Category — Ultimate

Well, Sunflicker has come and gone for 2010 and was a blast to say the least. It was so great to see a TON of friends and our house was PACKED. Friday night we hosted 18 people and Saturday was 16 people…. the beds, carpet and hardwood were packed with people and hopefully everyone had a good nights rest. Can’t wait for next year! All are welcome again!

Pi did pretty good and most importantly we had a good time. A tournament like this with great friends and some ulti is the reason Lindsay and I love the sport so much. There’s not a lot of other places and sports where you can get that sort of exercise, enjoyment, friends, frisbee and fun. Here’s a little pic of the Pi crew.

Then Monday, Scott and I hit the BGolf course for a round. Unfortunately a wind-warning was issued for the Okanagan. Needless to say it was a little windy…. Which made it cold and interesting. It’s always neat to be on a course with almost zero people on it. After that we headed to the H2O waterpark for a much needed hot-tub. It also had a flo-rider. The flo-rider is basically a simulant of an ocean wave…was much trickier than it seemed and Scott and I entertained the kids with some solid wipeouts.

See you all next year!

(this has been a work in progress all week, writing a bit here, a bit there, and therefore a bit out of date)

Really fun, active weekend for Jeff and I. Saturday we woke up early (ok, early by my standards) and hit the open highway to spend some time in the gorgeous rocky mountains. We went to Banff for a day of hiking. It is the first time Jeff and I have been hiking since living in Calgary and I can’t believe it took us so long as we had a fantastic day. Wandered through town and then hiked the Bow Valley/Hoodoo trail.

The trail was not too exerting with only a 60m elevation gain over 5km but just enough of a gain to get a nice view of the mountains. We took our camera but didn’t get any amazing shots as there was some cloud cover. Started to clear as we were arriving back to the car but the wind was also starting to pick up so our timing was great.

Normally (as least what I remember from all the hiking I did with my family growing up) the end of the trail, at the highest point, is the most spectacular. This was not the case with this hike. The Information Centre in Banff said to do this trail “Hoodoo Trail” to see the hoodoos at the end. Wow. Deceptive. They were NOT worth the hike (luckily the views along the way were). The hoodoos (all 2 of them) were way off in the distance and not much to look at. Thumbs up for the nice hike, thumbs down for the hoodoos.

Here are some pictures from the day:

View of the Banff Springs from the parking lot

Yes, you read this correctly. Christmas in January? We had our staff Christmas party on Friday afternoon. Our original party was scheduled for December but was snowed out so we postponed until now. We spent Friday playing mini-Olympics at Shank’s North. We broke into teams and played bowling, mini-golf, Daytona racing and pool. Super fun times. I would recommend this for a stag or stagette. Perfect for a little healthy competition among friends.

My team made the podium, but didn’t come first. I found this strange as 3/5 of my teammates came first overall in one of the sports and one of the guys on my team finished as the top male overall. I guess with these sort of stats we must have shone at times and not so much at others. I really think pool was our downfall. I blame the lack of beer at this point. Who seriously plays pool sober? Afterwards a few of us headed back to our place for some fresh fruit maragarits and guitar hero.

On Saturday morning we had our second annual Garage Hack party. We started this tradition last year after we took up hacky sack after our fall league ultimate games. In the winter we missed it, so we had a hack party in our garage. Last year Jeff made omlets for everyone but this year we had waffles. Great work on breakfast Jeff thanks to the fun crew with the hack skillz:

The whole crew hacking

Nice focus Terri!

Weekend summary: guitar hero, Shank’s, hacky sack, disc golf, coffee, margaritas, squash, Superbowl party, Rock Band, ultimate. All the makings of a great (but a tad tiring) weekend!

We were discussing how Christmas cards are so 2005, unless your Heather who makes a super awesome hand-made Christmas card every Christmas. So consider this an electronic Christmas card from Jeff & Lindsay.

Editor’s note: We really didn’t send Christmas cards in 2005….but you get the point.

Yes, we have a Christmas Theme and used the word “Christmas” seven times in the last three sentences. If you don’t like it, move along. Anyway, onto the year …

Editors note: Comments from Lindsay in Red and Jeff in Green.

January

We were flying back from Hawaii (from our honeymoon) on January 1st. Oh Hawaii…What a great way to ring in the New Year!

