The game was close, with no team up by more than one point. When we scored upwind, they answered scoring upwind the next point. If the first four points hadn't taken 35 minutes to complete, with a score of 2-2 at the end of those 35 minutes, the game looked like it would go to 17-16 with the team who took the wind off the flip.

Everything was on pull up until half, with Gendors taking half 8-7, and our tying it back at 8-8. The game was intense with hard marks, strong defense, close calls and unrelenting pressure from both sides. Both sides often disagreed with calls the other made, and so the observers were well used by both teams.

Soon after the second half started, maybe a point or two into the half, a travel call was made on the field by a Mischief teammate. The call went to the observers, and was overruled by the observer on the far side of the field. Since the observer was standing on the far sideline, Adam approached the observer on our sideline who may have had a better view, and suggested that, if he had a better view, he should say something.

An older man who had been walking along our sidelines for the entire game, immediately went up to Adam and bumped him. Adam describes the bump as an attempt to chest bump him, but the old man's camera was in the way. The man was about six feet tall and about twice as heavy as Adam, so bump could knock him over.

After bumping Adam, the old man stood close, looking down at him and said, "You know, going to the observers makes you look weak."

So, here was a guy who no one knows, who was not a player, by all rights shouldn't be standing within 2 yards of the field, much less standing over one of our players attempting to intimidate him.

Wade heard the exchange as he was walking past, and turned on the man. "Are you with Gendors?" he asked in a loud voice. I didn't see the man's reaction (Megan said he answered yes, though), but I definitely heard Wade's. The man attempted to defend himself, but received a barrage of yells in return. "Your team is cheating! They're double teaming and travelling!" "Oh, sure, let's get the parent's involved." "Because the Gendors are perfect, right? And Black Tide has the best spirit." he continued sarcastically. "I didn't know Black Tide was here!" Towards the end, Wade yelled he should watch out, or he'll die of a heart attack.

The old man slinked off to the far side of the shade tents we had on the sidelines as Wade was more and more fired up.

We scored three of the next four points, and went on to outscore the Gendors 7-4 in the second half. Wade was on fire, bringing the rest of the team up in intensity, and we won the game 15-13.

Weak, indeed. It's hard to be weak when the other side is cheating.

Calling the other team cheaters in a sport where mutual respect is a key element of the game may seem disrepectful but consider this: the Gendors would zone by having a marker on the thrower and two players within four feet of the thrower for more than half the time they were on defense. When Wade was unable to punt a disc because a women defender, who was not is marker, was able to touch him during his throw (incidental contact, so no foul, but a double team because Wade is not ten feet long), Kris told the observers they needed to take action. They agreed and told Gendors to step back on their zone cup pointmen. They did, and lost their ability to stop us.

Funny how, when the cheating stops, the better team wins.

"There! Done with that blog post."

"It's just like pooing, eh, Kitt? Sometimes you just need to get it out."

"Yeah, just like that."

A few months ago, I was talking to Mike about religion. One of my arguments about not being a particular religious person in the Christian sense is the fact that ultimate provides many of the core aspects what traditional religions provide: community, social outlets, a sense of right and wrong, friends anywhere you go. Community being the biggest of that list.

Last night, I was reminded of this fact, once again.

I was the first to arrive in Sarasota, flying into the Sarasota airport directly to avoid needing to travel the extra hour by car or even deal with the red-eye everyone seemed too fond of. Kris can sleep on a plane, at any point. I can stay awake on a plane, at any point. Direct opposites when it comes to flying.

On the flight from San Jose to Atlanta, I saw two Fury players on my flight sitting a few rows forward of me. On the second leg, from Atlanta to Sarasota, I decided I was going to ask them if they were in Siesta Keys and if so, could give me a ride to my villa housing.

A bit later, the flight attendant was handing out drinks, I turned around when I heard the person behind me mumble something about deciding between some drink and another. I smiled when I turned around, because I recognized JD Lobue (Jr.) sitting in the row behind me. He smiled back and asked me what I thought he should get. I immediately said, the second one, which prompted the flight attendant to ask, "Do you know each other?"

I laughed and said I knew of him, but I've only ever seen him on television. She freaked out a little, and JD visibly blushed, which isn't easy to do in a darkened airplane.

We talked about ultimate the entire rest of the flight. We talked about how the mixed division has canibalized the women's division, but the power teams in the women's division are victims of their own success (by becoming so dominant, other women's teams are less likely to form and get crushed by the dominant teams, so the women will be more likely to play mixed).

As the flight was landing, I asked him for a ride to the villas, and he said yes.

To be able to meet someone on a plane, spend the whole flight talking to him, be instant friends and catch a ride with him, knowing every time I see him at a tournament, he'll say hello and we'll chat, is why ultimate is so totally the best.

