About leaving the Barge: Everyone did, but some came back. Al, Wolfie and Filip went to the Paga party at the pier. When that place closed, they went back to the Barge. When the Barge closed, they took a stroll on the beach towards the hotel, watching the sun rise. Plastered. When I woke up, I noticed that the other bed in the room still was unused from last night, and no one was in it. That meant that Filip either slept out side the door, in someone else’s room or just got lost. I was hoping for the second possibility. Coming down to the breakfast room, there was the the Three Musketeers, giggling along, and still very drunk. Ordered Filip to go pack since we had to leave for the train in 20-ish minutes.

Filip crashed into REM sleep quite fast, and the rest of us (me, Marcus and Ben) created a fort-like wall around the young lad. I COULD post a pretty picture of a passed out Filip sleeping with his eyes half open, but instead, I’ll give you an example of beautiful Italian women at their best. The train was packed as usual. Got into a cab to take us to the airport in what felt like a major detour. I was expecting getting ripped off for sure, but when we arrived, the meter was at the same price as going into town the week before. Arriving at the airport, me, Marcus and Filip were quite early since we accompanied Ben for his earlier flight. The idiocrazy started when they wouldn’t let us drop our luggage off at the.. baggage drop. It didn’t open until two hours before boarding. What’s the use with a baggage drop if you can’t drop the baggage off..? Another hour or two waiting to board the airplane and another four hours at Schiphol, Amsterdam. I later found out that Marcus got hit by stomach problems and lost about two kilos in the same run. Can’t remember if I slept on the flight up north, but I was quite happy to be picked up in our car by my girlfriend, she’s nothing less than awesome.

From here on now I can’t really see me playing as much Ultimate as I did back in 2007, it’s all down hill from here. But hey, other stuff will pick up, I’m sure.

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

Well in Bologna, we split a cab into the city center and step out into the 15-20 degree sunshine. Ben informs us that he’s firmly on the ground and is on his way. We get tickets for everyone and wait. And wait. The most informative text message arrives: “Shit.” It was quickly decided that if Ben would miss the train, he would still pay the €17 for the train ticket we bought him! We left the Italian hobos outside and stepped into the shadows, underground and up onto the platform, meet up with Annelie and her team mates. Ben is lucky. The train is delayed. Ben shows up, we wait another 5-10 minutes for the train to arrive, get on the train and can actually sit down in seats since we managed to get tickets with just that. We share one of the 1,5 liter Grolsch’s I picked up at Schiphol. Not super cheap, but cool bottles none the less. Blunt force trauma anyone?

We obviously arrive later than expected, so we run off to the hotel, dump our stuff, get my light disc and more or less jog down to a packed welcome party. We are met by the usual goo of people yearning for plastic, even if it’s only for delaying and stalling. A lot of faces are recognized and saluted. The urge for The Barge washes over us and soon even more acquaintances are seen. Scandal and Los Tigers roam the bar feeling the need to hydrate. Car bombs, Scandal bombs, Paganello bombs. When will the stupid fishes of the Adriatic have their revenge? You will have to wait and see.

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!

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.

Even though it’s staged, it’s pretty amusing. It was shot at the tournament Sun of the beach in Rostock 2009 at 210 fps. I wish I had gear that could do that.. Anyhow, the slow motion clip shows just how much force the body takes when hitting sand. By the looks of it, concussions should be more common in Ultimate.

Among the videos that I came across, there’s one that made me come up with an idea: To try and document Stockholm Syndromes visit to Paganello XX. The clip that got me thinking about it was this:

Everyone on the roster is stoked. It’ll be awesome to meet up with most of the guys from last year. I better find a indoor beach volleyball pitch so I can do some shuttle runs.. I’m not sure that I’ll make it to another practice before I get on the flight, so the next time I’ll throw a disc, will probably be a Flashlight disc on the Rimini beach with a glass of free red wine in my left hand.

There’s not much I know about the other Swedish teams this year except that they are going. By the looks of it, Tailspin diverted from their idea of keeping it a Swedish talking team, picking up Tushar Singh from Canada. Crash course on the Swedish language on the flight over? Tushar, I can record some common Swedish words for you if you like

Today, Stinks is a bit like the intro to this video, i.e. in the fog waiting to emerge, and Paganello is at 0:28 into the video.

