They have Ultimate in Rapid City, SD?!?

August 24, 2013  -  

Rapid-CityI know, I know, I was skeptical too. But after touring the Wind Caves and Mount Rushmore, Chris sent a message to the Rapid City Ultimate facebook group. Dana Jensen responded within 7 minutes and invited us over for dinner. Unfortunately, we didn’t give him enough notice to organize a pick-up game, but it was cool to just be able to hang out with another Ultimate player. And the dude made a mean burger.

Dana said it would be cool if we crashed at his place, meaning we were able to successful sleep at an Ultimate player’s house in every state we stayed in. I think that’s pretty cool, almost as cool as Geoff and Cindy Moeding (who is responsible for a last minute donation which resulted in this), especially considering how spur-of-the-moment it was. What’s even cooler is the fact that we ended the evening by watching R. Kelly’s Hip-Opera, Trapped In The Closet, in its entirety. It’s a little weird to think that we almost went the whole summer without watching Trapped, so I’m glad we fit it in.

Mount Rushmore

August 23, 2013  -  

YMCA-CrewAfter the Wind Caves, we made the short hike (OK, we drove) to Mount Rushmore, where apparently there are four presidents whose heads are carved into the mountain. Furthermore, these heads seem to drive pretty much the entire economy of Southwest South Dakota, so how could we skip Mount Rushmore?

I don’t know a lot about the personal lives of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt or Abe Lincoln, but I’m willing to bet that none of them had as good of a hammer as Chris Schasse. For that reason, we decided to give them, and all the other onlookers, a show in the amphitheater located beneath the statues. It took three tries for Chris to throw it lightly enough to stay in the amphitheater, but I don’t have as big a hammer, so I figured I’d fare a little better.

After watching us boost a few throws back and forth, some members of an adult YMCA program located in LA wanted to try their hand at it. Unfortunately, a park ranger put the kibosh on our fun before anyone else got a chance. We salvaged the moment by tossing a disc around for a bit, and had almost as much fun. Chris decided that we should give the group a disc that they can use for the rest of the trip. Check out John and Lindsay posing with their new disc, courtesy of Clark Anderson.

Mount Rushmore was great to see, but both Chris and I agreed it would be better if they added Bryan Thomson.

Some Pretty Windy Caves

August 22, 2013  -  


Most people go the the Black Hills in South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore, and so did we. Before we made it there, however, we wanted to check out the Wind Caves. I had no idea what the Wind Caves would be like, but a good friend of ours went there last summer and I thought it sounded like a magical place, so we decided we had to check it out. On our way there, we met some bison.

Chris was too lazy to change the settings on his camera

Chris was too lazy to change the settings on his camera

As it turns out, the Wind Caves aren’t very windy, at least once you get inside. But with 140 miles of tunnels, it is the most complex cave system in the world. So that’s pretty neat. We took a guided tour of the caves and made a few friends while we were there. Dane and Grace and their family were vacationing from Minnesota (Go Vikes) and weren’t nearly as scared as Chris when our tour guide turned all the lights off. For that, they earned themselves each a disc, courtesy of a few cats, Porch and Dolly. Tracie, I apologize that you can’t see your nickname written on the disc, but Grace really just wanted to wear it on her head.

 

 

Chris was too lazy to put the camera on a tripod

Chris was too lazy to put the camera on a tripod

We also met Anderson from Denver, CO within the depths of the Wind Caves. He had on a Colorado Avalanche shirt, but that’s probably just because Colorado doesn’t have a professional Ultimate team yet. My dad, Jeff Wagner, taught me not to like hockey from a young age. I thought it was because he didn’t like hockey, but I found out years later that it was just because he didn’t want to pay for me to play it. Hockey could have been my calling, but I found Ultimate instead, which of course pays WAY better. Anderson, my dad is awesome and I love him for pointing me in the right direction, but if you want, go ahead and play both hockey and Ultimate. You can credit both your dad and your disc donor, Caleb Gerdes, when you become great at both.

Yellowstone Discs

August 20, 2013  -  
Picture compliments of Jame's phone, which sucks.

Picture compliments of Jame’s phone, which sucks.

Alright, it’s a poor picture; let’s get that out of the way right now. Guess who was operating the camera, ha, ha, ha…

Anyway, Ken Schasse, Michelle Anderson, and Derek Levin, your discs have been donated to Seeger, Julian, and Liam, respectively (cool names, right?). Their family was vacationing from Wisconsin and Julian and Liam both caught the first disc I threw to them and completed the throw back to me. So yeah, they were gonna get themselves some discs. NOTE: I didn’t get the chance to throw one to Seeger, but I didn’t want it to sound like he dropped his.

