Uppsala, Sweden

Last weekend kicked off the first of what could be five consecutive weekends of Ultimate!

06-07/09 USM: Uppsala, Sweden (coaching)
14-15/09 SM Dam (Women's nationals): Linköping, Sweden
21-22/09 Burla Beach Cup (picking up with british people I don't really know): Viareggio, Italy
26-29/09 eXtended European Ultimate Championship Finals: Bordeaux, France (watching/volunteering, maybe)
04-06/10 Oktoberfest Hat: München, Germany

After Oktoberfest, I do not know what I am doing or where I will be. I am not 100% sold on going to XEUCF. I have some friends who will be there playing and it seemed silly to fly back north for such a short amount of time, but I think it is also a little weird to go to a tournament to not play. (feedback appreciated in the comments or other channels) I may also have a job interview that could screw all this up...

Three days before I was scheduled to come back to Sweden in Mid-August and was really questioning my decision to do so (more on that in another post... maybe), I got an email from a guy in the Swedish ultimate federation who does a bunch of youth stuff in Stockholm asking if I wanted to get school team ready for the Ungdom Sverige Mästerskap, USM (youth national championship). I had helped at some school demonstrations where we take over a few gym classes at a school and teach throwing and do some drills and had kept score and reminded kids of the rules at the Stockholm school tournament in May (basically like instructional observing), but I had never had a group on my own before. I decided to try it out - It sounded like fun and I would get paid in "Ultimate Money" (to get around wage taxes, the money gets donated to my sports club, which them applies it to my costs such as tournament fees and jerseys), plus it sort of gave me a purpose for being wherever I was during my job search (and make interviewing in Europe much easier)... I mean it was lovely hanging out with family, but I didn't have very much going on in NC.

The team I worked with had some Ultimate experience: it had been taught in their gym classes for the past two years, they actually won the school tournament in May, and they had played in an indoor tournament somewhere at some point, but most of the schools in that competition had only recently picked up the sport (in one case we did an instruction on Tuesday and they brought 3 teams to the tournament on Thursday). They had some notion of the rules, but the rules used at the previous tournaments were not standard WFDF rules (in indoor you count to 8 and can drop the pull and at the school tournament you could have a meter of "disc space," since they were new throwers), so I really had to fight against these old rules. They also had basic throwing skills, but we worked a lot on taking your time and throwing flatter. We didn't make much progress on making a stack or executing set plays.

A practice. In cuts! (all at once and too close, but still cuts!)

The school is located in Husby, which you may have heard about as the site of the riots in Sweden a few months back. The gym coach their likes Ultimate because of spirit and self-refereeing and is even trying to incorporate some of the themes of Ultimate into other subjects at the school. One of the keys for the week was being a good ambassador (the others were holding the force, running up and down instead of side to side, and at one point "stay friends"). There were teams from all over Sweden (okay, not really the north) and the kids needed to show them that they weren't the type of people who set cars on fire. We had some attitude issues at the beginning, but by the last game things were going really well.

An unflattering photo of me with the squad. Screen shot used for attributing the source and for the amusement of gained by reading all the hashtags, which the ultimate Sweden account manager loves. My favorite: Sport with Swag!

We practiced an hour a day four days a week for two weeks, but that was not quite enough time to catch up to the level of play of teams that are part of established Frisbee Klubs in Sweden. We almost won a game (for bronze), but blew a 6-4 lead, losing 6-7 to Sigtuna, which is located just north of Stockholm (my club sometimes holds joint practices and combines with them when we are low on numbers for tournaments). The comeback is partially a result of them going straight up on our flick hucker (basically our default action) and us running out of gas. I'm so proud of the kids for making it that far - most of the team had never played on a sports team before. Their attitude was so much better in that game, maybe it was because they were able to get some more points on the board (we only scored 6 total in 3 games on Saturday), but they cheered, "peppa upp"-ed each other, and didn't get hung up on their (or their teammates') mistakes. The last game really made the whole experience worth it. AND it continues the Stockholm-Sigtuna rivalry!

I tried to speak some Swedish with the kids (they didn't laugh like my friends do), but was largely unsuccessful. I would start a sentence in Swedish then toss in some English for the words that I didn't know and I think that was just more confusing.

Will update with more photos, when/if they get emailed to me.

