"Wildwood Night/Day 1" OR "Oww my feet"

Wildwood. The stuff legends are made of. The guido-filled miles-long boardwalk is typical Jersey shore, replete with funnel cake, saltwater taffy, 99 cent pizza, and rib guys advertising "two for one rib dinnas, I got ya meal right here, just tryna save you money!"

We arrived in Wildwood around 8:15 after a scary and exciting drive by Benny Haim to get us there in two hours flat. Idaho Sweets beckoned to us from the road, and it boasted a real wood BBQ pit. We stopped in and were blown away. Jon Lin and I split a huge basket of meat, which was half pulled pork and half brisket, with ribs thrown on top. It was absolutely delicious.

Sated, we moved on to the hotel where we met up with our other car of teammates. We had to sneak into the hotel's back entrance because we had to pay by person, rather than a flat room rate, and each additional person was $50 a night. So the manager could only ever see four people. We accepted this, settled into our new suite, and began the party. Friday night was relatively relaxed - we chilled amongst ourselves, took a little stroll on the boardwalk, took a little stroll on the beach (before being chased off by the beach patrol), and soon 'retired' to our beds. At least most of us did. Benny was missing and later reappeared by climbing through a window that he had removed earlier that night. Ed's two friends from Slow White, one of whom was supposed to be our second girl, showed up at 2 am just as we were drifting off to sleep.

Saturday morning I rose early and put on the Tour de France individual time trial - the race's deciding stage. I was following intently as everyone was getting up slowly, trying to figure out how much longer they could still sleep and not miss the games, and recover from the previous night. It was exciting, and unfortunately our games were at 10, so I had to miss the actual contenders' rides. After changing and cleaning up the previous night's mess, we hit the beach for my first ever day of 4v4 beach ultimate.

It's hard to play on the beach. The sand negates most of the normal advantages that our team had over the others - mainly speed and aggressive defense. This is how teams with a thrower and a tall guy can win at Wildwood very easily - especially with the 2 point line, which is one of the worst rules I've ever played with. We had our wakeup call in our very first game, as we went down early to some 2-pointers, clawed back, and then lost on a 4-point swing at the end to fall 24-20. We were scoring 1-pointers with ease, especially with our women roasting the other team's girls time and time again. But when they got up by a few late in the game, we couldn't hit the 2-pointers to close the gap. Yes, there were the pitiful 40-yard dumps in order to get the disc back into our own endzone. And unfortunately, the other team's tall guy was very athletic and able to shut down all but one of our 2-point attempts.

Between games, I went over to the main tent area, picked up some of the delicious fresh fruit that was available, and ran into a bunch of players that I knew, and one ex-Stanford player that I knew about (hi Lefty Tim!). Wildwood really is huge - I recognized players from tons of teams and tournaments that I'd played, not to mention summer league and Prospect Park pickup. By this point I wasn't really that dirty - I actually wore a shirt for the first game and my only layout came *before* the game.

The second game changed that. We played Princeton alumni (of the non-Bailey Russell type) and only a couple points in I get a layout D that ends with my entire body covered in sand. After a couple cuts on offense, I end up having to take an injury timeout because there's so much sand in my eyes that I can't even see. Thank you Amanda Davis for pouring water in my eyes, and Jon Lin for letting me use your Gaia dry-wipes to remove/cry out those last pesky grains of sand. Fortunately, the game goes our way, as they have an anemic hucking game and we are unstoppable moving the disc. I'm pretty sure that this is the game where I manage to pointblock my man on our own endzone line with two open receivers, but he manages to get to the ricochet just before I do and catches it for a goal. They also ran a guy out the back of the endzone into a port-a-potty and almost knocked it over. 12-10 victory, good guys.

After this game I'm absolutely covered in sand, my feet hurt a lot, the heat is starting to get to me, and all I really want to do is sit down. So I sit and watch other games, get off my feet, and engage in general lethargy before our final game of pool play. Our next game is against Cornell alumni, and we roll this game. Our women absolutely roast the other team's, and the rest of us generally don't turn the disc over. I think the final score was 20-11 or something similar. I wound up cutting my feet on shells and a chunk of concrete. Ouch. Then we wait over an hour for the prequarters matchups to be posted (we're the last division to hear, of course), and we end up playing against a team that can't throw forehands.

This game is notable mostly for their complete and utter inability to throw forehands, as well as Jake Levine, the non-ultimate-but-wiffleball player, getting something around 6 D's but being absolutely awful on offense. In trying to get Jake bookends, I was 0-3 with two turnovers. That was just a mistake that I apparently couldn't learn from. After we ended the game 18-4, Jake treated one of the teams on the sideline to some wiffleball pitching, after going off by himself to "scuff up the ball." It was impressive to watch, but I can't really believe that he hit 78 mph. With a wiffleball.

After that I finally took off my ankle brace and hit the ocean - it was cold, fun, and absolutely necessary. I was covered from head to toe in sand, and that rinse was clutch. Part of the consummate Wildwood experience has to be finishing your game and immediately running down to the ocean to cool off and splash around before your next game. Eventually, we headed back to the hotel for a long round of showers, and me watching the rerun of the Tour de France time trial, basically from where I'd left off in the morning. It was a great testament to the sport, Levi Leipheimer was amazing, and Contador was inspirational holding on to the maillot jaune and finishing 5th on the day. After we were all cleaned off, we played a little catchphrase and split off into smaller groups for dinner on the boardwalk.

Night/Day 2 to follow ... full of interesting Night 2 stories.