Thanksgiving

It seems to be a trend to travel to the U.S. to spend Canadian Thanksgiving. This past weekend, I travelled to Boston for two reasons - my cousin Amy's wedding (and all of the festivities), and the UPA Northeast Regionals. It was a very fun weekend despite the long drive.

The weekend started out early Friday morning when Geoff, Damian, Melody, and I departed from Ottawa and started on our adventure towards Boston. Our intended departure time was 7:00 am from downtown, and we ended up leaving Orleans at around 8:00 am, which was only about 30 minutes behind schedule (typical ultimate time). The drive was quite nice, we decided to cross in Cornwall, which put us driving on all of these little roads so that we would avoid the morning rush hour in Montreal. I drove that leg and was quite happy to be done driving somewhere in Upstate New York. Geofford took the next leg and brought us the rest of the way through New York and into Vermont. At our first rest stop (which was badly needed by my tiny bladder) we saw advertisements for Ben & Jerry's so we decided to head to the factory for "lunch". Fortunately for Geofford and I there was a small chip stand where we could get "real" food before our ice cream. Damian and Melody decided to eat ice cream for lunch and save their appetites for the banquet that would occur that night. After Ben & Jerry's we drove the rest of the way to Boston, once we reached Boston we saw a burning car on the side of the road and thought that was the reason for the increase in traffic, but it was just regular rush hour, and due to some poor advice (from the other car) coupled with a lousy map we spent an extra 45 minutes inching through the traffic in Boston. When we reached the hotel, we met up with my mom and Francis to walk to the restaurant in china town to have the pre-wedding banquet with the family at some chinese restaurant. After dinner, we all headed to the Cheesecake Factory for our second dessert. Unfortunately for me, I was stuffed and since we had Regionals the next day (with only four women), I thought it would be wiser to pass on the second dessert. I did take a taste of the cheesecake, and immediately regretted my decision, but was too tired to return and get a piece. We headed to bed fairly early (by tournament standards) because we had to depart from the hotel about about 6:45 so that we could get to the fields on time.

So the 6:45 departure time was actually 7am which was perfect because it took about an hour to get to the fields (in Devens, MA). We got there right in time to watch the other teams all arrive and seeing some familiar faces on Goat. We played our games and the women got really tired because there were only four of us. The guys did a really good job of helping us out, which was greatly appreciated, especially when I got hurt in the second last game, and decided that it would be worse to try and push it the last game. So Deb, Nat, and Mel played ironwomen in the last game and did great.

Although we did not advance on the Saturday, we liked the way that our schedule worked out (we only wanted to play three games on Saturday, either win all three, or lose-win-lose) because it gave Damian, Mel, Geofford and I enough time to get back to the hotel before the wedding dinner (we had to miss the ceremony which was beautiful). We made it just in time and sat down to an awesome feast which included: scallops, crab, lobster, fish, chicken, steak, and many other fantastic dishes. I was ridiculously full after the dinner and was unable to make it to the post-reception dancing which was to occur at the Avalon - one of the clubs in Boston. The other reason for not going was that we had to return to Devens early the next morning for another 9am game :p

On Sunday, we did not play our best 2nd game of Ultimate, but that could be due to the fact that the team was distracted by the Open Final between Goat and DoG. This was a phenomenal game even though Goat lost. After our last game, we watched the end of the GLUM back door final and saw our Master's team advance to the UPA Championships in Sarasota, FL before watching the conclusion of the Goat - Twisted Metal backdoor final. This was a very exciting and nerve wracking game as we saw Goat give up a couple of breaks, and then get them back, and then getting a break, losing it, and almost losing the game 16-14. But Goat didn't let Twisted Metal score, tied the game at 15 and made it a game to 2. Goat ended up scoring first with a huge break and then finishing off Twisted Metal 17-16 in a very exciting game. We were a little glad that we played our 2nd game or else we might not have watched that exciting final.

That was the end of our Fall seVen team, and now we are preparing for indoor so that we can get ready for next summer and our pursuit for Perth in 2006.