I’ve also taken on the challenge of translating Ffindr into Swedish. The graveyard shifts next week will be a suitable time to bury myself deep into the linguistic Swedish mine field.

And in other Swedish Ultimate news, there’s a new blog up, but it’s in Swedish and devoted to recruiting new players from schools. I hope the project is successful so we can see a lot of new clubs spawn in the coming years. Keep up the good work, Jacob!

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Right after midnight, a mail slid into my mailbox. It was from Jumpi. The subject line said “Party theme and others”. I became a bit excited. What supercal.., meh, idea did they come up with for this year? As I wrote back in January, this year Paganello is dedicated to “Amarcord“, Federico Fellini’s Oscar-awarded movie from 1975, so I was a bit right about the party theme: “The Oscar Night: Movies and red carpet”. I just felt  a bit “bleh“. There was a movie theme back in 2007, and there was an actual Oscar award on the freestyle arena held by a Swiss or German team (I think), with hardwood manikins painted in gold. We’ll discuss whether we’re going for some kind of costume or not for the Saturday party. I guess a bit of red carpet glued to a fake tux teeshirt would do?

On a happier note, but still talking tops, the mockups for the Paganello 2010 edition jerseys is complete and will start printing today in Seattle by Five Ultimate! The logo will spread across the chest, about 33 cm in total. And the cost is unbeatable compared to the other big companies as far as I know. Can’t wait to put it on!

Since this years Paga is named Amarcord which means “I remember”, here’s some  questions for you:

• How many times have you attended Paganello?
• What themes have you experienced?
• What’s your best Paga experience?
• If you are playing this year, what team are you playing for?

Last year I wrote a piece on “Videos and the lack of good ones“. It was more trash talk than anything. Of course there are good ultimate clips out there. Ultivillage is a good source, but not free for all. Back in the day when I made videos, I tried to connect as much of the action to the music, to make it fit, just like Jason. In the beginning the raw material was shite because of bad cameras (not mine..), but it picked up in the end. I’ll do some prowling for new great stuff, but I’d be happy to get tips from everyone. So what’s your favorite Ultimate clip?

And then there’s the thing about doping.

Tommynomad from New Zeeland got a sane view on the olympic discussion over at Ultitalk:

Ultimate doesn’t need the Olympics to be great, international, and top-level: it already is, and growing. Maybe someday the IOC will come to us. I’m not holding my breath, but I hope when the day comes, we turn them and their anachronistic ways down flat.

I’m not holding my breath either. It’s their loss, I say.

By the way, No Breaks seems to have come to a halt. Too bad.

In the Swedish Ultimate community, there’s a new actor on the scene: Swediscsport (in Swedish).  Daniel Engdahl from Nora (close to my hometown Örebro) is behind it. If he’s on a ultimate team, I guess he’s on either KFUM Örebro or Frövi. Don’t recognize him off the back of my hand.. They hope to become the new meeting point for people that are into disc sports, mainly Ultimate and Disc golf at the moment. We’ll see how that turns out. At the moment, they just got two members. Hope it grows beyond that.

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It seems like the Paga site got a bit of the Cut & Paste Hick-up. I wonder if there’s something else that should be there or if it’s just a filler. Either way, the 100 teams from 25 countries are probably just as eager to get to the beach as me. The open division contains 40 teams from 13½ countries (the half category being “International”). I recognize most of the teams from previous years and I’d prefer not playing against UTI, 45 Giri, FSL, Tailspin or Stinks at all, just for the sake of variation. The teams I WOULD like to play again is:

• Super Mannschaft (three is a charm or three strikes?)
• MILF (beat us in 2007, love at second sight?)
• Black Panthers (same as MILF)
• Inglorious Basterds (to get a speed check of the Polish Ultimate scene)

Since we’ll have Alex from Ukraine on the team and he’s the only one (as far as I know) with a connection to another team, I guess we will cheer a bit extra for “Dyki Krali” in the womens division.

Facebook links to check out:

• Stockholm Syndromes Fan Page
• Ultimate Fan Page
• 1,000,000 for Ultimate in the Olympics
  (The intent is good I guess..)

And for the final..

Do not fuck with a guy holding a disc. From Hard ticket to Hawaii (2.7/10).