We went to Sun Peaks for our good Friend Dylan’s 30th birthday (what an old man). It was great times with phenomenal snowboarding at Sun Peaks per usual.

February

The highlight from February was one of the highlights of the entire year: I discovered and solved my migraine mystery. Turns out the thing that was causing my migraines all along was water (or a lack thereof). Not chinooks, hormones, or exercise. Who knew? (I did) If you are reading this and suffer from migraines try drinking a ton of water. I mean drink so much water every day that you pee constantly and feel like barfing from having drank so much liquid. (No seriously, I harped on this for a while)

My migraines caused me extreme pain and suffering for years. I was on every medication under the sun (vioxx, anti-depressants, anti-seizure medication, vitamin B, others…) to prevent my migraines. The medications caused terrible side effects from dizziness, to nausea to numbness in the extremities. Not to mention the potential long-term damage I may have done by taking so much Imitrex and Maxalt to take the migraines away upon onset. They are wonder drugs but not so wonderful.

Now I just drink lots of water everyday (more if I’m exercising) and I’ve had very few migraines. Of the ones I’ve had since February, I can attribute about 90% of them to dehydration.

Anyways, sorry to hi-jack this Christmas post…but this was definitely a highlight when reviewing 2008. I guess my wishbone wish came true!

Also to note was a nice visit from Larry and Brenda in February and my publication in Nature magazine.

March

I started a company! President Jeff just had such a great ring to it that it seemed like a good idea.

He was nice enough to make his loving wife the Vice President.

In March we also attended one of the funnest parties ever: Robert’s 50th. Hard to believe anyone we play ultimate with is even close to 50…maybe in age but not in spirit. I sure hope I’m still running around (or even walking around) when I’m 50 after playing the equivalent of “tackle football without equipment” (as our chiropractor calls it) for so long.

We also welcomed a new family member, our nephew Conrad, on March 11th.

April

as a side note here. Blog’s are awesome. Seriously. The year in review is so easy to do because you can just Michael J. Fox back into time and “remember” what we did. You would think I’d remember but you’d be wrong.

Some people who read this blog may be bored from the repetition. However, those who don’t care to waste their time on our babble can just read this and treat it like the Cole’s Notes of our life recently.

May

Major highlight #2 for Lindsay: Addition to our family. After a lovely visit to see Jeff’s brother and my parents in BC,

May saw our Cat-Dog Willow enter our life. She’s was so little and cute and won my heart over. For the record (ie: Wriggs) I still don’t like cats. I like Cat-Dog’s. We call Willow our Cat-Dog because she really like to be entertained, played with and has a full routine in the morning. Cat-Dog’s are awesome

We ended May with a trip down to Bozeman, MT to have a weekend-long shower. Where we learned the game psychiatrist! So fun!

June

Brief trip to Victoria for work, but other than that, June was really uneventful, except for our Garage Sale and the Toppers Heroes for Hospice Race!

July

We made it through our first entire year of marriage this month. So far so good. That sure flew by. Seems like just yesterday I was cleaning up from the wedding…er…so maybe I was. Still working out what to do with the dress….

Another significant event in July was Regionals.

August

After all the hard work to get to Nationals, we had a disappointing finish, but I guess if you can’t be top 8, you might as well win the Ninals!

I went on a trip to Toronto and had a wonderful visit with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and my mom (who came with me). Luckily all of my extended family (with the exception of my uncle in Australia) lives in Ontario so it’s like one-stop-shopping. I also visited almost every casino in Ontario…(when in Rome).

Went to Golden with some folks for a little disc golf at Infinity’s Sports Ranch.

Also had a second medical breakthrough – discovered I needed orthodics. Solved my ankle problems, back problems and sore foot problem. Guess it makes sense, the backbone is connected to the leg bone.

September

Great times had in September. Quick weekend trip to Fernie (thanks Terri!) for some mountain biking and relaxation. In case you haven’t heard, we also went to Japan. Amazing country, friendly people and a wonderful trip! Japan is seriously cool. Such a unique place and definitely recommended and high on list of places we’d like to visit (again). Highlights include Bullet Trains, Raw Chicken and Beautiful Gardens.

