Brokeback Beach Ultimate

In the final game of beach ultimate down in Seaside, Oregon last weekend, I gratuitously laid out for a frisbee and somehow landed on my spine. It hurt. The six-hour motorcycle ride home did not help the bruised spine. I'm not really sure what to do other than "take it easy." Do I lay down? Is sitting OK? Oh well, time heals all wounds, right?

The beach ultimate trip was a lot of fun, but could have been better. Princess Leia and I did not gel whatsoever. When she was open I would make a bad throw, and the times I made good throws she would completely misread the disc and drop it. One of my "good" throws even hit her in the back--which is pretty darn hard to do when she knows the disc is coming to her. We finished 6th in the "winners" bracket, and we played savage most of the weekend (i.e. no subs).

Playing on the beach was both fun and frustrating. We had a constant 10-20mph wind all weekend, which made throws incredibly difficult, and our team did not have the best handlers in the world. Our team only had two people who had ever played beach ultimate before, so the simple act of running on the sand took us a while to get used to. You can't lead people as far as you are used to, and jumping is nearly non-existant. Laying out for frisbees is a lot more fun though, because if you can avoid landing directly on your spine, laying out on sand really doesn't hurt (I've got to work on this in the future).

Overall, the ultimate and the motorcycle ride to and from the ocean was a weekend well spent. We hit Seattle at dusk on our way back, and the city sunset was amazing looking out towards the Olympics from I-5 just south of the city.