Gaia, Buses, and disc golf

The majority of the SA open team (and we really need a better name, so please feel free to offer up some suggestions) is staying at the lovely Pacific Spirit Hostel on the UBC campus. In most things the importance of location can not be underestimated: we are about a kilometer from the fields, a few blocks from the pubs, close to the buses, and right next to the nude beach. It's a perfect location for us. Unfortunately, the conscientious desk staff will not reveal what room anyone on the team is staying in, and if it wasn't for some quick thinking and fortutious meetings, I'm not sure if anyone would have actually ever found each other.

However, Brent and Pinky found me last night and I bumped into Martin and Ryan early this morning. Ryan, Martin, and I eneded up going for a run around the campus and checking out the fields. They felt soft and fast, and beautiful thoughts of long layouts for some of Ryans hucks were running rampently through my head. We continued our run around to the beach and then marvelled at the beautiful Vancouver landscape: the blue-green sound with early morning geese, ducks, and seagulls ; the rocky beach; the tall, towering trees; the modern city skyscapers; and the snow capped peaks in the background. At times we were reminded of Cape Town, especially since the weather is about the same in the two places at the moment (Google says: Vancouver: 15 C and raining. Cape Town: 13 C and raining.) My entire plan of escaping Cape Town winter has been ruined! It's followed me to Vancouver.

On our way back into the hostel, we found Pinky regalling Mike and Chris with stories from last nights Vancouver league game. Brent joined us shortly, and we had a pretty good seven for the line and ready to play. We made a decision to begin our day with a pilgramage to the Gaia shop (hey look, we linked to Gaia. Don't you want to send us some free swag? Please?) and to follow that up with some disk golf.

Fortunately for us, Pinky has become a master of the Vancouver bus system and after a brief stop at student union for starbucks and bagels (definitely breakfast of champions), we were on our way downtown. The Gaia shop was definitely an interesting place to visit for us Ultimate fanatics (we did just travel some 16453 km to play a few games). The walls are covered with logos from many, many past teams and leagues. It was good fun to look for ones you recognized (apparently they sponsor some team with a monkey) and I think two of my favorites were "Talk Nerdy to me" and "No You Can't Have a Horse". Definitely a cool stop and truly awesome to find a place dedicated to Ultimate.

We then took the bus back up Broadway to find a sports store with some golf disks. We found a great little shop (G-Max) that had a pretty good selection of disks and gave us a great suggestion for a course to go play on. Plus they carry SA rugby jerseys so they must be pretty cool guys at the store. Now that we were kitted out, the fun could begin! Okay we were almost kitted out. We still had to pick up some beer and it was also still raining and we had about 100 blocks to travel by bus, but we were almost ready to play some disc golf!

And quite a fun round of disk golf we had at Queen Elizabeth Park . Ryan showed us all how it was done and definintely shot the best out of any of us, Pinky had some huge drives, Martin tended to end up in the water and now owes Mike a number of beers for fishing out his discs, Chris quickly warmed to the game that he initially disparaged, Brent had some amazing par-saving putts, and I refused to throw without a beer in my hand. It was a great way to spend a rainy afternoon in Vancouver and I'm hoping we have an early afternoon in the schedule so we can play another round at one of the other courses.

At the end of the day, we were all pretty happy to drag ourselves back to the hostel and rest-up for the days ahead. We can't wait for the rest of the team to arrive and we're all anxious to play some Ultimate. The schedule seems to keep changing, so I'm never quite sure who we are playing first, but we'll definitely post details of all our games. We haven't had a chance to transfer any of the pictures yet, but we'll try to get them posted sometime soon. So keep your eyes here and we'll update this as often as possible.

Welcome!

The SA open team is presently arriving in Vancouver, Canada for the World Ultimate Championships 2008 (2nd - 9th August). This prestigeous tournament is held every four years with the last tournament held in Turku, Finland.

The team is made up of 16 players from Cape Town, Johannesburg and several international based players. The team has been training hard for the past three months, mainly sprint and agility training (including the notorious hill sprints!). A training camp was held on the 12th and 13th July with the Cape Town and Johannesburg based players.

Click on the following link to see our game schedule http://www.wugc2008.com/team/615

We'll be updated the blog daily during the tournament so that you can follow the team's progress! We'd love to hear from you and know that you are behind us!

Here is the player roster

17 Abhijit Bhattacharya
4 John Brodhead
11 Steven Crawford
7 Finn De Haan
50 Tavish DeAtley
13 Brent Flack-Davison
1 Michael Harber
9 Ryan Males (Assistant Captain)
5 James Moolenschot
0 Darren Rennie
55 Peter Rive
10 Andre Standing (Captain)
14 Ankur Udani
6 Chris Webster
83 Michael Weston
2 Martin Whiting