Lets just say there was penetration

Yeah, yeah, I know. I get one good post in and disappear forever. Been a little busy. New house, new baby. Yikes, I really am old.

Well, back to the old stories. I was inspired to write this post by thinking yesterday about all the remaining ticker moments that haven't been told. These won't be chronological, or even make sense as one long story, but seem worth writing nonetheless.

I figured this was a good time to bring up a possibly unique moment in UPA history. I would claim this was the only time an elite open team, at an elite open tournament, won the tournament and the party.

The year is 1996. The tournament is the Chicago Tune-Up, as it was called in those days. Double Happiness was the team. We had suffered some losses of talent from the year before (Dilly, Dave Smith, Barkan, etc.), but had filled some of those spots with some young studs (Paul Pisacane, Woody, Hoover, Ken Slicerson, etc.). We were coming off a win at the annual Santa Cruz Labor Day tournament, which had featured all elite division games having officials. We were feeling pretty good about our chances in the fall series.

We showed up on Saturday with our typical swagger. My memory fails me about who we played, but I don't recall us having any particularly close games early. We did have one tough game versus Ring of Fire in the afternoon. As I recall there was one particularly nasty moment where Cribber got into an argument with a guy with a ponytail on the other team, and I believe his exact quote towards the end of the game was "Jerry's dead". As usual we used this interaction to fire us up and give Ring the spanking we seemed to always give them.

Our final game of the day was against Boston's Dog, the 2-time defending UPA champ. This game would be a measuring stick for us in our pursuit of the national title. It was a nip and tuck game, but Boston pulled out a hard fought win. This was not the way we were hoping Saturday would end.

This led to us hitting the party pretty hard on Saturday night. Our hotel was about 20 minutes from the field, and the party was held at the tent at frisbee central. We grabbed whatever food was available at the tourney (they may have even served dinner), and then started swilling beers.

Then the genius began happening.

A group of guys from Johnny Bravo we getting very loaded, and started telling people they wanted to boat race, for the uninitiated this is a beer drinking relay race. I believe it was Worm who actually got their attention and asked them "What's a boat race?" Now this was a completely ridiculous question because Worm had been the Anchor of many successful boat race teams, even leading to the ill-fated "swing shift" moment at a Southern California party years earlier (that will have to be its own blog post at some point).

Well, Biscuit/Billy/Scott Lippy jumped right in. Suddenly we were actually "boat race sharking", convincing the Colorado guys that we had absolutely no idea what a boat race was. And that they would easily destroy us. Now, it is not that hard to convince a drunk guy of something like this. But that is the real genius of it. Because it is so easy it allows you to really drive them nuts by asking the most inane questions like "We all drink at once?" or "Who has the stopwatch?" And it drives the drunkard crazier and crazier when you can't seem to follow even the most simple of directions.

So we determine it will be your usual 7 on 7 boat race. And the beers are filled, and as usual the whole tent is now aware of the impending competition. Lots of yelling and screaming ensues.

Right before the race is about to begin, Worm takes it to a whole nother level. He suggests that they make the competition "a little more interesting". Maybe a little side bet. We agree that the loser of the boat race has to streak the party. Thankfully there is no way we are going to lose.

As usual the race stays close until it gets to Scotty and Worm. And as usual they completely smoke the competition and a celebration ensues.

That is until the Johnny Bravo guys fulfill their part of the side bet. Except instead of streaking the party, they just take off their clothes and hang out at the party naked for the remainder of the evening. We learn our lesson, any future side bets will clearly not entail male nudity.

So, normally this would be the end of a great party evening. We had our shenanigans. We have some big games to play in the morning, and it is time to pack it up and call it a night.

Well, not exactly. Worm, Hoover and I have now begun chatting up some lovely Chicago ultimate ladies. I don't remember their names, and even if I did I wouldn't embarrass them.

The three of us decide we are going to hang out for a little while and see if we can get anywhere. Billy, always the "responsible" one, has decided it is time to go home. He is sitting in his car waiting for us. So we send Worm to break the news to him that we are going to stay and take a ride home from the Chicago women.

I have never seen Billy angrier to this point. He is sitting behind the wheel steaming that we aren't content enough with the evening's shenanigans. But eventually I think he realizes he won't win this argument, and leaves to head back to the hotel.

So we stay and have a few more beers. But then, horror, the beer runs out and the party is over. So the 6 of us decide to head back to our hotel room, but pick some beer up on the way. Worm and I head in one car with two ladies, and Hoover is in the other vehicle with the third female companion.

We pull up to the beer store. The three "men" get out to buy the beer. So we ask Hoover how it is going in the other car. The exact quote was "Lets just say there was penetration". WHOA. Worm and I are lucky not to get thrown out of the beer distributor from the hilarity that ensues. Can always count on Hoover for the good material.

We pick up a case of guinness cans and some "sippers". As Barney and Jeffy so eliquently put it, it is not the guns that kill you but the sippers. We head back to our hotel.

Needless to say Billy was not exactly excited to have us come back. With all that beer. And with three women. He actually managed to get Biscuit (our best player but has the Irish love of a good nip here and there) and Jeffy in bed at a reasonable hour and reasonably sober. And we have to show up with more beer NOW?!??!?