October

I started working part-time at my ‘real-job’ and part-time as President Jeff. We decided that it would be a smart move because I could get a lot more done and hopefully grow the company a bit. The one question I get lots is how’s the company doing. It’s doing fine and I love all the concern people have, however, this is also one of the reasons that I never told people about my sites for quite some time. You see to get indexed in the search engines takes time (makes sense that you just can’t throw something up and be highly ranked in google). So things I’m doing now is really for the future and so it can be slow going while things are growing.

The end of October also brought Halloween, one of our favorite celebrations of the year. This year Lindsay planned a 30 days till I’m 30 party. Man was it fun. Some of the highlights include meeting our neighbours in sock feet, Egg-up, 12 (or was it more?) people shot-gunning beer (including my Pa) and Anasol.

We went to Victoria for Pumpkin Pull. It was the first time I had been back in about 5 years. So much on the UVic Campus had changed but not much around the city felt different. It still really felt like home and was hard to leave.

November

Jeff turns 30! (I’m an old man now)

Oh and squash club is back in full force which is super fun!

December

We’ve been too busy writing this post to have anything exciting happen in December. Luckily we are snowed in right now and have time for blogging.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND ALL THE BEST IN THE NEW YEAR,

LOVE JEFF AND LINDSAY (AND WILLOW)

Slightly old news…but just too busy to post lately, so here’s our story from last weekend:

Fantastic weekend in our old stomping grounds. I was there in July but Jeff had not visited Victoria for 5 years!

The tournament went even better than expected. We were Pumpkin Pi (our league team is Pi and we went to Victoria’s Halloween tournament, Pumpkin Pull).

Travis hooked us up with some sweet jerseys, and we added the logo. You know you are a dork when you notice they were ironed on backwards.

(might have to zoom in to see the logo, but photo courtesy of Jana)

We made it to the finals! Played 5 games the first day, losing only one game to a very poor spirited team from Vancouver called Caddyshack (had another close call as we were warming up and won our first game in Universe Point). The level on Saturday was surprisingly low with only 2 good games. We even bagelled a team. I thought the competition would be better from what a remember. However, it was many years ago since we played in Pumpkin Pull and we might have been way worse than so it would have seemed like the teams were better then, even if they weren’t.

Out of 22 teams this year, we finished second!!! I had hoped to be top 8 (really didn’t want to compete in the ninals again)…so I was pleasantly surprised!

We had a first game bye so Jeff and I brought Terri and Travis for a trip down memory lane. Did a drive around UVic to see all the new buildings and then went for a drive along Beach Drive (I will own a house on Beach Drive one day, just wait for it) and played in some tidal pools at Cattle Point. We spotted a dead jellyfish and hauled it out of the water. It was huge and so cool looking. Looked just like a big clump of jello.

Went back and played the quarter final in a really fun game against a Seattle team. Game 2 was a rematch (semifinal) against the jerks. Everyone from the whole tournament hated playing against them over the weekend so we had a ton of fans during that game. We received lots of high fives from fans when we won. One particular fan had asked me where we were from on the first day and I said “we’re just a league team from Calgary”. Upon beating that team and heading to the finals he replied “not bad for just a league team”.

Pi heads to the finals against a young athletic squad from Vancouver, NBA Jammers. Got down by a few, was 9-4 at one point, got our crap together tying it up 11-11 and ended up losing 13-11. I think that’s the happiest I’ve ever been after losing.

Our team was so much fun. A terrific group of people. Thanks to everyone who went. Lots of laughs mixed in with a little fireball, some hack and some disc.

Maybe next year we can play in the final and win…..

Oompa-Loompa-Doompa-Dee-Do we have friends going to UPA and coming from Loops. (a little too random perhaps?)

Just a quick note to say good luck to GOB and HFA at UPA’s. Heather is playing Women’s on the Capitals (#44) and is listed as 5′ 10″ … also known as the only GSB on the team…. Weird. Greg (#32) is playing Masters on Throwback and is listed as 5′ 7″.

You can follow all the updates and scores at the UPA website.

The loops is because my parents and a good buddy Dylan (also from the Loops) will be in town this weekend for Halloween. 30days till I’m 30 on the 31st… scary! Anyway should be pretty fun weekend.

Please note that the picture below is neither Greg nor Heather but simply a result of searching for Heather Adams Frisbee in Google’s Image search.