USA

Over the summer, I was back stateside for 6 weeks, the longest span I had been home for since leaving in May of 2011. I traveled across the country (going through 13 states) and had a blast!

Seattle

My ultimate team in Sweden, the Stockholm Syndromes, has been tossing the idea of going to Potlatch around for a few years - one of the key organizers is from Seattle and a few exchange students have hailed from the west coast. Potlatch is a massive co-ed tournament where you camp around the fields. It is one of the "fun" north american tournaments, games are played after each ultimate match, but it is also serious - the Canadian team training for the world games was there.  While chatting last Fall, it became clear that several members of the team were going to be in North America anyway this summer, so a bid was submitted and members of the traveling team were recruited from current Stockholm residents, Syndromes alums, and friends of the team. We ended up being quite a mix of players: Syndromes/Fish (our women's team), two estonians, a few guys from the University of Washington's team - fresh off their trip to Nationals, some ex-syndromes who had moved back to the US, some of their teammates, and a guy who knew a guy who had met us at a tournament in the Netherlands a few years ago.

Photo from Dani. Check out her work at http://dcosmephotography.com/

Colorado

My mom, dad and sister got together at a family friend's place near Aspen for the 4th of July (I wasn't invited). The ladies hiked and my dad fished. A good time was had by all (allegedly - I wasn't there). (Granted, I was defending my thesis in France and in Seattle during this gathering) Then I met up with my dad, one of his college buddies, and my uncle at another friend's duplex outside of Breckenridge for week of fishing (and eating massive breakfasts). My dad is recently retired, so he has a lot of time for fishing (and driving across the country) these days. I didn't have much luck, but did land a few.

The Drive

Dad's time in Colorado was right after the national soccer tournament in California. Because rental cars are expensive in CO, it made sense (to him) to drive to colorado, leave the car at the airport, fly to california, play, fly back to CO and drive to the houses and fishing holes. That meant dad and I had a 28 hour drive from Colorado back to NC! 

Kansas lures you into their Welcome Center with the promise of free coffee. Dad took a bunch brochures that the lady offered while he was getting our joe, but refused to stop at any of the quality attractions across the state. No Castle Rock or World's Largest Hand Dug Well for us! We did get to see the oil and gas wells and the 250 MW Smoky Hills wind farm from the interstate.

I drove us through St. Louis in rainy darkness (they need to get their detours together!) and we slept in Illinois. The next day we passed through Kentucky (no stopping for bourbon), Tennessee (no stopping for music), and finally made it to North Carolina (no stopping in Western NC to look at the mountain house they just bought). The landscape was generally more interesting than Kansas', but dad's favorite Sirius channels repeated the same music!

North Carolina

 Finally home! So nice and comfortable! Before I went home I was totally set on staying in Europe, now I think working in the US could be fine. Some highlights include:

• Being in the same city as two of my favorite people at the same time
• Crazy popsicle flavors (cucumber lime - okay, but not recommended).
• Went fishin' with Pa in Cherokee!
• Helped get my parents' new house in Asheville settled.
• Being in Alyssa & JP's wedding!

København

The last weekend in April I travelled to Copenhagen with the Swedish Fish for the three-day Wonderful Copenhagen Ultimate Tournament. Just like the Tallinn trip, Emilia and I headed to the tourney a day early to take in the sights. We hit up the castle, the mermaid, opera house, waterfront and the star-shaped barracks island. It was a lot of nice walking. I think it was a holiday, but the city seemed really empty compared to Stockholm. It was nice and open; old, yet designed. There were bikes everywhere!

Everyone wanted lots of pics with the mermaid.

I was more interested in this power plant,
which.I think was burning trash

I ate this delicious cookie sandwich, which i now realise must have been some sort of precursor to the poptart.

We didn't win a game at the tournament, but lost several by just a few points and had some really great moments. And some not-so-great ones, like when we were up on a team 10-6 when the time ran out. The way this tournament worked, when the time runs out, you finish the point and ad one to the highest score (unless one team has reached 15) and play to this score. We scored that point, so the game was to 12. We lost 11-12 and the match lasted all the way through our bye, almost two hours long; we had 15 minutes to rest and walk across the complex to our next game. We were only 10 players, so we were all pretty exhausted the rest of the weekend from this marathon game.

