Process of Illumination

I had a dream I won the lottery. The following afternoon I went to my corner gas station and bought a ticket. I didn't win.

It's a shame, because I had already spent the $50 million I was set to win a few times over, and holding the losing ticket, was instead forced to think of all the could-have-beens. But it led me down a interesting train of thought. How would the Ultimate community have responded to my grandiose plans for the sport with the money I almost won?

Would we welcome them with open arms and be grateful for the fact they're pumping money in the sport, however they chose? Or would we, as I suspect, demand not only accountability but also an active hand in the cookie jar they'd provide for us?

It seems that while the phrase "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" survives the times people are always ready with a hand out for a helping when it's time to split the prize. How many would be angry if the only beneficiaries of the person's generosity would be the participants of the club championships, say, all-expenses paid trip to the tourney? How many would judge them critically if they offered cash prizes to the winners of the open division only?

I did not win the lottery - this time. But I'm close. As I type this I am using a complex algorithm taking into account all past numbers drawn and the positioning of the stars to put out next week's winning numbers. I think when I do win, to appease the masses, along with several of my own more selfish ventures (pampered living for all Hodags and Bravo, among other ideas) I will set aside a trust similar in scope to the current UPA innovation grants, but with a shitload more funding. That way the voice of the people can be heard through the shouting of a vocal few who will probably still be pissed the money is not being spent they way they'd like.

Oh, and also Kyle Weisbrod would have a dozen eunochs to do his bidding so that Juniors ultimate continues and accelerates its explosive growth. Nothing would make me happier for the sport than a future in which I wouldn't be able to contribute at its highest levels.

When you become a millionaire, if you share my passion for this sport, what will you do with the money?

Since there's one thing Ultimate needs, it's definitely one more ranking methodology. With the poorly named NUMP emerging last year in addition to two UPA-driven ranking systems, we figured we throw our hat in as well.

1. Colorado
Losing on double game point and retaining almost everyone, Mamabird is the presumptive favorite to win the national title.

2. Stanford
Though losing Handler and Herbert, this team picked up Neale Mahoney (Brown '05) and retains the rest of the faceless.

3. UBC
They hang on to Hibbert and Pottinger and -- by the way -- their big time players just won Club Nationals? Yeah, they'll do okay. Don't they have their own college nationals?

4. Wisconsin
The Hodags need to shake their habit of losing big games. Enough talent to make it far, but questions remain in the coaching department. This region has one bid and Regionals in Madison should help.

5. Oregon
Finally, the last Wiggins is gone. Hating aside, the Eugene Gentlemen's Organization has been recruiting the last couple years and Oregon state's high school Ultimate scene is among the most potent.

6. Florida
Kirk Gibson and his crew aspire to get to Columbus. When they do, expect noise... and some duct tape over their UFUCT logos.

7. Georgia
Dylan Tunnell remains one of the best athletes in the college game. If his teammates can bring it, too, Jojah will be a threat. In our opinion Tunnell is also among early leaders for the Callahan Award

8. UC San Diego
Sure they lost Kubiak, but this team knows their Nationals bid is locked up. If they peak at the right time again (hint: May 27) we'll see pink bandanas on CSTV again.

9. Michigan State
Though we can't recall the last time a Great Lakes team made quarters at Nationals (hm, no, actually it was 2001) this team will look to improve on their CCC finals appearance.

10. Brown
They lost most/all of their starters, their Callahan- and Gold Medal-winning poster boy, and -- perhaps most significantly -- their Eli of a coach, Nathan Wicks.

Women's Top 10 to follow....

PROLOGUE | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5

I have a routine when flying. I’m the last to board, I ignore the flight attendants, I sleep, then wake to eat and write. On the fifth of July I boarded a plane for Denver in the morning and began it. It was as any other flight; predictable, familiar, comforting. I looked out at Mount Rainier and remembered how my biggest problems always become manageable when put into perspective. The fatigue, the emotion, the pain, the drugs, the alcohol, the ultimate. Everything had been so intense and so searing that it cauterized the wound shut even as it cut me.

When I arrived at my house in Boulder, I placed my bags in my room and went directly to the hot tub. The dogs came and licked my face, I had a jug of iced water, and over my backyard fence I looked at the foothills of the Rockies. It was time to think of this place like home, I thought. I had the week off from work, mini-camp that weekend, and an entire Ultimate season to think about. I dunked my head underwater and smiled at all the ass-kicking still left to do on the field. I thought of my friends in Colorado and the teammates that would do anything for me, even pick me up from my own despair if I needed it. Sick. I was home.

