Probably my favorite sport to play is Ultimate Frisbee, a game very similar to rugby or American football where the object of the game is to pass a frisbee disc to your teammates 
from one end of the field down into the opposing end zone. Although there are many leagues where teams practice vigorously to compete, I prefer the more relaxed play of a “pickup” game where anyone can just show up and play for fun.
In the town of Española where I lived for the last 4.5 years, we played a pickup game every Sunday afternoon all year round. The game gets really fun when you have 6-8 people on each team, and on average about 10-15 people would show up to play, but sometimes we would have over 20! Ultimate became a regular activity in my life because it’s so much fun to play, and it challenges you to become skillful at throwing, catching, and coordinated play with your teammates. And you can do lots of running so it’s a great form of exercise.
Ultimate is definitely a love of my life for many reasons! So I’ve been kind of bummed in the last couple months because most cities that I have visited on this trip haven’t had any nearby pickup games. Enter the manifesting power of the universe — “ask and you shall receive”!
When visiting REI a couple weeks ago, I saw some Frisbee Golf discs for sale and I thought “what the hell, that looks like fun” and I grabbed a couple. After being cooped up inside doing too much work this week, I needed to get outdoors and get some exercise. That’s when I remembered the discs that were just sitting in my car. So I went online looked up Frisbee Golf courses in the area and I found one nearby and went to try it out.
Frisbee Golf is pretty similar to the game of Golf where you have tee-off areas, a big fairway (a long, narrow grass field), and a target at the end to get your frisbee into. But instead of clubs and a ball, you’re playing with frisbee discs which are smaller in size than a normal Ultimate/beach frisbee. The discs generally come in three types, a driver, a mid-range and a putter, and you can often buy them in a starter kit for the low price of $25-30. Each type of disc has a slightly different shape that can give you more distance or more control in your throws. The goal of the game is to continually chuck your frisbee down the fairway and eventually throw it into the basket to score. Scoring is generally done by keeping track of the number of throws for each hole and totaling all the throws at the end — the fewer throws the better. Well-built courses will have signs that tell you the “par” (average throws) for each hole. Most courses generally have 9 holes, though some of the nicer courses have up to 18.
Although the game certainly offers opportunity for competitive play by keeping track of your score or tournament competitions, many people just play for fun or to hang out with friends. Don’t worry if you don’t have anyone to play with… most times you can just show up at a course and either play by yourself or join up with other people who are already there.
I went out to play for a couple hours yesterday, and joined up with a few people of varying levels of experience who showed me the ropes and gave me some pointers. Because the goal of the game is to get the frisbee into the basket in as few throws as possible, it’s generally a good idea to chuck the disc as far as possible on each throw. Because my arm was out of practice for not having played Ultimate for a few months, the 2 hours of play yesterday left the muscles in my shoulder a bit sore. Still, I loved it so much that I had to play again today and so I went out for half an hour at lunch time. Ultimate Frisbee will always be a love of mine, but I now have a new best friend in my life, Frisbee Golf!
Went camping with my new friend Sandy out in a river canyon near Jamestown, about 20 minutes from Boulder. We drove out there with her couch surfer, Felicity (who is from New Zealand), and met two more of Sandy’s friends who were already at the campsite when we arrived. They had picked out a great spot for us on an island in the middle of the river. After hauling in our gear, the women started setting up the tent and preparing the campsite while myself and the other two guys went out to gather firewood.
We spent the evening around the fire, taking in the delicious warmth and dancing flames, sharing food and drink, and recounting some great stories. I particularly enjoyed Felicity’s stories about New Zealand, including the history of the Maori people and their connection with the earth. I love her accent!
About halfway through the night, we started working on putting together all the ingredients for a sweat lodge. We found about 15 large stones and placed them into the fire, and then started throwing very large logs onto the fire and to the point that the flames were almost licking the branches of the nearby trees. Apparently you need a lot of heat for a sweat lodge, so we let the stones cook for about two hours under the blazing logs. While one person manned the fire, we started work on digging a hole that was about 2 feet in diameter by 6 inches deep. The next step was to start chopping some of the dead Aspen trees into 6 foot poles and then start placing them around the hole in a tipi/teepee fashion. Once we had the wood frame constructed, we created walls by wrapping the poles in about 20 blankets. It’s important for the walls to be as airtight as possible to keep the heat in, but you also need to build a flap for the door that can be easily opened and sealed shut.