Here I am (looking awkward in 5 shorts) with teammates. Beautiful sky and weather on Days 2 & 3.
(Photo from Get Horizontal)

After that game, the team got pretty dysfunctional: not warming up together and having very little patience for mistakes. So dysfunctional that we didn't even get a photo in the official team photo photo-album on facebook (even though they took one).

It seemed to be a lot about pushing myself as a player. I was mostly handling. When a fellow handler asked me why I didn't throw the disc across the field (through the cup and into the wind) to her I was taken aback-- such a throw is way outside of my comfort zone, but the next point I started looking for these cross-field swings and they (mostly) worked out.

One (sort of) funny bit is that we were accidentally awarded the spirit prize. Em and I were the only Fish left at the fields after finals (the rest of the team preferred hanging out at the airport instead of watching ultimate) and they announced "Swedish, uh, Fish" as the women's spirit winners. We looked at each other confused, because our teams actions weren't particularly laudatory, but ran up to grab the prize excitedly. We started eating chocolate from the bucket they gave us and took some selfies with the sweet Viking trophy. We even started making plans for the trophy's role in the team: he would travel with us to all the tournies as a totem of sportsmanship. We got on the airport bus, ran into one of or pickup players and offered her some of our spirit chocolate. She told us that she had heard that the U23 Swedish national team had won. We felt horrible. Em ran back to the TD and asked them about it. Apparently the paper had been folded and they had only seen the Swedish part and just "guessed" it was us. We passed off the trophy and remaining chocolate to some of the youngin's on the bus. We will always have those precious few minutes with the Viking. All three of us even made it into the tournament video (near the end).

WCU - Wonderful Copenhagen Ultimate from Get Horizontal on Vimeo.

So photogenic! (and sunburnt!!!)

Tallinn, Estonia

I went to Tallinn for an Ultimate tournament called Kick in de Kök, which means "peak in the kitchen" in Swedish and is the name of one of the fortifications around the city, with the Swedish Fish, the women's team here in Stockholm. It was my first time going to eastern Europe for more than a few hours and also my first time captaining a team.

One of Tallinn's watchtowers, Tall Herman. The other is named Fat Margret. 

Tallinn old town skyline.

A friend from the squad and I went early Friday morning, so we could see some of Tallinn before the tourney. I didn't take many photos, but the old town was really cute and there is a fantastic pancake place called Kompressor that I would highly recommend (but only order one, they are really big). After a day of exploring, we met up with the rest of our team and a men's team from Stockholm called GRID for dinner followed by a medieval-ish tavern with delicious cinnamon beer and a sportspub to watch the end of one of Sweden's Euro qualifiers (they lost).

We went as a team that was there to have fun. As a club, there are mentalities of the Swedish Fish: the speedy, well oiled machine and the team that comes to have fun. There is a lot of overlap, but we brought a fun-oriented squad! This has a tendency to confuse our opponents. One remarked in the spirit circle, "We expected more from you." OUCH! We came in 7th out of 9th and had some hard fought games, but also some where we were trampled. It was a little disheartening, but we were a mix of fish teams past and present, 4 fishies, a fishie who had moved back to Germany, her twin sister and a girl who plays on another team in the Stockholm suburbs who has just come to cheer on their men's team, but we convinced to play since one of our handlers got sick and couldn't make the trip.

This haunted-looking liquor store was (luckily?) closed.

Our "intense it's defence-time" faces! and party winning leis!

We were the team that sang and danced on the sidelines (to a Swedish children's song about fish), the team that chanted really loudly, basically the team that I never in a million years would have thought I would have been part of. This was in stark contrast to the men's team from sthlm, who went to win (spoiler alert: they lost in the finals for like the fifth year in a row).

It was kind of weird, they kept stats for goals and assists. Apparently I threw 15 scores and caught one. I only remember throwing about 3.

We won the party with our sick dance moves and made up theme (there was none given, so we went with something approximately equivalent with "On a Boat" in preparation for our upcoming cruise). I still have the prize, a bottle of the local liquor (nobody really likes it).

We took a boat back from Tallinn (my first non-river cruise), which allowed for saunaing, more dancing, and an impressive stop at the duty free shop in preparation for our upcoming fundraiser party.

