing, nostalgia, etc., all surrounding the experience of loneliness. Meaning that the tales of breakup and loss and good times are not meant to be literal summer night accounts, but really stand-ins for advice for how to cope in a bitter, cold world. I don't know if I can give country-listeners that sort of second level credit, but insofar as the choice to enjoy that type of music represents in anyway an active decision to forego the analytical in seeking pure, pseudo-Buddhist be-the-moment relief ... well, it makes me a tad more tolerant. I mean, I still don't understand the phenomenon of modern country's popularity, and I don't *really* believe that sort of meta-awareness activity is really taking place. But the fact that the angle exists makes me more willing to open my mind, even to a genre which I pretty much hate with all my being. This was all on my mind when i asked why we all so casually agreed, against popular opinion, that country music sucked. I didn't really get a satisfactory answer.

Everything car-ride-wise went smoothly until we hit L.A. at 5 o'clock ... oops. Unlike Art Brut, there's no chance I'm going to live there anytime soon, lest I murder someone.We *finally* pulled into the hotel parking lot at about 7:30 and ran into Aaron, Ian, J-Ro, Monika, etc. immediately. They were headed to Chili's, so we didn't even bother to unpack the car, just hopped back in and headed to the warm familiarity of a franchise. We had to wait a bit, but the time was easily filled with Ian and Aaron picking my brain for how we would strategically handle the tourney. I got a half rack of baby back ribs for some pre-tourney saltiness (supplemented by a serving of carby rice), and ... they sucked. I mean, what was there was tasty, but what was there was minimal, skimpy meat, and I left the restaurant hungry. Grrrr. We headed to a grocery store to stock up for the following day, and I had to get some yogurt and a Zone bar to keep from going to bed hungry. On the plus side, Ebay pretty much made my day at the grocery store - when the cashier asked him, "Would you like to donate a dollar to breast cancer?," Ebay correctly replied, "No! I hate breast cancer! Why the hell would I give it money?" HA! We got our supplies and headed back to the hotel to quickly go to bed.

Why quickly? Well, in all the idiotic field reservation confusion, the coordinators failed to get fields with lights. So with five rounds to play on a day past the autumnal equinox, we had to start at 8 in the friggin' morning. In Santa Barbara, mind you, and yeah, we were 45 minutes away in Oxnard. All of which meant a 6 am departure time, which meant a 5:30-at-the-latest wake-up time, which meant get to bed pronto. I nabbed a room with Vince, Paul and Cole.We caught a little of the baseball game, but got to bed at a pretty reasonable 10 pm time. I was awoken by a screaming sleep-talking Vince at one point in the night, and otherwise slept terribly, my usual in-a-strange-bed routine. After waking up probably 15 times at various short intervals over the night, I snapped-to at 4:30 Am and got up for good - it was game day, so I got up and got ready.

4:45 AM is quite a time be putting on suntan lotion in a hotel bathroom... to be continued.

Crowd-Pleasing Bullets

Well, *apparently* album reviews are not certain readers cups of tea. And while some may ignore their readers' beverages of choice and post about the 21st century max-banal*, I am nothing if not a slave to my single-digit** readership. The people want Ulty updates? The people get Ulty updates. Abbreviated, ill-informative bullet-form updates - mildly appropriate given emoticon-titled subject posts - but updates nonetheless. The last few weeks, in (insert Megadeth scream here) BULLETS!!!

* - I kid, I kid. But seriously, you didn't think you could rag on my album reviews on facebook sans repercussion, did ya? :) But really, cute stuff from the Mark. If I'm ever forced to cover him in an Ultimate game, I will just say, "I've got Iheartyou."

** - My DFW impulse to clarify that "single digit" is a description of the quantity of the readership and not their individual mutant and/or shop-class-related finger-and-toe-statuses*** is kicking in. Clarified?

*** - My sensitive-'90s-ponytail-guy-sans-the-ponytail (and probably the sensitivity) impulse to clarify that there is nothing wrong with missing nineteen fingers/toes is kicking in. Morally or essentially wrong, I mean; let's be honest, you're probably going to deal with some functional difficulties in life, not the least of which will be throwing a flick**** and/or typing "Eff you Nyet" into the comments below in a timely fashion.