Once everything was ready, we stripped off our clothes and ran into the tent — it was about 35° that night, so we had to move very quickly! The person watching over the fire shoveled about half of the hot stones into the hole in the tipi, and then the door was sealed shut to keep the heat in. The room was now in total darkness, but you could see a faint shimmering from the stones as they radiated their inner heat. Water was poured onto the stones to create steam which rose up and filled the room with a damp, earthy heaviness. Even though our legs and bottoms were shivering from sitting on the cold dirt floor, our upper bodies were sweating heavily until almost a steady stream of water was dripping down us and creating pools on the floor or falling onto the hot rocks and turning back into steam.
Time seemed to slip away there in the darkness of the sweat. Our eyes were blind but our other senses were heightened — the sound of the crackling fire outside and the wind blowing through the trees around us, the sweltering heavy air that enveloped us like a cocoon, the raw earth that evaporated into the air with the steam and caked onto our bodies and into our nostrils with ancient smells. We talked, we laughed, we chanted and prayed. We gave thanks to all the beauty and prosperity in this world, and for the opportunity to share this rich experience with each other.
When the heat had done its cleansing job, we each climbed on hands and knees through the door out into the cold as if being birthed from the womb. We jumped into the freezing cold river and screamed and laughed as mother nature’s cleansing water washed away the sweat and dirt. We gathered around the fire, still naked but unaffected by the cold, feeling so natural and at peace with the world around us and basking in the afterglow of the experience.
We slept well that night cuddled up in a big pile together in one large tent. We awoke the next morning to a bright sunny day with deep blue skies and the occasional puffy cloud here and there. All the trees in the canyon were shimmering as they swayed back and forth from little droplets of frozen water that had collected on branches and frozen in the early morning dew. As we were breaking down camp, a mild wind blew through the canyon and showered the frozen dew down on us like little snow flurries. Once camp was packed up and our stuff was brought to the car, we went for a short hike up the side of the canyon and climbed rocks that looked out across the river and nearby hills. It was a perfect moment to take in the beauty of our surroundings one last time, and reflect on the vivid experiences of our magical night together.
Went hiking with my friend Amy up Boulder Canyon to find a place for her to experiment with her camera as part of her Photography Class homework. We found a short trail (10 minutes?) leading us up to Boulder Falls. It was a bit chilly that day — you can see some snow in a few of the pictures, and you can even see me holding a disc of ice that I fished out of the stream. Other fun things to look for in these photos are a rainbow created by the waterfall spray, and the figure of a large face appearing on the cliff just above the waterfall.
Tags: Boulder, hiking, nature, pictures, waterfalls
My couch surfing host in Boulder, Dave, loves rock climbing and bouldering, so he organized a big group of his friends to get together for some outdoor fun. Three cars of people drove up Boulder Canyon for about 15 minutes to a pullout across the road from the canyon river. We took the short hike up the canyon to a rock face overlooking the forested valley below. There were already a few other groups of people set up with their gear, including a few more of Dave’s friends. Here are some photos of the canyon valley and rock climbers.
Tags: Boulder, rock climbing
While driving through Boulder today, I decided to take an alternate route to where I needed to go. I drove down College road into the University of Colorado campus. There were so many students walking around and crossing the street, I probably stopped 10 times for 30 seconds each in the course of a mile. It was crazy and felt like I was driving through a flock of birds that fly towards you instead of away.
There are an incredible number of south-east Asian restaurants in Boulder — lots of great Thai food in particular. This town has an insane number of coffee shops and Thai restaurants — I’m not complaining though because I’m getting to eat more curry and noodle dishes than I have in many years and I’m stocking up because it may be a long time until I get to a place like this again.
Tags: Boulder, delicious food
Sky-watchers in North America can expect to see up to 30 meteors hourly tonight as the annual Leonid meteor shower peaks in the wee hours of Tuesday, Nov. 17. Earth will cross the first meteor-producing stream on this date starting at around 1 a.m. PST, experts predict.
Click here for general information about tonight’s meteoric show
Click here for plenty of links of where and when to watch the sky