My Auxiliary Family

It's been a long time since I have written on this but I thought that I would go ahead and finish something that I started a long time ago...

A long time coming.

By the end of 2013 I was tired of playing ultimate. I attribute some of this to being physically burnt out after playing for almost a decade, but more than that I was tired exhausted of pretending like I wasn't emotionally drained from the community. For better or for worse I didn't end up quitting...

Pie Hole.

Thus far its proven to be quiet a good thing I didn't quit. I was fortunate enough to have meet some really genuine people over the years, one of whom reached out to me about a fall league team he was putting together.

The purpose was not to win at all costs, nor was it to just drink and roll over to teams. The team was established so that friends could come together play as hard as they wanted to and most importantly enjoy some good old fashion all american pie. First and foremost I want to thank Ky for setting this team up and inviting me to play with you guys it's been a real pleasure and honestly you showed me how much fun frisbee really is. The next two I want to thank are Natalie and Masler, each in their own way they pulled the 'Why' out of me. I think its important for everyone to be in touch with the why and understand the reason behind the choices we make instead of just following the pack or continuing down the same path out of habit. The last person that really brought me back into the light was an old friend from high school who reminded me that it's fun to play and make plays for people you respect and trust, so thanks Cole.

Obviously Seattle will always be my home plain and simple. This October at nationals I was overwhelmed by all of the friends and loved ones that I got to see in one place. It reminded me that I can be so far from home and seemingly disconnected from everyone's lives, but in an instant it all comes flooding back and you feel like you haven't missed a beat with anyone.

ATL.

It's hard to imagine but I have been here now for 6 months, I ride the sub way, I cheer for the home teams (when there are things to cheer for), and I have found a routine. I was told that when moving I would have to make it 6 months before a city would feel like home. Thanks you those of you who told me to wait it out when I wanted to quit and come back home. I'm not going to drone on about the cliches of finding my stride in a new city I now consider home. So here are the cliff notes; Thanks Bucket and Chain for making me feel so at home in a new place. Thanks Matt and Miranda for not only housing me when I first moved here, but for holding my hand while I met new people and connected to a new community. And thank you Jason Campbell for always being down to hang out, throw, run, drink, talk, being a great friend when I really need one.

I'll recap nationals soon.

I love you Mom and Dad,


Allan Laviolette

Falling in Love Takes One-Fifth of a Second

Coming Home.

I've been in Atlanta for about a month now and I can confidently say that I'm ready to make a trip back to the Northwest. I've been enjoying myself a great deal, but I really miss my friends and my family. I know I won't get a chance to see everyone while I am back but I will be sending my love through those that I do get a chance to see.

Looking back now it was a bold (albeit somewhat stupid) move to pack up everything and head to a new city. But all idiocy aside it gave me a chance to reflect on my life and helped me to clarify what it is that I value and am willing to work to hold onto. I have learned a lot about myself what it is I value in a home city as well as the people I want to surround myself with. It has been a arduous task but I have managed to foster a lot of my friendships back home or in other cities making time to either send emails or make phone calls.

I'm flying into Portland and am going to get a chance to see a MLU game Rainmakers vs the Stags! If you have nothing to do that weekend and want to come hang out in Portland Saturday and watch the game Saturday night that would be awesome and I would love to see you.

Spring.

Spring has officially sprung in The A. It's gorgeous and sunny almost everyday! I have also now experienced my first Southern lightning storm it full of thunder and warm rain. I've been maintaining the miles I'm running, but I starting to do real workouts on the track to get ready for tryouts (I'm actually doing it, going for it 100%). I actually went out to my first tryouts for a team called Smoke Shack last weekend. It was a lot of fun the level of play for fairly high. But more than anything it was really nice to get out and get to know more people in Atlanta. Work has really picked up I'm now in full control of the accounting side of things and have started getting to poke around other non administrative departments like marketing and installations. It's pretty cool work I might actually get to go out and install one of our video wall systems in the future. I'm working on getting my CTS Certification so I have a full scope knowledge of how our product works. I'm pretty excited I've been learning a lot and once I get my certification it will allow me to do a lot of cool projects within the company.