While no disc is more special than another, I would like to make a special note about Derek’s. His disc is the only one we’ve given away than already has a few scratches from hitting the concrete. It’s also the only one that has allegedly been run over by a moving vehicle. I wasn’t there when the incident occurred, so I can neither confirm nor deny its accuracy. Lastly, it’s the only disc that has been given away on the second attempt. That’s right Derek, someone refused your disc when we were in Seattle. I’m sure the first two interesting facts had nothing to do with the third…

In any case, the fellas have a road disc (everyone needs a disc they can beat up on the road) and two pristine ones to use to perfect their flick hucks upon their return home. Heck guys, if you wanna see if you can throw Derek’s disc into Old Faithful, far be it for me to stop you. You only need one for a three-man_mark_drill anyhow. But seriously, you guys better at least use the other two discs to become some awesome Ultimate players.

A Bozo Weekend

August 18, 2013  -  

James-Bozeman-GearMontana has certainly never been known for its sports teams, so we didn’t know what kind of Ultimate we’d find here when we left on this trip. And while we haven’t spent a lot of time here, we’ve been pleasantly surprised with what we’ve found.

It wasn’t as easy to find the Ultimate community here as it has been in other places. Turns out that the internet hasn’t quite taken off in Montana yet, so a lot of people didn’t see our post on their Yahoo! Group. Thankfully, Tim Staub was at the library and was able to respond to us.

He invited us to drop by the Bozeman Bike Kitchen, where he volunteers on Thursday nights. We met him there and after dismantling a bike, Chris and I followed him to Music on Main to meet some of the other Bozo Ultimate team members. It was cool to kick it with the fellas for the evening and hang out with a crew as awesome as Paula Meyer herself.

On Friday, we woke with the sun and got down to business making a video with Tim, who brews his own beer. From scratch. Using a method he learned in the mountains of Washington, Tim expertly turns barley into delicious beer. Unfortunately he had just moved to Bozeman so he didn’t have any for us to sample. Might be another reason to come back to Montana…

We’ve met a whole slew_of_cool_characters in this town, but its time to be moving on. We’ve got a lot of site seeing yet to do and only a week left. Yikes!

 

Minnesotans in Idaho?

  -  

Disc-DonationWe knew that we would only be in Idaho for an hour or so on our way through to Montana, so we had to make our time count. We didn’t want to say that we just passed through Idaho, so we pulled into a rest stop to hopefully give a disc away.

While we were tossing a disc in the parking lot, a van with a Minnesota plate rolled up. A family with two young kids hopped out, so I ran back to the car to grab a few discs that were donated by Minnesotans. I found Jeff Wagner and Lisa Anderson (who both live in Minnesota) and the discs found their way into the hands of Levi and Piper.

As it turns out, the family was actually from Seattle and the van was a rental they were taking to Fargo. But they enjoyed the discs nonetheless. Their dad even taught them to throw a chicken wing and I’m pretty sure Levi could throw it further than either Chris or I. So I didn’t exactly get to meet any Minnesotans, but I think we still made their day!

In any case, Minnesotans are awesome. Especially Neal Hanke. I’m sad that the end of our trip is drawing near, but it’ll be fun to be back!

Our First Dinner Date

August 17, 2013  -  

Ken and VangieThose of you who remember our Kickstarter will recall that one of the favorite rewards was a dinner date with Schasse and Wags after our return where we will relive our experiences with the donor. While our trip isn’t quite done yet, we did get a head start on our dinner dates while in Seattle.

Chris’ Dad and Step-mom, Ken and Vangie Schasse, live in Seattle and were kind enough to contribute to our Kickstarter, so we figured we’d test out our cooking skills on them before we returned home. We had planned to do the dinner on Saturday night, but Ken and Vangie were staying at a hotel about 3 hours away from the ECC tournament because I apparently don’t own a globe. I accidentally told them to book a hotel in the wrong city, but fortunately they weren’t too upset with me. All was OK in the end and we rescheduled the dinner for Sunday night once they returned to Seattle.