PROLOGUE | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5

We arrived at the breakfast place where I shared my night’s tale with several other members of my team, and a few friends and former teammates who were wondering why I looked like I’d been deported. Matt Bruss was especially poignant in some of his remarks, but calmly broke the somber mood with his humor and feigned nescience. I set about looking at the other patrons in the diner, and realized half of the world’s top fifty Ultimate players were eating there at once. Had a terrorist at that moment decided it was a good place to bomb, the new best player in Ultimate would probably have been Adam Tarr, and the new dynasty Jawbone out of Ohio. It made me laugh a little to think of it, and that felt good.

I felt better after eating, human again, and decided to redirect my energy to a positive place, a familiar place, an effective place: the ownership of whomever might guard me in the day’s games...!

Oh yes! Lest we forget, after that night, there was still another day of Ultimate to be played. How I would find the emotional and physical strength to play it was beyond my ken, I only knew it had to be done.

We returned to the fields and the good news that we had a first round bye, and as time passed I became more alert and the events of last night, as best as I could remember them, were sinking in.

Our morning match-up was against CK, Cram, O’Brien, Enessa, et al. I remember playing well. Very well. I threw and scored a lot of points. I also remember tripping up with CK on double game point and not contesting the foul. And I remember his subsequent throw to Enessa for the game winner.

But all this is secondary, because not once during the entire game did I not remember my conversation outside the truck and the way we’d just stared at each other for an eternity before we spoke. Well, maybe once I stopped remembering it. I was about to score a goal at a critical moment on O’Brien. All Sebby needed to do was throw something, anything, into the corner of the endzone from two yards out. He could have tossed it like a shot-put. Anything but the floating, lazy scoober that hung for too long and came up too short so O’Brien ran in front and fell into the block. Then, for one moment, the bewilderment at the choice of throw gave me respite from my other preoccupations.

Our following game was against Hang Time from Texas, and despite the fact that I just love crushing real coed teams at tourneys just like this one, my heart wasn’t into it. In fact, no one’s was. Everyone stumbled from one point to another but no one had any pizzazz or fire. But near half, down a few, they started shitting on their own women, making tacky calls, and taking the game too seriously, and we called a time-out to remind ourselves that if we can extract no joy from beating down practicing coed teams, the terrorists have already won. We dropped some shock and awe on them in the second half and after shotgunning two red bulls I was ready to take names again. I lent myself entirely to the Dark Side and let my passions and emotions dictate my movement on the field and we ended up storming back and beating them by several points.

That sudden ejaculation of emotion exhausted, we slumped on the sidelines as a team and decided we’d had enough disc and elected to not play our next game, taking some sadistic pleasure from telling our opponents they could move on in our stead. I joined my Boulder brethren, smoked a load, and felt relaxed and unencumbered for the first time in days. We laughed, shared stoned stories from the weekend, then grabbed some snacks and moved to watch the semifinals games where the Vagabonds were owning Team USA.

The crowd began thirsting for the upset and soon every sick play by Aaron Richards, Leslie Calder, Keith Monahan, and Brian Snyder was rewarded with lusty cheers. Team USA, the soi-disant best team in the country, fell to a ringer team of Northwest players. Their disappointment was matched only by the Vagabonds’ exuberance. And the crowd’s guilty satisfaction. I had little interest in watching the finals because I was up to my crow in disc, so I made my way back to the tent to prepare my things and be ready for when my girlfriend would arrive and we would have an uncomfortable ride back to her Seattle apartment.

Gone were the goals and plans of a bittersweet but enjoyable week with her before our end. It was replaced, I could see in both our minds we were walking through scenarios in which we’d be out of each other’s hair as quickly as possible. However, my flight wasn’t for another 6 days, and although neither of us had any desire to spend it together, I had no desire to pay for the transfer fee to change my flight. I knew my patience outweighed her discomfort, however, so I merely waited until she offered to pay for the ticket’s fee, which she did. Considering the weekend’s events, I considered it a fair solatium. The drive home was full of quotable gems I’ll decline to share, but her piebald arguments seemed directed at being hurtful and irrelevant so as to make the separation that much more justified. I burked my comments, and let her try to shrive away her guilt as best she could. At some point I just stopped listening and started trying to take in everything that had happened.

The One They Call Wade offered his services and house as a place to crash for the night or week, and as touched as I was by the generosity, I just wanted to get home to Boulder, to lay down roots for the first time, to reach tabula rasa and look forward with promise. We arrived at her apartment and Moises Rifkin picked me up and took me to his new, empty apartment, where he provided me with a sleeping bag, pillow, thermarest, and a few kind words. He left, and I laid in the bag. It was the fourth of July, the fireworks overlooking the water began to explode, and I heard their thunder and muffled partying all around. I slowly dozed off, hoping to find in a dream the clarion answers that had eluded me all weekend.