So we head into the bathroom for some guinness shotguns. But we can't just open them like a normal human being. At that point one of our regular routines was to try and find interesting ways to "craw" or open the shotgun. On a car door. On a lawnchair. Whatever is possible.

So I decided I am going to craw the shotgun on the faucet of the bathroom sink. Um, bad idea. Beer spray EVERYWHERE. And when I say everywhere I mean the walls and ceiling and floor of the bathroom are now a rich guinness brown. It is bad.

Biscuit walks into the bathroom to join us, and freaks out. He is relatively sober, and realizes that Billy is going to have an aneurysm if he sees what we have done to the bathroom. So he grabs every towel we have and wipes down the room. The towels go from a nice crisp white to a soggy light brown. Ouch.

We do a couple of rounds of guns, and then the ladies get very bored. I am not sure their idea of fun with us was heading back to the hotel and waiting for us to do guns in the bathroom. So they decide to leave, and Hoover and I offer to walk them to the car. On our way down we pass the hotel bar which apparently has a DJ. We go and dance the macarena, and then walk them out.

I wake up the next day feeling like death warmed over. We got like 4-5 hours of drunken sleep, and now have to go play a full day of ultimate. It is not good news.

We get to the fields on time, a minor miracle in itself. I can't remember who we played in the quarters, but we crushed them. We head over to watch Seattle (our primary regional rival, and one of the top teams at the tournament) play Miami, in what is turning out to be a close game. One of the Seattle players makes one of the worst calls we have ever seen. He is standing at the front of the stack with his man faceguarding him. The disk gets thrown to him on a high stall count, but the defender is still facing him not realizing the disk is in the air. The Seattle player reaches over the defenders shoulder to try and catch it, and drops the frisbee. He then calls a foul, even though he initiated the contact and the defender actually had not moved. We erupt on the sidelines with various "cheater" chants.

So now the semifinals are set. Or so we think. We are scheduled to play Boston and Seattle will get a much easier draw with Atlanta in the semis. But for some reason Johnny G wants us to mix up the Semis matchups. Seattle had played Atlanta earlier in the tourney as well. So they want Boston in the Semis, and are giving us the easier road. As we were never ones to look a gift horse in the mouth, we accept.

We roll Atlanta. I was getting a decent amount of playing time at this point with Double, but you know it was an easy game because I played most of the points. There was one notable point where I got a savage point block on a hammer by one of the Atlanta players. Someone picked up the disc and threw it to Scott Lippy streaking down the middle of the field. Well, instead of just catching the disk and firing a goal, Scott decided to mack it to himself, over and over down the field. Um, this is not quite legal, but it was pretty funny considering the big lead we had at the time.

Boston, meanwhile, is locked in a battle with Seattle. These teams had faced each other in the finals of the prior year's UPA Nationals, and Seattle this time was not going down easy. But in the end, Boston prevailed as usual.

This set us up with a finals rematch against the Boston boys. Unfortunately for many of us, this was also coinciding with the "delayed hangover", that moment in the afternoon when it finally catches up to you. I, for one, really felt like throwing up for most of the game.

But we sucked it up. And boy were we playing well. I covered Corky for a good portion of the game, and while I didn't get any blocks, I at least felt like I made him work for everything. And the rest of our D team did likewise. We ratcheted up the pressure on the vaunted Boston O, and eventually in the 2nd half they began to crack.

This led to us to us pulling away to a 3-4 goal lead late in the game. This was an amazing moment for us, about to put away Boston in the finals of a marquee event. We got the disk and worked it all the way to their goal line, with Edward Coyne calling a timeout. You couldn't ask for a better situation. Edward was arguably our best thrower, a master at breaking the mark. All we needed was this for the win.

The play was called for Kenny Slicer to cut to the front cone for a goal. The disc got checked in, Ken streaked open to the cone. Edward broke the mark beautifully and threw a perfect pass. All seemed well with the world.

Um, not exactly. For some reason, unknown to this day, Ken decided to leap into the air to make the catch. Well, the problem with that decision was he was a little close to the sideline. And then once in the air realized he needed to get his foot down. And he barely missed the sideline. From then on he was called BarishnaKen for his fancy footwork.

Well, the story has a happy ending. Even with this potential heartbreak we managed to put in the winning goal capping off the first, and to this day I believe, the only successful "win the party and win the tourney" combo in Elite Open Ultimate history. It felt good once we got that first beer in us.

Which reminds me of the last great story from that weekend. As we were celebrating our victory with rounds and rounds of shotguns, Worm noticed that Weber (one of our new guys that season) was sneaking away in a car to the airport. They were running a little late.

That did not stop us from forcing Weber to get out of the car and do a "gun for the road". Weber apparently did not feel so well after said shotgun, and attempted to go behind the rental car and throw up discreetly. Well, Worm saw him, and proceeded to insist that Weber do ANOTHER shotgun to make up for the one he just horked. Weber did and kept it down this time, and then made his way to the airport. Once at the airport he was forced to hold the flight from leaving until Biscuit and Scotty made their way to the plane, which they entered wearing wigs. I do not believe the other passengers were amused.