I've nestled in nicely with a group of good people, that enjoy brewing/drinking beer as well as playing games and going on adventures. They have been very accepting of a lost soul and I have actually spent most of my non-working hours hanging out at their houses and just chatting about life, traveling, relationships and families. 

I bought a scooter and have been roaming around getting to know the streets better in a radius greater than the one that I have been running in. I'm now fairly familiar with most of the city and can comfortably navigate the triangle of Matt's house, work, and Decatur.

I have been apartment hunting as of late and have narrowed down where I want to live to either Decatur/Little 5 Points or Midtown these are young neighborhoods with a lot of interesting bars and restaurants as well as both places have either a Trader Joe's or a Whole Foods!

Hair gets lighter,
Skin gets darker,
Water gets warmer,
Drinks get colder,
Music gets louder,
Nights get longer,
Life gets better.

Wet Hot American Spring!

Coming home. 

I left on Friday at 4AM after staying up most of the night with my friend watching movies and shooting the shit about work and life. Ended up landing in Seattle about an hour later than expected but because of the time difference it was only 1PM boom! Managed to sleep 40 of the 45 minute flight to North Carolina, unfortunately that would be the only sleep I would get until eventually making it to Walla Walla.

Unabashedly I can say this was one of the most emotionally turbulent weekends of my life. Stepping off the plane (with a shit eating grin) I realized how much I longed to be back in the northwest. Over the past 6 months I have toyed with the idea of quitting playing frisbee. For better or for worse a large proponent of why I didn't quit was because I was introduced to a team of people I now consider my auxiliary family.

The impetus behind my journey back home was to play in a tournament called Onionfest. This was the very first tournament that I ever attended way back in 2004. High school juniors at the time, Alyssa Weatherford and Shannon O'malley talked me into going with the high school club team MoHo. Since then I have returned to the tournament several times with a similar group of people, and I can safely say this continues to be one of my favorite tournaments, unlike potlatch or poultry days, Onionfest is a small tournament that allows recent college graduates a chance to go back and relive the thrill of college one more time before returning to the real world. For those of you who have never played college ultimate before I would recommend it if you still have the chance. There is something about it, a feeling that you can try and recreate in club or high school but it just doesn't exist. The main difference that makes college fribsee so much different is that everyone on your team is living life in such a tight proximity and trying to hurdle through the brutal schedule of mixing ultimate and school work. You all live in the same general area, see one another on campus, are able to go to the gym with one another, you create bonds in college that seemingly last a lifetime. To this day some of my best friends are people that I both played and lived with in college.

Back in Atlanta.

I was going out to lunch with Matt one afternoon and we once again found ourselves at one of our favorite taco places near work. Moe's Southwest grill. While eating and talking about what we had left to go over for the day Matt stops our conversation and says, "Hey man I'm not positive but I think Charles Barkley just walked in..." Because of the outlandish nature of the statement I didn't even bother to look back until a moment later Matt said, "Wait never mind I think he is too short." Hearing this made me question whether or not he was telling the truth because as you may or may not know Charles Barkley was short for the position he played. When I finally turned around who is it standing there, none other than Sir Charles himself.

4 million people in Atlanta metro and guess who I meet?!?

That's right! Ladies and gentleman, the round mound of rebound!

As we conveniently ended up leaving the restaurant at the same time as him and ended up getting to shake hands as well as exchange a few words with him. The days to follow I couldn't help but wonder why Charles Barkley would be eating lunch at essentially a taco del mar...  

Piedmont Park Dogwood Festival.