When I worked at a bookstore in college, I was indirectly responsible for another employee embezzling money from the company. I can't say I am particularly proud of this fact, but I can say the other employee was an idiot and did a very poor job of following my near-perfect salary enhancing scheme.

Having watched the various buying habits of people in the area, as well as the inventory techniques of the store, I discussed a return-refund technique to the assistant manager of the store. The technique worked something like this: a customer would purchase a fairly expensive book, or a small number of relatively expensive books, say hardback books, in cash. The transaction could be anywhere from $20 to $100 in books, the key was the customer paid in cash.

The very next transaction would be a refund for one of the books sold on the previous purchase or a cancel of the entire purchase if the purchase was for one expensive book. The situation would actually happen regularly enough that it wasn't unusual for a return immediately following a transaction: often the customer wouldn't have enough money, so it was easier to ring the transaction as cash and refund one of the books on the next transaction or cancel the purchase completely on the next transaction.

The cancel or refund would happen on the next transaction, but only after the customer had already left the store. The refund or cancelled transaction amount could then be pocketed. This technique would work well on a slow day, when the customer would have left the store and not see the transaction, or possibly on a busy day if the clerk was quick enough to cancel the transaction between customers in line.

The amount pocketed would never be much: $20 or $40 at a time, and the situation had be correct: a cash transaction followed by an immediate cancel of the transaction. The cash could be removed from the register at the end of the evening when the drawer was counted out.

Since the store didn't have any surveillance cameras, there wouldn't be any direct evidence of theft. The trick would be to avoid any patterns in the transaction cancellations, and not doing it more than once or twice a month at most for small amounts, lunch money for a couple days at most.

So, yeah, the technique was fairly foolproof. I just wasn't counting on a real fool.

I arrived into work one day, to find out the assistant manager had been fired and the whole store was being both inventoried and audited. A few weeks later, my manager would be fired and charged with embezzlement for having "borrowed" hundreds of books without returning them. The store had a borrow policy that employees could borrow any book as long as it was returned in sellable condition. Books were signed out on the sign-out sheet; the manager would sign them back in if they were over a week overdue. He rarely returned his books.

The assistant manager, however, was the trigger for this mass audit of the store. It turns out, he attempted my return-refund technique, but not in its proposed form.

Instead of cancelling cash transactions, he would cancel charged transactions, and pocket the money he refunded. The problem with his version of the technique was not only was the customer not charged for the transaction (since his card was refunded), but the drawer was short by the amount of money the assistant manager stole. The trail of theft was ridiculously easy to follow (nice paper trail), made easier by the frequency of thefts.

When I heard of the disaster, I was immediately mortified. He was doing what I had suggested, admittedly suggested in passing and not seriously, but my idea none-the-less.

Because of this experience, I'm more observant to when cashiers hand me merchandise and put aside the cash I pay them. Like today, at the fast food place in the Atlanta airport. After struggling to understand the woman wasn't asking me if I wanted a drink with my pizza, but rather was saying my total was $5.22, I handed her $11 as a single and a ten. I expected a five dollar bill plus change back. Instead, the cashier eyed my remaining four singles. She asked for them, handing me back my $10 bill. I fished for a quarter in my backpack as she handed me my pizza.

Now, it's entirely possible she needed singles and twenty two cents was a small cost to pay for the five singles I had. But I doubt it. I'd be very surprised if under the register is the correct place to put the five dollars destined for the register.

Back in 1986, January 28th to be exact, I came home from school upset. We had watched the Challenger tradgedy on a television a teacher had brought into a classroom, and we watched it over and over and over again. I wanted to talk about the accident, and so sought out my mom when she arrived home from work.

In particular, I wanted to talk about Judith Resnick. She was everything I wanted to be. She had a 1600 on her SATs (I was young, this was very important to me), was an engineer (biomedical, before that was a real major), and had a PhD. She was beautiful. She was musical (a classic pianist) and athletic (a runner). And she was pioneer: an astronaut in a male dominated field.

Everything I aspired to be (minus the astronaut part).

Mom's first words about Resnick were, "What a waste."

I immediately responded, "No, it wasn't a waste. It was a loss. She was doing what she loved to do, how could that be a waste?"

Mom looked at me, surprised, then agreed, yes, it was a loss, but not a waste.

On my way out the door today, I thought about that moment, about how I insisted that dying doing what you loved wasn't a waste. And I can't help but wonder, will I die doing what I love? Will I die playing ultimate? Or hiking? Or reading? Or gardening? Or programming? Or designing?

Will dying doing what I love make the loss any less painful?

Because as near as I can tell, the dying part of the equation? That's the part that sucks.