"Tattoos and Santa Cruz: A Lesson In Diplomacy" by Dan and Timill

So Dan and Timill are over in the States at the moment, doing some travelling and ultimate following their Worlds duties. Got this email a while back from the boys, and wanted to share it with you. It's presented here in full, save for a bit of editing for readability. Enjoy.


"The very first night Timill and I arrived in Seattle from Canada we went out to a pub called Dantes. We met a bunch of people that Miranda and Idaho knew while we were out. One of the people we met was a guy called Reid. I knew he didn't play for Sockeye and I didn't know quite where this Reid fitted into the Seattle frisbee scene. A group of 5 or so of us got talking about Kaimana and Timill and I were trying hard to get Idaho and Nate The Great to commit to playing HoS instead of Sockeye. Nate was a little unsure he would have any time or money to come. Reid piped in and said, "I'm in for sure."

We didn't know this guy very well and thought he was a little weird, probably like the main admin guy of your uni team. Timill and I looked at each other and changed the topic because we didn't think he was any good. We started to talk about college ultimate, our friend Cyle was telling us how college ultimate meant a lot more to people here than any other division. We told him that university ultimate was mixed and didn't mean anything in Australia. And Reid said "Well it's serious over here, people even get tattoos for there college teams here." We asked him if he had a tattoo for his college team and he smiled and said yes. Reid used to go to the University of Western Washington and he played for their team Dirt. So i asked Reid what year Dirt had won Nationals.

He told us that his team had never qualified while he was there.

Timill and I lost our shit. All i could think about was Pissy getting a BUUF tattoo or Reevesy getting a Badgers tat. As we laughed he started to pipe, "We're a good team and if we were in any other region we would have qualified for Nationals". Waving our fingers around counting him out a pfeiffer and yelling, "Oooh piping," was hilarious. Reid said, "Fuck you guys I'm not coming to Kaimana with you anymore" and returned to his beer. And we thought well that was amusing - "I can't believe average players care enough to get a tattoo over here. We'll probably never see this guy again."

Three weeks later, while I was on the sidelines in Santa Cruz i got thinking, "Gee I'd like to play a couple tournaments during the series over here," and I spoke to a couple of Sockeye guys about Voodoo - the second team in Seattle - and what they thought my odds were of getting a game. "Oh it's sweet, we know the captains they'll take you for sure." Voodoo seems to have acted as the main feeder for Sockeye for the past few years, with Nate Castine, Sam Harkness and Aly Lenon all making it through to Sockeye via Voodoo. Voodoo are a pretty good team but it's unlikely they'll make it out of NW as there are three bids to nationals in a region dominated by Furious, Sockeye, Jam and Revolver.

I thought, "Well it sounds like fun to play Sectionals and Regionals," and I only have to stay around one extra week to play both. So i went over to Sockeye and asked for the captain of Voodoo's number, and of course they said:

"So his name is Reid, and this is his number...."

"...Oh shit."

So over the past four days I have worked some massive harry and have not talked about tattoos at all. Reid ended up inviting me to tryout last thursday night at a practice dominated by throwing drills... and I ended up making the team.

I'm quite unfit after eating fast food and drinking beer for four weeks post-Worlds but I'm excited to have the opportunity now, despite how hard I may have made it for myself.

Sectionals is next weekend and Regionals is a couple of weeks after that. Oh and by the way, Idaho thinks there is a gap going to open for a D handler on Sockeye next year and he is tipping Reid to break into the team.

Didn't tolkien it at all."


Glossary
pfeiffer - continually reacting to antagonisaiton.
harry - sweet talking
tolkien - read the situation