Since before I moved here I had heard from a lot of people that Atlanta city culture is revolved around outdoor festivals revolved around food, art, or music. The Piedmont Park Dogwood festival was my introduction to this. A beautiful weekend 80 degrees both Saturday and Sunday I ended up walking around the 7mile park taking in all of the culture and beautiful sights. There were gorgeous flowers from blooming dogwoods as well as tons of carnival style games to play. Most notably however was an engineering event, which teams were given all the pieces to an Ikea chair and were given one hour to construct anything. The coolest thing that I saw a team make was a scooter. they bought skate board wheels from a shop across the street and used the wood from the chair to construct a fairly durable scooter.



Largest body of water that I have been able to find.




Sorry this post was a little bit of a roller coaster,

Allan

The Subtile Nuances of Playing Club

Back Story.

I think it's a fair to say that the Northwest has a great depth of talent. And from my experience being selected to play on a top tier team is similar to being hired by a business. The hoops that people jump through during the interview process are similar to those players go through during tryouts. In the NW the tryout process begins with one open combine where players come together for one afternoon and have a "shot" to prove that they deserve to move on to the next round of tryouts. Sounds a lot like the sifting through of resumes, no? Similar to how companies respect employee referrals, a majority of players to make it past the combine have a connection to the leadership of the team. You see nepotism for students or alumni of programs with a heavy presence already within the organization. And more often than not the person to get the job has the greatest depth of connections. It's interesting watching the Chain tryouts develop because it seems as if they are willing to take on a lot of young talent and grow them as players actively on the team. Unlike a lot of cities up and down the west coast, talent in the south is much more spread out, so a focal point doesn't exist where intermediate players can hone their skills on a second tier team.

Atlanta:

Culture.
I believe Seattle sometimes exemplifies the ideology of being too cool for school. It is hard to break through and meet a lot of the top players because they are often non existent within the greater community. Also in Seattle I feel like more often than not you see players whose lives revolve around ultimate and I would say by and large a lot of the people that I have met here are much more career driven than their Seattle counterpart.

Play.
Chicks love the long ball. If I could sum up the style of play into one sentence this nails it. There is an overwhelming number of people that can throw the disc a mile and jump out of the roof to get it. It's an odd contract to playing in Seattle where the pace of the game is very fast and shots over 40 yards are a rarity.

Community.
This feeds back into the culture, but I feel like people here like playing for the sake of playing and don't take themselves too seriously. During my first night of playing in the South at a Sunday night coed league game. There were an astonishing number of Chain and O-zone players spread across various teams. I have also learned that winning summer league is a well sought after goal, I would equate it to the indoor goaltimate league in Seattle (people taking a little too seriously).

Conclusion.
One thing I can say for certain is that it doesn't matter if its in the South or Northwest you can always find people that play ultimate that are good people to be around.

Southern Hospitality, Fact or Fiction?

OK so I was rocking out semi embarrassingly to 'Wagon Wheel' and a car full of girls pulled up next to me... It was too late so I embraced the awkwardness and turned the music up and waved to the car. They motioned for me to lower the volume and asked where I was headed. I told them I had just eaten dinner and was headed to get a drink. The girl riding shot gun shouted for me to follow them. I showed up to a local watering home a few minutes later and everyone piled out of the car. I sat in the car for a moment debating whether or not to make up an excuse for why I had to go but decided I'm never going to make new friends unless I step out of my comfort zone. I took a deep breath and got out of the car.

They waved for me to come over, so I walked over and introduced myself. Olivia, Anna, Clara and one person whose name I can no longer remember... my apologies person 'X'. Regardless as we went into the bar Anna turned and asked me so what do you do? Pretty standard question but it took me an unreasonable amount of time to answer, I ended up stumbling over myself until finally I just said, "I work for a tech company that creates video wall solutions." I then proceeded to ask her what she did. She replied, "Oh, I'm a student. We are actually all Juniors at Emory." As I looked around I realized that I had stumbled into a fairly popular college bar. That had a live show going on in the back.