**** - See? Ulty content. In the fourth paragraph!

• When we last left our Sprawling heroes, they had won the Open Division of the Colorado Cup, even whilst missing famed superathlete co-captain Dheintime. This apparently went directly to the entire team's collective heads, as the plan - ramp up practices in August in preparation for the start of the Open Series proper in September - fell flat on its collective face. We started having attendance problems almost immediately as the month clicked "8," struggling to get sixteen-to-eighteen people out to the fields. And sixteen-to-eighteen people - particularly when that sixteen-to-eighteen is partially comprised of four-to-five non-Sprawlers - does not make for effective practicing with your top lines. Boo-urns.
• I can hardly talk, as I continue to be a mysteriously malaised, topping out at 75% wreck. Seriously, it's been better, but I'm still fading out here and there, and it got bad enough that I missed a couple of practices in there. Think about it - Nyet, willingly skipping Ulty practices! Not even going! Egads! The good news is that I've pursued all kinds of standard-issue medical explanations, and nothing overtly serious is going on. So put your worries away - cardiologists, pathologists, even surgeons assure me that everything is fine and this is merely some post-viral badness. One of those tests involved an incision and sitting out of all athletic activity for a week-plus - that was awesome - so maybe now you're starting to get an idea of why I haven't been entirely enthused about writing about Ultimate lately.
• Again, just to emphasize, DO NOT WORRY, and DO NOT WRITE me with bizarro speculations. "Nothing is effed here, dude," as Lebowski would say, so other than sympathizing with my suffering suckitude of late, you don't need to expend another thought on the health of Nyet. I'm fine. And raring to go for this weekend, taboot.
• Random side note - my funniest self-joke of the past month? Well, I'm still tracking my diet, which has been extra challenging with the sporadic cessations of exercise. But I'm maintaining my weight and eating well. Huzzah. The joke, though, is that the first self-e-mail chain I used to track things back in January was entitled "Food Diary." After a couple of months, I got tired of scrolling so far down the screen and created "Food Diary II." Then the nutritionist wanted me to track carbs / protein, so I started "Food Diary III." Tracking carbs means keeping track of a bit more info, so it was convenient to keep on elong e-mail and copy-paste frequent foods rather than repeatedly look them up. So this time I let the scrolling go long. And it turns out that e-mail threads in gmail max out at 99 messages; after that, it changes to "Re: Food Diary III." Annoying! So I had to start a new thread. Its title? "Food Diary Zoso." I. Am. Hilarious. Even if you don't get that particular joke, appreciate the meta-joke of having read one of the more mundane paragraphs e'er featured on this blog. Outside, you know, those dreaded album reviews.
• NEhoo, our solution to the attendance problem was to back it down to an optional practice on Mondays and a mandatory one on Wednesdays. This helped somewhat, but the curse of Phoenix-summer continued to afflict, and we continued to have problems. J-Ro even berated the team in an e-mail with the subject, "WTF?" When the excessively chilly and ubercool J-Ro gets feathers a-rufflin', things are problematic.
• We did (at least) continue to SLUG it out on Saturdays, occasionally having some stellar games. So there's been a thread of competition throughout, even if the practice issues have caused a lot of consternation.
• Speaking of consternation, we (in case I haven't mentioned it here yet) are going to be playing the series without stalwart Garret, who has run into way too much work and a new PhD program this fall. We're also going to be missing BP for sectionals (ugh), but it's better that way than having him miss regionals. And Cole has been 100% AWOL - I am relatively certain that I haven't seen him since CO Cup. Now, again, I missed three practices in there, but by all accounts, dude has just been GONE. So, um, that's disconcerting. Hopefully he rolls in this weekend to grab his reserved seat on the Pepsi Max Where-Have-You-Been-Dude? Bench. I mean, I'm one to talk, but I know where I was. Hopefully it's just been scheduling conflicts and not a dedication issue. Either way, communication is preferred.
• Speaking of, sectionals this weekend. Exciting times. We're carrying a roster of 23 and facing off against Monsoon, Le Tigre, El Ponderosa, ASU and U of A. You'll note the conspicuous lack of a Sweet Roll there - they have split between a master's squad and a co-ed team that could give Barrio a run. Pretty sure I mentioned this in the CO Cup writeup, but we never got that last official crack at 'em. Oh, well. Sectionals, fwiw, is conveniently located at the Scottsdale Sports Complex in Sunny Azz, so if you're around, be around! We play pretty much all day both days.
• I am sure all of that sectionals talk has you wondering how things have been going lately. Well, we changed practice fields to Eastern M(es)A in September, and have been making the trek to the east coast on Wednesdays for two hours of intense scrimmaging fun. Last week we played vert stack to give our D a look at the alternative O set, and then had to the D give the O lines nasty poaching sets. With the latter, we let the D play with eight guys - eight on seven! - and we still managed to score a good amount of the time. So hopefully that'll have us ready for the junk defenses our man-O will likely inspire.
