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.