We cooked salmon per Ken’s exact instructions, but he was very particular about his fish, so we were constantly battling to keep him out of the kitchen. Vangie was content with a glass of wine and a spot on the couch and after several struggles, we got Ken to relax too. The salmon turned out great (although Ken insisted on giving it a look-over before it was brought out) and we feasted like people who aren’t on a summer long road trip might.

It was worth the hard work to have a nice sit-down dinner and just share some stories for a change. We’re looking forward to the rest of our dinners and we hope they are all as awesome as Jane and Kevin Murphy!

MSP in SEA

August 16, 2013  -  

The weekend of Aug 10-11, 26 of our friends who play for Minnesota Star Power decided to join us in Seattle. As luck would have it, there was an elite mixed tournament taking place here this weekend too! MSP was fortunate enough to be a part of the 2013 Emerald City Classic, part of USA Ultimate’s inaugural Triple Crown tour. Yeah, our friends are kind of a big deal…

The MSP people started to trickle into town on Thursday night, so we had an evening of fun with Kensgaard, Soccer, Tower, and Doctor Poptart before they had to get down to business. By Friday night, the entire team had arrived in full force and was ready…for bed. I tucked them all in promptly at 9 pm (to their credit it was 11 pm central time) and then had to find something to do for the next few hours. I wasn’t trying to get a good night’s sleep before an Ultimate tournament…

MSP knew they had a tough weekend ahead of them as they were competing against some of the best mixed teams in the country. They performed_admirably on Saturday (I would know, I was rockin’ the stat sheet) but unfortunately came up a little short in each of their games. However, no one was willing to drop their heads and they came out firing on Sunday. They lost their first game 13-15 to Mental Toss Flycoons, but responded by winning their last two games to break seed.

It was really cool to watch a team of Our_Friends come into a tournament with a low seed and play every team they saw as hard as they could. Schultzy and Jeb-a-deb-deb continually came up big on D, C-Bomb, Krabby, and Boobecca made defenders look silly, and MOARavec edged out all the Tom Grunds for team heartthrob. We celebrated the successful weekend by standing_really_close_together and looking incredibly attractive.

 

Skyd Magazine

August 15, 2013  -  

Skyd MagazineIn addition to being the location for Five Ultimate, Seattle is also home to the Skyd Magazine office. Chris and I met the Editor-In-Chief/President, Elliot Trotter, for lunch on Thursday. Also at the table was Typical Ted, who you might recognize from his taco_video.

We had a great time sharing Ultimate stories over lunch at CJ’s. Both Elliot and Ted play Ultimate at a high level, and are very connected within the Seattle scene. It was interesting to listen to them talk about elite Ultimate and hear the crazy stories they had to share.

Elliot and our buddy Jonathan from Five Ultimate both play for the Seattle Voodoo, who we got to watch play at Kleimman Eruption. They were practicing that night and said it would be cool if we came to check them out.

Voodoo was preparing for the Colorado cup, so practice consisted of a lot of offensive line vs defensive line drills and scrimmaging. Trotter demonstrated the easiest way to swing the disc across the field (scoober) while Masler came up with the sickest layout of the practice.

Good luck to Voodoo the rest of the season and of course to Typical Ted on any future typical shot videos. And good luck to Lisa Anderson on continuing to be super awesome. Although I don’t think she’ll need it.


The song is “Tongue Roller” by DJ Ananzi

Five Ultimate

August 9, 2013  -  

Five-Ultimate

We’ve been in Seattle for a few days now and we’ve kept busy meeting some pretty cool people. Our friend from Flagstaff suggested a few people to contact and of course, they turned out to be really awesome.

On Wednesday, we were invited to lunch by Jonathan Masler, a former sectional rival and Wisconsin Hodag. Jonathan now works for Five Ultimate here in Seattle and we were hoping to catch a glimpse of the Five facility while meeting him.

As it turns out, we got a lot more than just a glimpse. After lunch, we went back to Five and Jon introduced us to the staff and showed us around. We talked to a number of people about The Break Side and they all seemed pretty interested in what we’re doing. As a result, they are allowing us to feature them in an episode of The Break Side.

We went back to Five on Friday to film the episode. We tossed a disc around their warehouse, raced to see which one of us could put on more five gear in a minute, and did some goofy things with some of the staff members. It’s gonna be a fun video.

It was really awesome meeting the crew at Five Ultimate and getting to shoot an episode with them. It was a pretty big deal to us that such a large and reputable company was willing to collaborate with The Break Side. Thanks to Jonathan and the entire Five Ultimate crew for showing us such a good time.