• I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that things are intense enough at practice that some people on our D line - lets call them "& the Argonauts" and, um, "Red-headed Electrolyte" - got in an argument over coverage responsibilities that escalated in approximately six seconds into a drag-out, pit-bull-death-grip fight/wrestling match. YOWSERS! Shades of Nyet v. Ariel, 2002! (No, not really; we just yelled a lot. I don't think I'd seen a *physical* fight at a frisbee practice EVER before - you'll very, very occasionally see skirmishes at tourneys, but this was two guys who know each other at each other's throats with intent to harm). The whole thing was uncomfortable - it was broken up quickly and everyone was fine, so no biggie in the end. And the intensity was good to see on some abstract level, I suppose. But still. Eesh.
• So of course after all that quality O and leading-to-fights defensive intensity, we came out Saturday to SLUG and played sloptastic frisbee. Just didn't look good at all, tons of turns, people tired, leading to a lot of "glad sectionals is next weekend" sidebars. Ugh.
• Then fast forward to last night, where things looked a little better, but I - clicking on maybe three of my eight cylinders - managed to have a terrible, terrible practice. Qualify it - I was fine, more or less, for the "O" part of practice (when we were playing 7 against 8 and not allowed to throw it upside-down to simulate, as best we can, windy conditions) , and just had a really bad stretch of throws in the middle of the D section of practice, where we were running a vertical stack O. I probably took it too hard - it was just an exceptionally bad stretch of about ten minutes or so - but wow, can't go through that this weekend. I am sure the 106 degree forecast will help with that tremendously. Ugh, again.
• But all else considered, it was a good, hard, well-attended practice. Hard to know how we'll look this weekend, but for the first time in six weeks or so, we get to play someone other than ourselves, and that's always nice.
• So how are we feeling re: the weekend? Well, on some level, it's immaterial; all the teams who want to can go to regionals. I.e., our finish doesn't *really* matter. But we (obviously) want to win the section for seeding purposes, so we're going to have to crack down and get over the spottiness of late. Hopefully we will manage to play well AND work on our game, as regionals is still sitting as the smack-us-upside-the-head sudden change in intensity. We just don't have the same opportunities as JB and SG to engage serious competition at tourneys yet, so I envision a wake-up call in our future that we may or may not respond too with enough juice. All of that said, we look as good as we ever have of late, the people who are rolling out to practice are flat out bringing it, and there's adequate excitement in the air. O is crispy even without our blond deep threat, and D bothers me at practice, which is pretty much my barometer for goodness. So the weekend should be fun and enlightening. Wish us luck.
• In non-Sprawl Ulty news, my league team "The Way to Wikki Wakka" is 1-1, having staked out big leads which were choked away in both of the first two games. If I didn't mention it, my spring co-captain Lindsey is out for a bit with bad back issues (no!), but the league director made the sweetest - literally, sweetest - okay, you caught me, that would be figurative - of lemonades out of the situation for me and allowed me to captain with Jenga. She's a PHXaion / Spitfire player who is solid AND notorious for shattering all happiness/coolness scales, so despite our precarious play in the first couple of weeks, we're having a great time. Our team is the usual mix of skill/experience/talent - I'll do a full scale writeup at some point - but suffice it for now to say that I'm doing my best to run that team while my energies are really focused on and, more importantly, accustomed-to-the-level-of-play-of, Sprawl. So if I don't seem my usual fired-up-self with ridiculous VOTS game posts and such, it's only as an act of maintaining balance and not getting frustrated with the inevitable Sprawl-to-VOTS drop-off. I'm sure things will return to the usual VOTS-detail-obsessed state once I hang up these club cleats for good.
• In news a further step removed from Ultimate, school is back on. I have a relatively light semester courseload-wise, though I am writing this post at breakneck speed during a half-hour break from reading one of many five hundred page books that are staring me down. I am (allegedly) defending my prospectus at some point this semester, and continue to feel woefully unprepared. At least I don't have to grade undergrad essays this semester and can actually spend some time getting down to the brass tacks of, among other things, post-Darwinian evolutionary ethics. I know you're intrigued.
• As a final removed step, congrats to good friend Reena and her new husband Rob - the Nyetfam, Beck and I headed down to Dallas a couple of weekends back to attend her traditional Hindi wedding and had a fantastic time. We used the opportunity to spend Labor Day weekend in Texas and a good time seeing Aaron & Kristen, Grandpa, Deb, Pat & Ron, and my parents in various contexts, most of which involving delicious food. We *may* have even gotten my family hooked on grilled pineapple! May.