PROLOGUE | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5

The only good thing about the prior night was that since we’d gone to bed so late we didn’t have to share the tent’s awkwardness for too long. In the morning I tried to engage her in small talk but she was treating me as if I were public enemy number one. She seemed to find fault in my every action, my previously endearing mannerisms now her pet peeves, my words just wrong. Now, there are many things I suck at but predicting behavior based on inferences and context clues is not one of them. Ask anyone who knows me well and they will tell you attention to detail and comprehension are to me as natural as eating Mexican food and throwing lefty. In short, I knew where this was going, and knew to expect more of this before we got there.
We left the tent without exchanging pleasantries and I joined my team.

Disappointingly, our team was to continue playing cupcakes until our last round, when we’d get to play a bunch of duders whose manhoods were clearly defined within the biking shorts they wore. This whole thing with my girlfriend was really starting to get to me, but a cruel glimmer of hope sparkled its chatoyant light in my eyes when she and some of her teammates came to watch the better portion of our last game. Perhaps I became distracted at this thought of harmonious resolution, because despite playing pretty fucking well all game I spaced at the game’s most crucial moment and we lost in a barnburner.

As soon as the game ended, the talk immediately shifted to the night’s revelry, and the hedonism danced in the pupils of friend and foe alike. I was still bumming about my romantic situation, and this perhaps guided my fate towards its predictable conclusion. I allowed my stress to steer my decision making, so when I was introduced to the game of “punch the bag of Franzia and chug it” it made sense to me. It was a release I could comprehend, and I played it with élan. I must have gone twelve rounds with that bag, and the night would show it won in a no-brainer judge’s decision. I for one drank somewhere between two and three liters of wine worth about four dollars in fifty minutes.

I staggered to the showcase field for the day’s final game, but was intercepted by two damned harbingers of malaise. The first was my friend Don Steg with a Tupperware of pot brownies, and being famished, I ate four. The second was my friend on Sockeye, one of a few, who at this moment was in full Wade mode. His smile revealed his shiny teeth, and I made the error of focusing on their ethereal glow rather than the words he was saying. I drifted back into the conversation in time to hear “shrooms at the party for you,” and before I knew it, he was walking in the opposite direction and I was still nodding my head affirmatively.

I watched Team USA and Canada play in a close but boring game of Ultimate. Like hornets and their stingers, neither team was fully willing to invest itself knowing a rematch the following day was likely. After the game, my girlfriend disappeared like the vapors and I found myself in the pleasant company of Bill Denver and other world’s team members as we headed to the showers in preparation for the party. In case your acumen is not as honed as mine, let me say that at this moment I was fucked up. I was a stone’s throw away from TAFS, “take a fucking seat”. In fact, as I showered amongst the cocks of some of the best players in the game, I thought the pressure of the showerhead itself might knock me over. These next few paragraphs are pieced together from witnesses to my actions and caustic moments of blurred memory. More or less I blacked out, but remember some of the important scraps.

The plan: Head to the party with Bill Denver, my teammates, and there dance, eat salmon, find my girlfriend, and share a few moments where alcohol might ease our tension. The reality: I arrived with my team, but within five minutes of entering the building, Wade found me. Then I remember him holding me by my long hair and pumping mushrooms into my mouth like a goose being prepped for fois gras. There is a moment where I found Ben Wiggins and remembered searching my pockets for the whittled toothbrush handle I’d prepared for just this meeting. Not finding it, we engaged in what I’m sure was an intelligible discussion on the finer points of Minimalism and its impact on architectural design, but the next thing I knew my roommate and friend Parker Krug was pulling me away because it seems the conversation was going to end with Ben, myself, or the both of us dead by our own hands. Then the shrooms really kicked in, and I started arguing with Idaho about who the fuck knows, maybe who’s more Mexican or who’s shanked more people or some shit. The next flash imagery is of me in line to get salmon, and someone scooping some onto my plate.

Now, despite the fact I was on enough controlled substances to subdue Hunter Thompson, you must remember this about me: I am a thinker. And the thing that was owning my brain was how much the current situation with my girlfriend fucking sucked, and how it was going to continue getting worse as the tournament progressed.

Some time later, it could have been the following instant or an hour afterwards, I remember someone tugging at my leg. I couldn’t make sense of it, but slowly came to and realized I was in an ivy bush face-down in my salmon dinner crying my eyes out at the beauty and ugliness of life and my friend Michael Bryce Whitaker was trying to talk to me, console me, and pull me out of the shrubbery. I love this man as a brother and say without hesitation that had he not pulled me out my chance of surviving the night was a coin toss. I truly believe this. Knowing the kind of man Whit is, I am sure there are others out there who have been in similar peril and been rescued by Stanford’s own Jiminy Cricket. I owe him my life. I rose to my feet still weeping like a Sicilian widow and in that state proceeded to be led to the buses that were shipping people back to the fields. That was not a world I was ready to enter, a metal drunk tank on wheels and me with snot dripping out my nose and ranting about everything going on with my girlfriend at the top of my lungs.

