Monday, October 30, 2006

UPA and a Soul Crushing Weekend

With the results in from Ultimate's big show, it appears Sockeye and Fury took home the glory. Furious gives up their crown losing to Sockeye in the finals. Fury takes the Women's division with a pretty convincing win over Riot.

The Canadian entrants did well. As I said before, Furious took second. The Capitals finished in the top 8 with a 7th place finish. That's down a few seeds from last year, but they had a good tournament getting into the power pool. Glum finished 5th; that's a great finish.

Pictured Above: This is an early version of the BEAT logo created by Hilary Leung. This, in my mind, is the best logo I've ever scene, and it is the one of the only pictures I would consider getting tattooed to my body.

While these teams were playing in the south, I had the fortune of playing with Bacon Eggs and Toast (BEAT) at a Halloween tournament in Kingston, ON. This was one of the toughest tournaments I've ever played in. Not because of the competition, but instead, the weather combination actually made me dislike (even hate) ultimate for the first time. It must be me aging, but apparently the equation for soul crushing is rain+cold+wind. The field was also a muddy soup likened to crumbs of a chocolate cake mostly covered in coffee.

Pictured Above: This is a where's Waldo scene. This was taken after our game against the Pirates at Goosebowl in Kingston.

I've played in snow, ice, and hail, but the key combination of being soaked and coldness cracked my spirit. It cracked many spirits. Luckily, I was with a great group of people and we had some fun.

PJ

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Peter,

Something that made a huge (beneficial) difference for me this weekend was using a pair of "Seal Skin" socks. These were recommended by Arthur and are similar to gore tex in that they let the sweat out, but don't let any water in. You put them on over your regular socks. I was skeptical at first, but after three games the first day of running around in several inches of rain & mud, I got back to the hotel took the cleats & seal skins off and found that the socks underneath were so clean and dry that I could have worn them out that night ... although I didn't :-)

I found these at Europe Bound for ~ $45.

Anonymous said...

I just read about 5 sentences on these things and they sound, as you said, to work like gore tex socks would. Sounds like a good idea, but I just wonder how long they'll last. Most people find that they wear out quickly under hiking conditions, and ultimate is much more strenuous. Whether it's worth it or not is a matter of how long they hold up.

One thing we use to keep our feet warm on long winter dog sledding trips is a "Vapour Barrier Liner", a very technical piece of equipment sometimes known as a plastic grocery bag. While they don't let your feet breathe, they keep the warm stuff in and the cold (and dirty) stuff out. One consideration might be the slippery nature of wearing plastic bags inside of shoes, but I think it might be alright if your cleats are tight and fit well.

Europe Bound also carries these for ~$0.

Peter Andrew Jamieson said...

We've warn the plastic bags at snowplate to various success. It is cheap, but it also isn't guaranteed to work (many times they leak).

PJ