Conservation Of Greatness

You might think that our strategy to help Scandal see the Barge table from underneath was a winning strategy. In theory, yes. But yet again, Scandal proved to be a hard nut to crack. We gave up at 04:30. I got up at 09:00 to have breakfast and get our player passes. We had a bit of luck in the pools. Even if were playing Scandal in the first game, it wasn’t until 12:50, and they had had one before us, at 9-ish. We kept to the seeding and lost. After that however, we also lost to FSL, that we beat by 14-5 in 2009.. And this time it was an universal point to top it off.. We buried the day at the Chinese restaurant. Nothing else to do.

On Saturday we faced Cutty Sharks, Inglorious Basterds, Chip Butty and Flugsaurier. All games were in our favor except Flugsaurier. That game was more or less no fun to play due to shit calls and what not. A game that was much more fun was the Inglorious one. The wind was pretty hard on on us both, and it came close to the game against Big EZ last year, but this time we won with 7-3. Being lucky on Friday turned to our disadvantage on Saturday. We got the 9:00 game AND the 18:00 game, with two in between, but it was expected. Since the free wine hand-out was supposed to stop at the same time as our last game, we got in line before the game, filled my 1 liter Nalgene up and saved it for later. Brilliant move. For dinner we headed over to the Barge for pizza with a complimentary Limoncello. It’s better than grappa. That’s all I can say.

Yellow Blocks from Czech republic was first up on Sunday. They came out steaming. We didn’t. Lost the game by 5-15. We also lost against Willy & The Schellekes and Black Panthers. The game against Willy was pretty wet and we got beat by an universal point. Again. All in the wrong games. Or, I guess every universal point is in the wrong game. The shit kept hitting the fan. At dinner, we huddled up outside under a plastic roof for a team dinner.

• Reminder 1: A big portion equals a double portion. At least to that waiter. Double check. The lasagna was absolutely not worth €18. Let alone €9. It became pretty obvious it wasn’t made by them when I got a piece of plastic wrapping in my mouth.
• Reminder 2: The customer is never right. Again, at least to that waiter. His reply to my claim about finding the plastic while chewing was “No, no, no, no” only to go on about the piece of plastic being from the form they took the lasagna out of. Of course it was. I won’t deny him that. Still, shouldn’t show up in my mouth. Trying to patch things up, he gave us chilled Limoncello… I tried to make him understand that I wanted a coffee instead, but that frozen, slow moving lemon liqueur must be cheap and popular in Italy since you can give it away like that. Or at least cheap.

On Monday we only had one game, against Kent Ultimate. We played in horizontal rain and winds up to 15-20 meters per second. We won it by 7-5. Luckily, Kent threw in the towel after the time was over. It was without a doubt a turn-over fest, but I guess The Big EZ game in 2009 was worse if you look at the score. The weather definitely won the award for “Worst weather”. Since we were more or less wet down to our bones, half of both teams ran into the Mediterranean for the first outdoor swim of the year, some more clothed then others. The bonus of this game was a honorary spot on Kent Ultimate for me whenever I’m across the channel. Liking it! Los Tigers beat UTI in the open final and we ended up at the usual Rose & Crown again before heading over to The Barge for (probably) the last time this year. Can’t remember leaving. Or who we left behind. Only headaches will tell.

What I forgot to mention in the post before this one, is that I got my 30-ish seconds of fame on Blockstack.tv at the Thursday night party. If you watch all of it, an UTI version of me might pop up saying non-PC words. I should apologize to Steve for my behavior. So Steve and the Blockstack-crew: Sorry. I guess the joke’s on me

Next time around: The Aftermath

Does this look promising or what?!? Yesterday it was sunny, 20 degrees Celsius and a light breeze in Rimini. What do the other forecasts say? It seems like most of the experts agree on possible showers on thursday afternoon and sunday. But let’s hope they’re wrong. I hope my third year at Paganello will be just as great as my first two, sporting a pale soon-to-be-reddish skin and a quite prominent baseball-cap tan.

Apparently, there was some mishap with the seeding, since Iznogood became better and are now seeded 7th. Inside Rakete took their 8th spot. This affected us as well, we “lost” CUSB La Fotta and got Flugsaurier from Austria instead. The updated schedule on how to win Paganello can be found here.

Remember to print a picture of yourself at previous Paganello visits for the big wall of celebration! I think I’ll bring this one.  –>

I guess the best would be to laminate the damn thing, pretentious or not. Most likely the remembrance wall will be inside the Paga tent, so it should be unnecessary. Remember something as well: Bring your old kits (jerseys, shorts etc) and discs. They will find its way to (apparently both) India and Africa.

For more photos related to Paganello see these links:

• Paganello’s Official Twitter Pics
• My Twitter Pics
• Tushar Singh’s Twitter Pics (will be playing on Swedish Open team Tailspin)

In 3 days I will be holding a lit up Ultrastar in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other! See you on the beach!

Update: The friday schedule (pdf) is out. And of course, we’re playing Scandal in the first game and FSL in the second. Luckily the first game is at 12:50 and Scandal’s first is at 9:50. Let’s get it over with! Scandal bombs away!

The pools are just in. We got seeded 22nd and our pool (F) looks like this:

1. Scandal, USA (6)
2. CUSB la Fotta, IT (11)
3. Stockholm Syndromes, SWE (22)
4. FSL, CH (27)
5. Cutty Sharks, UK (38)

Scandal won 2008. Won “Best outfit” 2009 according to most. Probably they have a good shot again at it the top this year. I hope we don’t meet them in our first game.. Unless we buy them a bottomless Car bomb (or maybe their own derivative “Scandal Bomb”) and a lot of straws! The Barge knows how to make’em.

In 2009 CUSB La Fotta won Tom’s Tourney for the third time in a row. We’ll see how that goes. The dream would be to play either FSL or Cutty Sharks in the first game, so we could get a feel for one another in the team.

We beat FSL last year by 14-5, hopefully we can do it a second time.

I don’t recognize anyone from the team picture of Cutty Sharks from Greenwich. We can just hope that they will play in stop motion at Paganello too! Looks funny!

Hopefully they’ll bring some of this. Should be a pretty obvious 5 cl giveaway. Never tried it, but for the Sharks, I will as soon as possible. The drink is Scottish though..

What are our chances then?

If we (and everyone else) play according to our seeding, we end up 3rd in the pool. This takes us to Pool O. And again, if Pool C ends up as “planned”, then we’ll have Yellow Block, CZ (19), Chip Butty, UK (30) and Inglorious Basterds, PL (33). If we would take 2nd place, I’m not sure what would happen. I found a minor discrepancy in the format about the runner-up’s. Rest assured, it has been reported (it has also been sorted), we would face last year’s nemesis and overall winner UTI as well as Freespeed  and Iznogood. After that there’s no end to the possibilities!

Then there’s the rules! Take it on the flight, bus, moped, bike, skates or clouds and read them until you know them. I’ll try to at least.