After a couple rounds of drinks and an exchange of pleasantries I decided it was time to go home so I bid the group adieu. The conversation was pleasant and sincere and they extended an offer to come back the following week to see one of their friends playing as an opening act for the band. I told them that I would be heading back to the West coast for the weekend but it would be nice to see them when I got back into town. I realized I said this almost out of habit but it was taken as a sincere gesture. I exchanged phone numbers with one of the girls and she told me to let them know when I get back into town. I realized that that friendly behavior that is exchanged in Seattle but never followed through on really doesn't exist in Atlanta. When people say they want to hang out sometime they mean it. It's kind of cool.

auf Wiedersehen

The Big Easy

NOLA.

Exciting weekend y'all! Made my way down to New Orleans to party with the saints. This weekend marked the first tournament I would play with any of the local Ultimate players. We made the 6.5 hour drive (8.5 for some of us who decided to take a MegaBus) to Louisiana on Friday. Going into the weekend I knew only two people, everyone else I had only exchanged emails with. But I figured frisbee people in the south are probably like frisbee people everywhere else so I wasn't too worried.

And so it begins. Friday night 11:45PM getting on the bus with my new friends Byron.

Exchanged some pleasantries with Byron and Michelle until we all pass out. I woke up at 4AM we are half way there slightly tilted toward NO!

I fell in and out of sleep for the rest of the ride until 7:30 AM when the PA system turned on and the driver welcomed us to New Orleans. After slowly shuffling off the bus into the already humid and hot air we managed to find our teammates that had so kindly offered to pick us up and take us to the fields. Prior to getting to the fields we made a pit stop at Cafe Du Monde to get some beignets. Oh my lord (if you come to NOLA I highly recommend getting some they are sublime). Driving through the heart of New Orleans reminded me of driving down The Strip in Vegas. When we finally made it to the fields most of the team was already there, we did a quick introduction mostly going over names. As the day progressed I began the process of meeting the team. Most of the team came from Atlanta centered around one mutual friend named Bam Bam. I met a couple from North Carolina that knew a couple I know from Seattle that moved out here a year ago. Even though we ended up going 2-1 for the day the best part came soon after the end of our last game. The sun was shining and the tournament had hired a local jazz band to play music during the post tournament feast of traditional jambalaya. Adding to the trifecta I decided to go out and lizard the afternoon away. After waking up and eating some cajun food the team decided it was time to head back to our host's house and shower to get ready for the night.

As a team we set off into the night, our first stop was "Dat Dog" a gourmet hot dog establishment. The menu was incredible holstering thousands of combinations of meat and toppings. I ended up choosing an alligator sausage with avocado, onion, and crawfish etouffee. After a brief stint at the tournament party we made our way to Bourbon Street the seedy underbelly of the Big Easy. After buying several hand grenades and sharknados and sharing them amongst our team we made our way to a nightclub overrun with finance bros and sorority hoes. A couple rounds of shots and a few beers later the DJ turned up the jams and our whole team ended up staking out a plot on the dance floor and cut a rug till 5 AM. I'd like to take a moment to shout out to the team, older or younger everyone brought it and I'm very appreciative that everyone was so open and welcoming to a stranger they met less than 10 hours earlier.

Our first round at 9 AM came faster than anyone was ready for. Literally, we didn't wake up until 9 AM. We piled 7 into a car and rushed off to the fields so we could field one line until reinforcements arrived. We struggled through the game the biggest hurdle being out own hangover but managed to pull out the win 8-6. After the game we came together as a team and had a tough decision to make. Do we continue on and try and win the next game or do we forfeit and go and get breakfast... After flip flopping for 15 minutes we decided we had come this far to play why not try and win it all. We rolled through the semis and ended up tied 5-5 in the finals trying to take the half. Fueled by the alcohol still coursing through our veins we managed to pull away scoring the next 5 points in a row ending the game at 11-5. Look at use beaming with pride you would never know that this team had managed to win both the tournament and the party.

