Van Buren Boys Win the UPA Club Championship!

Admittedly, I don't know much about ultimate or how tournaments work, but what I do know is that it's just like my mom always used to say: it's not whether you win or lose, it's how good your timing is when you win.

Dave says "Plan sounds good Kev, I'm in!"

The Van Buren Boys, of course, reinforced this principle in early September by losing 5 games and winning just 2 to finish higher than our initial seed at CHC. I don't think it needs to be said that we planned our entire season around this principle. The ultimate community at large is undoubtedly aware of Kevin's recruiting platform: We're going to put the least amount of required effort, time, and wins into naming the team, designing jerseys, and qualifying for Nationals, but we're going to get it done. Truth be told, most of us were stunned to read Kev's email about practices being scheduled in June and promptly put an end to that kind of thinking by not showing up. After that, we were back to our minimalist approach toward qualifying for Nationals.

Initially, the plan was to win 0 games and qualify, but teams like Zebra Muscles, Mephisto, and Hustle no doubt had heard of our plan, adopted it, and were just simply executing it better than we were early in the season. Plus, the VBB braintrust had been unable to find a 0 wins path to Nationals that didn't include mass disqualifications and they had foolishly put the only guy capable of disqualifying his own team on our roster. Regardless, had a scheme like that been attempted, the UPA evidently no longer disqualifies the entire team for playing an ineligible player in the series, just the captain, and the plan would have failed miserably.

Next step, try to concoct a scheme to win just 1 game at Regionals and qualify. And it nearly worked! The UPA helped out tremendously with this plan by announcing that Regionals would be held in a state that only 8 people have heard of. It was conceivable that all but 1 or 2 other teams would either get lost trying to get there or just stay home. Sadly, 13 other teams showed up and it was time for plan C.

Heading into Regionals, we were 0 for 12 against teams ranked 39th or higher. We knew there were 2 ways we could win just 2 games against similarly ranked teams and get to the big show. One was to beat Machine in pool play and then win in semis, but since we were relatively sure Machine would qualify and that beating them would be, let's face it, hard, we decided on beating top 39 teams on just Sunday. So that's what we did. And our season was unofficially a success.

But we still had 7 games yet to lose.

Photographic evidence of our Championship

Which brings me to the title of this post . . . we won Nationals! Don't ask me how or why, I'm not a great tournament-format mind, but immediately after the last game on Sunday, they clearly announced our name over the loudspeaker, promptly handed us a trophy, and crowned the Van Buren Boys champions, despite losing every single game of the tournament.

No wonder nobody takes this sport seriously.

Ding Wop Saved My Life

More often than not, I leave my office around 5:45 to drive home after a long 5 or 6 hour day at the office. Wednesday, August 1, 2007 was one of those typical days.

Quickly, I closed my laptop, threw it in the same backpack that has a bottle of five hundred 200mg ibuprofin tablets, a bottle of Gold Bond, and several packages of sport beans. I then sped up the stairs and into my car. With the radio tuned to 1130 on the AM dial, I hit the road, completely oblivious to the tragedy about to take place.

A few minutes into my ride, I cruised by what at first appeared to be some litter on the side of the road. At the very last second, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed it was a hat. A trucker hat. A BROWN trucker hat. A brown trucker hat with a logo suspiciously similar to that of Ding Wop. I u-turned and then pulled over to inspect it further only to discover that it was INDEED a limited edition Ding Wop trucker hat.

I have included photographic evidence of said hat on the side of the road lying in the middle of a T intersection, exactly where I first spotted it.

I spent a few minutes parking, walking over to it, photographing it, wondering who would leave his Dinger hat on the side of the road. I determined the schmuck was probably from Liquid Assjets.

I then hopped back into my car, still bewildered over the orphaned hat. A few minutes later, someone called in to KFAN to report that a bridge had fallen. It didn't seem like a big deal. It seemed like it might have been a prank of some sort, at least until the producers of the show confirmed that a bridge had in fact collapsed and that the bridge was the freeway where 35W crossed the Mississippi. Or, for those who don't carpool with me on a daily basis, my usual route home. THE bridge that I cross 2 or more times almost every day. Holy . . . shit.

Now in shock of the magnitude of the event, the Dinger hat completely left my mind. Later, though still in shock, it occurred to me that on a normal day, if not for the extraordinary discovery compelling me to pull over, I might have been part of some extraordinary circumstances of an entirely different kind.

In short, Ding Wop saved my life.

Bridge Collapse

I'm safe. But still really freaked out. I usually drive on that bridge two or more times a day -- and usually right about the time it collapsed. This is un-fucking-believable and really scary. More later.

(edit: I just an unauthorized "video" on CNN of the collapse ... good god this is devastating)