Sweden Semester I: A look back

Written in January, but just never posted! It's interesting to look at my expectations for this semester and how things are panning out. (pretty spot on)

Just a few weeks after arriving, I was invited to a teammate's summer cottage to close it down for the season. It was down a dirt road that was off another dirt road, which was off a gravel road neat Kopperberg. The cottage was powered off of a single solar PV panel and has a composting toilet. We went mushroom and lingonberry picking (very swedish activities), rowing on the lake and played lots of board games. It was a nice, relaxing introduction to the country outside of Stockholm.  

The crew rowing

Shortly afterwards, I went to Swedish mixed nationals with the Syndromes. They let me play in the less important pool play games. We ended up getting the Bronze (out of seven teams) and I think everyone was a little disappointed, but we'll get 'em next year!

Cool looking shroom (not for consumption

Then came lots and lots of school and The Royal Institue of Technology or Kungliga Tekniska högskolan (KTH pronounced Ko-tay-Ho) My courses were Renewable Energy Technology, Energy and Environment, Sustainable Power Generation and Sustainable Energy Utilization. That last one was particularly rough... dry early morning lectures on complicatedish material. I'm glad it's behind me... No more classes! Just a 30 page paper and a 20 minute presentation stands between me and my master's degree.


My friends Dani and Anders hosted an american thanksgiving for some of the north americans. Check out the sweet potatoes that I made (L) and my plate full of goodness (R). I took some photos of the people there, but we were all stuffing our faces and they didn't turn out very attractive

Right before exams, I went to Lapland with a few classmates to attempt to see the Northern Lights. We were successful! More photos can be found here. We also did some hiking in the snow and saw some reindeer. Since I would have been procrastinating and not studying for exams anyways, that seemed like a good way to spend the time.

Right now I am playing the indoor season with the women's team Swedish Fish. We went to København for Kung Volmer. After I got used to the necessity of throwing hammers, it was lots of fun, but super tiring (we had three handlers and the other two were sick, so I only rested about a point each game). We ended up 11th/14 had some close games, but are still figuring out team dynamics and lost our last match to some rude young girls, which was a little embarrassing. We have a big tournament in Göteborg/Gothenburg the weekend after I get back from Bangladesh, which I am really looking forward to, we are getting some player back who had taken off the first half of the season. 

That said, I'll be staying at KTH next semester for my thesis. I start the semester off (early) with a 3 week trip to Bangladesh to do a field study relating to identifying/developing good/effective/sustainable business models for rural electrification. I'm really excited about this opportunity and the flexibility that writing an academic thesis (rather than working for a company) should afford me. 

For the upcoming semester, I'm looking forward to getting to know Stockholm a little bit better, my dad visting for a soccer extravaganza, traveling to european tournaments with ultimate, and ya know... figuring out the next few steps in my life (maybe).

Tortilla

We had a brunch with the ultimate squad this weekend and while I was looking for recipes, I kept being drawn to frittatas. The one I wanted to make called for goat cheese, but the grocery store I visited did not have any, so I changed course mid-shop and decided to make a tortilla (the Spanish variety).  This is a thick, dense potato and onion omelet that is served at all hours in Spain.

It's been about a year since I left Madrid and this seemed like a fitting marker of that milestone. After consulting several recipes and Alberto, my Spanish course-mate, this is what I came up with:

After adding the mixture of egg, fried potatoes and onions to the pan. 

After the flip. It was not very graceful.

Finished product. Super oily.

I ended up not taking it to brunch (I opted for scrambling eggs and baking some spare peanut butter chocolate chip cookie dough). It tasted fine and had the right consistency, but it was just sort of underwhelming. Like it's hearty, substantial and nice, but wasn't really impressive. It also took a really long time to chop all the veggies and cook through, so I don't know that I'll make it very often, but I'm really glad that I tried. I have been snacking on it all weekend and will continue to enjoy it with lunch this week.

Taste of Sweden

It has been snowing steadily all day and the ice cream truck still runs! I heard the song playing and thought it was some sort of residence complex-wide alarm!

Swedes are prodigious ice cream consumers and I had heard of this phenomenon, but this was the first time I have ever seen a truck here (even in the summer).

 I chased it down. It wasn't a typical ice cream truck, they sell mostly bulk bars/cups (+frozen pizza), but I was able to buy an ice cream sandwich!