I miss you Piehole! But don't worry I've managed to make some friends in a distant land.

Allan

Meeting the Locals.

Pub Run.

I'm proud to say I survived the St. Patricks Day. Ended up running ten miles and drinking ten pints of Guinness plus five Irish carbombs (excuse the lack of political correctness). It was actually a really good way to learn a little about the city. Matt and I took MARTA (subway) from his house in Decatur to the heart of downtown. The morning started off as would be expected Matt and I ended up going a stop too far and had to wait for another trolley to come by to take us back. Once we finally made it to the graveyard we were welcomed with cups of Irish coffee (yum). While I stood watching people slowly congregate, I wondered if it was in poor taste to be drinking in a graveyard... When I jokingly stated my concern to a friend of Matt's he laughed and told me we were in the confederate section of the plot. As the time to leave and start our run to the first pub nears I learn a little about the history of this run. It was started 7 years ago by a Ultimate player attending Emory's medical school named Josh Ziperstein. Because of this the group was primarily made up of either Ultimate players or Emory med school students.  As we got set to begin I readied myself for a serious run, but less than a minute later we had made it to our first stop. Nothing is funnier than seeing the expression on a sole patron's face at a bar at 10am as 80 people march in dressed in green and begin drinking pints of Guinness. 

As the run continued I met more and more people and realized that I had a lot in common with this small community. Either connections to Zip who had coached me for a brief stint in Seattle to realizing I had played in college against others. This is a picture from our 5th stop where my new boss (mysterious floating hand on the left side of the picture) decided we should celebrate being half way done with a carbomb. Wahooo! As the run continued I met more and more people and realized that I had a lot in common with this small community either connections to Zip who had coached me for a brief stint in Seattle to realizing I had played in college against others. This is a picture from our 5th stop where my new boss (mysterious floating hand on the left side of the picture) decided we should celebrate being half way done with another carbomb. Wahooo! Around bar number 7 the run gets really hazy. I want to apologize to Sean and Natalie, both of whom I apparently called but don’t remember talking to.

Woke up at four AM Sunday morning with a wicked hangover, never doing that again (until next year). Made a lot of new friends, don't remember names but I know I had a blast!

Sunday Night Lights.

I made my debut in the Atlanta ultimate scene, playing in the Sunday night league. I was placed on Matt and Miranda’s team neither of whom showed up to the game. But luckily I had met a lot of the players the afternoon before during the run (apparently). As I drove up to the fields a very Seattle like rain began drizzling down on us. Before the game started our team circled up and I got a quick rundown of names. The captain asked me what I liked to do? A tough question I just told him I liked to have fun. He smiled and said I think we are going to get along just fine. We ended up winning the game 15-12 first victory of the season for the team!

My first thoughts about the Atlanta scene are that it is much smaller than its Seattle counter part. The community also seems less segregated than in Seattle where you see teams that form high school like cliques and don’t socialize outside of their own cohort. In Atlanta it seemed as if it didn’t matter if you played only league or for the top tier club team, everyone was out having fun and being supportive of his or her teammates. After the game some people from my team stuck around the fields and talked to me about why I had moved to the South. After telling our journeys with Ultimate and eating I realized that it was well past my bedtime and my first day of work was tomorrow. We exchanged numbers and said our farewells until the next time.

On the job.

Started work this week. Spent the first few days shadowing Matt learning the ropes and dusting off the cobwebs from accounting 240 and 245. My first few days were spent as expected, filling out paperwork and learning peoples names and their role at the company. On Thursday I actually got to sit down with a few of the other employees and have an all day meeting with one of the founders going over the company and the products that they are putting to market. It was incredible. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but also a lot of great resources and opportunities. It's nice having Matt guide me through his old job and I feel confident that I will be ready to take on full responsibility of the role very soon.

Hope this finds everyone well,

Allan