It’s been quite sometime since I’ve posted (June 24th to be exact) and I’m starting to get complaints. You think people would have more pressing things to discuss then my lack of blogging but I digress… Oh and Lindsay will post a recap of her trip to Toronto tomorrow.

So what have I been up to?

Well, there has been quite a bit of Ultimate… in fact dare I say too much ultimate? Nah. I don’t dare. That’d be crazy. Besides ultimate I’ve been doing lots of work type of stuff. My ‘real’ job (aka 9-5) is going really well and we’re making some really cool progress that I really shouldn’t discuss in a public forum. My 6-11 job is going well too, I’ve got way too many ideas and too little time… C’est la vie.

Now that ultimate is over for the summer we’ll be biking, hacky sacking, playing disc golf and playing ultimate.

My Cat the Dog.

No this isn’t some way to protect myself from being called out by Mike for being a cat lover. My cat is seriously a dog! This morning we were playing “fetch” in the backyard. It wasn’t exactly fetch and it went a little something like this. I throw the Tupperware container lid somewhere in the yard, she sprints to it, looks back and meow’s at me. I walk over pick up the lid and throw it again, repeat.

Besides fetch she enjoys following us around the house. Today while I was playing ‘bike mechanic’ and I emphasize “playing” she was in the garage just hanging out. What a great little dog cat. I swear if she didn’t poop in the house I wouldn’t know she was a cat.

Well, if we couldn’t have top 8, Bronco took 9th!

First game was a blow out against Wannebego from Quebec. We didn’t play very well, but didn’t have to and won 15-4. The highlight of that game was some chick counting stalls to me in french.

Game 2 was super windy. We played Tundra and traded points for a while, then pulled away and won.

Game 3. Gecko. Because we like to stay consistent, we made nine-als (game for 9,10) way closer and exciting than it had to be. Ended up winning 11-9 in a time cap. Luckily Gecko spent so much time arguing with us, that they ran out of time!

All in all a fabulous nationals. Bronco played very well. I would have liked to have finished top 4, but we just couldn’t pull off a few key wins. Jeff and I had a super fun time. Maybe next year….

Now I’m Toronto visiting my family and putting the calories back on that I lost at Nats. Jeff is probably doing the same (back on the chips!) and taking care of Willow.

What an emotional rollercoaster!

Played Swarm in game 1 and won 15-5.

Game 2, played TFP (reigning WORLD CHAMPIONS). Traded points the entire game and Bronco comes out victorious!!!! It was amazing. Won 14-12. We played our game and they weren’t ready for our intensity. The underrated their opponents and paid for it. I’d have to say that the amazingly inspirational talk at half-time won us that game (thanks Luttmer!). If you believe in your heart that you can win, you’ll win. You just have to believe.

Game 3. Huge dissapointment. The way the seeding work and with upsets going on all the place, it came down to the wire. Bronco vs. Monster. Winner goes on to the quarters, loser drops down and out of contention.

Unfortunately we had a bye after our TFP game and weren’t able to take the intensity into the next game, but had 2 hours to sit around. Got off to a slow start, down by 3 and never recovered, losing 14-10.

Much like Regionals there were tears, but this time for the opposite reason. It was a great experience and the team is amazing with great potential. Now we are playing for 9th. At least we beat the world champions!

Final update to come!

I’m sad to report that Bronco had a disappointing day and finished 1-2.

Lost our first game to Liquid from Waterloo (who we beat in universe point last year at Nats). Maybe it was the early morning start (8:30am) and maybe they had the timezone advantage of being 2 hours ahead, but something wasn’t right. Got off to a slow start and could never recover. Lost 14-11.

Second game was much better. Played Bytown Flatball Club from Ottawa and beat them 15-8. They finished second at Nats last year, but I’m pretty sure they have a much different team this year.

Game 3 was another disappointment. Played Onyx from Quebec and lost 14-11. It was a super chipy game with lots of (bad) calls.

Hopefully tomorrow goes better! We’ve dug ourselves a pretty deep hole and I hope we can get out of it. Still contenders for the quarters, but just a tougher rode. We play TFP (from Vancouver and current World champions), Monster (MUST WIN!!!) and Swarm (beat them twice in Saskatoon this year).

Time for an epson salt bath and early to bed