Hope that scratches the itch. Sectionals writeup due next week, though hopefully it will be a relatively boring weekend. We shall, as always, see.

All I Ever Wanted (Summer 2010): Part 3 (Seattle)

• I neglected to mention that on both Saturday and Sunday, figuring that we would be doing a fair amount of eating and lounging on this trip, Beck and I hit the hotel gym. So yes - having stayed up until the wee hours dancing like maniacs, we went to the gym *before* brunch on Sunday. We are heroes..
• The brunch was good, with everyone bleary-eyed and recounting the wedding as expected. Favorite exchange: "Elliot, your Tufts friends are very serious." "What do you mean, older relative?" "They are quite serious about their partying." Cha-ching!
• Beck and I caught a cab with Matt to the airport, but not until after we had another run to Pinkberry. Tap that vein!

• Flew up to Seattle sans incident, then drove from the airport out to Tad's & Katy's (Beck's former vet colleague) & *James's* place out in Orting, WA. Beautiful countryside home in the heart of berry country and with a nice view of Mt. Rainier:

• Had a delicious steak and spicy squash dinner, then took a nice walk with the fam and dogs down a local river:

• and came home for banana splits. The evening drifted to vet talk, and we eventually hit the hay to get ready for a touristy day in Seattle.
• Great early breakfast at T & K's, the hit up touristy sites in downtown Seattle. The EMP (Experience Music Project) featured an instrument sculpture and Supremes gowns:

• On Ariel's rec, made our way to Pike's Place and Beecher's for lunch, followed by the usual touristy spectating of fish-tossing and such:

• And while walking in the market, we were floored by a delicious cinnamonomy smell wafting through the air. We took a direct left and discovered the must-visit pastry shot of downtown Seattle - if you are ever in the Seattle area, you MUST stop by Piroshky Piroshky, a Russian bakery featuring de-friggin'-licious sweet and savory piroshkis (big as your face Russian hot pockets, more or less - soooooo good).

• We when-in-Romed and hit up a non-Starbucks's Seattle coffee house on the way back to the car, giving us time to hit up the iPhones:

• Headed back to Tad's and Katy's, grabbed some fresh-picked berries from a farmstand, and drove from there to Tacoma for a portside fish meal. Fish and chips for me, Mussels - again! - for Beck, a great Microbrew on Tad's rec called "Mack & Jack's" and a great time hanging out with friends:

• Back to Orting, We packed up for an early AM departure and said byes to everybody. On to Canada the next day - in another post - but we capped the evening by sharing James's first experience of the sourness of a strawberry popsicle. He was, shall we say, subpleased:

All I Ever Wanted (Summer 2010): Part 2 (Denver / Wedding)

• Took a bus-ride south of Denver to a pstoral, faux-ranch wedding site. Our ride included a troubadour who resembled the love child of David Bowie and John Denver; I called "American Pie" an an inevitable component of his setlist and was not wrong.
• Nice, casual wedding ceremony atop a hill that over-looked the idyllic scenery. The setting received a sort of meta-commentary during the ceremony (i.e., something along the lines of "we should be really appreciative of the beautiful scenery we are experincing at this very moment!") and was indeed lovely:

• And the bride and groom were as happy as I've ever seen two people be. Here's a fairly "captures it all" photo, taken after Elliot stomped the glass in traditional Jewish fashion:

• Obligatory Tuftsmen Group Shot:

• Fun wedding, fun reception - good apps and dinner, open bar, good conversation (had a great chance to catch up with Andy and Ariel in particular), touching toasts, an ubercute slideshow (the highlight of which was a video of Briar helping a hospital-gowned Elliot walk around after an emergency appendectomy, and the cameraman (Elliot's brother?) perspicaciously humming "Here Comes the Bride") and a heck of a dance party afterwards featuring a cover band and some interlude DJ'ed music. And no wedding cake - the couple met while studying abroad in Italy, so gelato made the occasion:

• I'll include some dance party highlights below - trust that the Tuftsmen routinely make the party, but I think this time we merely pushed it to 11; this would have been raging with or without our usual dose of craziness. As expected, there was a rehash of "Paradise City," "Like a Prayer," and all of your usual favorites. The scene was fairly crazy with a number of some sort of grey goose / cranberry juice shot interludes. In fact, Zach's backing up his Maker's Mark with one right here:

• Anyhoo, great reception; just check it:

• Okay, okay, a devoted "Paradise" section:

• With... video?

• I know, I know - energy drops out mysteriously and intermittently during the week, but I'm crowd-surfing at wedding receptions. I don't get me, either.
• The affair ended pretty late, and again, the only drawback of being bussed out is that you have to wait for the buses to take you home - Beck and I were fairly zonked about an hour before we actually got to leave. One nice touch by Briar and Elliot (in a wedding that featured who knows how many (and how expensive) nice touches) was a goodie bag featuring a late night snack burrito for the ride home; Zach in particular was stoked about this:

• We arrived back at the hotel half-asleep with no chance of an after-after party. Crash and get ready for the next morning's post-chaos breakfast... for another post.