Thankfully, miraculously, as we approached the line waiting for the bus my guardian angel sent Will Henry by driving his car back to the fields, and instantly recognizing I was in need of assistance, offered to drive us back. Bless his heart and a million apologies because at this point the shrooms were peaking and I was spilling a diarrheic soliloquy about my love life that he didn’t need to be burdened with. Nonstop. Without exaggeration I talked for the next two hours without pause. We arrived at the fields, and this is a moment I won’t forget, because it is when you are at your highest despair that your true friends reveal themselves. My Colorado roommates, a girl I’d wronged, people I’d ditched to play on my Potlatch team, they came to me and welcomed me and looked after me by their tent until I started coming down. I’d not seen my girlfriend since the end of the day’s games and the only thing I wanted to do was lie in the privacy of our tent and sober up, and maybe even steal a nap if the demon dreams of hallucination would allow it.

I unzipped the flap, entered the tent, and collapsed in a heap on the sleeping bags. How long I laid there I don’t know, but I remember slowly coming to and all of Team USA and others were shot gunning beers right outside. Amongst cheers and jeers and crushed cans I thought I made out the voice of my girlfriend, and decided I would compose myself and try to socialize a bit. I snapped to, opened the tent flap, and stepped outside deliberately and coherently. She saw me emerge and shot me a look of horror, disgust?

In night’s uncertain shadows it was hard to read. She was talking to a former teammate of mine and a fellow Wisconsin alum and seemed insulted I would interrupt the conversation with my emergence.

“Hey, what’s up? What’s everyone doing?” I mustered, and she replied coolly and accusingly, “What are you doing?”
“Just coming out to rally and hang out,” I replied, but I’d not finished the sentence before she and my former teammate turned their backs to me and began walking in the opposite direction. I may have said something to the effect of wanting to talk with her and she may have said something to the effect of saying I was fucked up, I don’t remember if that part happened or not. What did happen is she continued walking without hesitation or a glance back, and I sat with Tully and others and contemplated the scene.

I retreated back into the tent defeated and looking to sleep. Again I laid there for some time and when I emerged from the tent once more my girlfriend was nearby still continuing the conversation from before. I know she saw me, and I know she wanted no part of me because they again walked away, this time to the red truck and sped off. To where, I didn’t know. I was exhausted and my mind was working with the clarity that always comes at a shrooming trip’s end. I was alert and everything around me was in a focus sharp enough to cut me.

I’m not sure how long I sat by the tent. I had no idea what time it was. It was that time of the day when the shadows worm out of the ground against the morning’s sunrise. Light and dark were in limbo as were the thoughts of frustration and compassion that flickered in my head. I decided to lap around the fields to get blood flowing and some fresh air, but when I reached the opposite end of the field, by the far parking lot, a most peculiar thing happened. I thought I was hallucinating again because there, parked one hundred yards away, I swore was the red truck. The red truck I had come to the fields in, the same one that had sped away as I emerged from the tent moments before. I approached cautiously, hesitantly.

Have you ever had a moment when you’ve come down from your trip, and you see something you know is real, but inside you hope against rational thought that you might still be tripping, that it might be something your mind is painting in your vision but is not really there?

When I was no more than forty yards away I saw her, I saw them. They were in the truck and she sat up quickly and made eye contact with me. Her face was anguish, alarm, shock, anger, all within ten seconds, a grotesque Marcel Marceau act. We just stared at each other as I continued to walk towards the truck, and he feigned fatigue and looked around the inside of the truck for something he could stare at. Slowly, she adjusted herself and stepped out of the truck. I was ten yards away. We faced each other like Western duelers and it was some time before either of us spoke.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked.
“I don’t know. What can be said?” It was obvious to both of us what was happening but we would waltz around the situation.
“I don’t think we should be together.” It was an observation that didn’t need vocalizing, but she found it a better alternative than anything else.
“That’s obvious. What should we do right now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come back to the tent with me, please.” I was pleading. This all felt so terribly awkward, so childish.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.” At the time this comment seemed terribly juvenile, but months later as I think about it I realize it was the perfect riposte for the conversation we were having.
At this point we both just wanted to be away from each other, and he was looking in the truck’s dash for some ejector seat button that would jettison him away from all this ugliness. I took my leave without saying another word and walked back to the tent. She opened the door and returned to the safety of the truck.

As I approached my tent, Kyle Weisbrod intercepted me and I broke down the hour’s news. I told him I just wanted to lie down, but he convinced me to drive with him and his peerless fiancé Sarah Gravelin to breakfast, where I could eat some food, rehydrate, get ready to play another day of ultimate, and contemplate the emotional sinkhole I’d walked into these last 40 hours. We got in the car and drove away, the first break from the fields I’d had since arriving. My eyes squinted from the morning’s effulgence.