limerick_jim

OK well the recession hit around September and i paid off all my college loans and i thought i was going to be broke forever. things were looking bleak for the documentary. but after some encouraging conversations with some people in the irish ultimate community and the fact that I've curtailed some of my ridiculous spending and now i've put away about a grand (€). i'm estimating i'll need around 10k so it's a small start. so first thing i need to get is a laptop with Firewire and then i need to learn what the fuck i'm doing with this editing lark.

Anyway if anyone reads this blog just to let you know that i am back working on getting this documentary off the ground

Jim

p.s. if anyone does read this please shoot me a mail or leave a comment i'd like to know if

so the dollar continues to rise against the euro. bad times
but i did get some interview footage and half a game recorded, good times.
all i need is one good  trip to dublin and i can get started.
also stupid Limerick Institute of Technology, pay me!!!

could you not blow over at least one oil platform? sorry everyone. let me explain how high winds in the gulf lead to me coming to you guys sooner. 
see if oil supply is disrupted, by say a hurricane, then it increases in price. an increase in oil price normally means a drop in the dollar against the Euro. since i earn money in Euros this is a good thing. last week the Euro was $1.60 now its $1.46. sad times.
i know i'm trying to profit on the economic collapse of america but at least you the public will benifit. and we can share the wealth. so invest in the Euro everyone and pray for high winds and we'll all be cool.
Jim

i'm currently mad at everyone at worlds. been watching the coverage on Ultivillage. i know if i went it would have been a big financial cut that would have pushed back the start of the documentary proper but still I WANNA GO!!! :'(
i'm in the process of trying to find something to film for a pilot. proving hard since all of european ultimate is in Vancouver at the moment. anyway i'll try to get something worthwhile to my editor before he kills me soon.
Jim 

it looks like the dollar is going to hit an all time low against the Euro today! why is this a good thing you may ask. well since i earn money in Euros but plan on living in america for at least a year its like getting a raise every time the dolar drops. this means i can spend more money on the documentary. Hurray!

sorry for all you ammericans who want to come to europe on vacation anytime soon. however it looks likely that the change of administration this november will see a shift in the dollar the other way.

i'm currently in the market for an editor/producer thingy. i've decided to pitch the show to RTE the Irish telivisio company. they have rediculus budgets so i might be able to weedle something. not much of an update i know but you'll have to deal with it my handfull of fans

so recently i've been doing alot of learning. one i learned that if you want to save money dump your girlfriend.  not that i even had to spend money on her per say as much as i had to spend money doing stuff with her. such as going to scotland and staying in hotels everynight. 
other things i've learned is that the battery life on my cam corder isn't what i thought it would be. 100 minutes goes by pretty quickly. 
i learned that jumping over campfires to impress drunken ultimate players is pretty stupid. 
i learned that there exists a glorious drug far better than Ibprophine named Diaphine.

so basicly instead of having a pilot episode that i thought would be awesome by now i have half a game my team played in amsterdam against another irish team and a short (but really good) piece on a game called stubby GUTS.

so the reason for my radio scilence for the past number of weeks has been my now ex-girlfriend coming over to stay with me (from Michigan) for 6 weeks. we travelled to Scotland and Northern Ireland with the twin intention of seeing beautiful places and bankrupting me. 

after getting back from Scotland i went to a small hat tournament on a beach in Cork. 
I arrived down on the saturday night after missing the first day of playing. however there were 60 some other people who had played that day and let me tell you that the old saying is true: putting an Irishman on the beach is like putting a fork in the microwave. there were some very burnt people.

we played a little drinking game called Stubby GUTS that you'll be able to see shortly on my first piece of footage (which i now have to come up with some way of displaying, ideas anyone?) 

this was followed by a camp fire largely built by me. since i built it a bunch of the Dublin lads drunkenly kept goading me to jump the campfire by shouting "Jump it Jim!" in repeat. so i obliged and sumarily sprained my ankle. i woke up the next morning and went straight back to limerick and went to hospital without seeing a single minute of ultimate played.

the next week was spent popping Diaphine like M&M's and going around on crutches. 

the next weekend was Windmill Windup in Amsterdam. a bad ass 36 open and 14 women's team tournament complete with camping at the side of the pitch. there was a strong Irish contingent this year with 4 teams including the national ladies team competing. so do to the funny draw. out of 36 teams after our first game our next was against Pookas, an irish team. followed by a subsequent game against Jabba the Huck, another Irish team. i don't want to bore you with tournament reports of a team you probably have never heard of, leave it to say that we were awesome (not really but we won a game), in part due to our two ringers from the Irish national squad who we paid to come over with us. 

the second night was an impressively drunk night in town with a visit to the pub to watch Holland play France in soccer and then a trip to the Red Light District...

day two started with finding out that one of the lads from dublin encouraging Jim to jump it had himself jumped a fence to go piss and tore his ligament in his ankle. the irony was appreciated by all.

another day of games was followed by another night of drinking... lots of drinking. and with 70+ irish people the drinking was bound to be... well... lots. we cut up the dancefloor in the dance tent and drank it up old school. also many entertaining races/games and sundry entertainments were hosted by the wonderful organisers so the party had no choice but to start out with some good energy. 

this was followed by a final day of games. let me just say that mornings are not a good time to be Irish. at this time i'd like to comliment windmill on their format. a Swiss Draw format was used. this ment that you got points based on the margin of victory of defeat your game ends at so if you won by only one point you got 16 points but the opposing team got 14. you needed to win by 10 in order to get maximum 25 points. then in the next round you play a team on the same number of points as you so its even all the way through as opposed to most tournaments wehere the awesome teams whale on the new teams and you end up with some pretty pointless games.

the ladies final was a big hit with the irish as our ladies national team faced off against the Italian ladies. 50 irishmen screaming for there female hero's alas wasn't enough and the girls lost despite a valiant come back at the end. 

without boring you much more i recomend checking out www.windmillwindup.com for more details.,
 finally just want to say that windmill is deffinatly the second biggest event in european ultimate every year second only to Paganello and should be visited by all before they die.

video content to follow soon... i promise!
Jim

i forgot to mention this in my last post as i was trying in vain to be somewhat funny. by the end of the tournament there were losts of regular holiday going French people hanging out at the beach watching the games. after one of the games these two French kids came up with pens and paper and asked for our autographs. and by asked the came upto us and held out the paper and pens twords us in an attempt to overcome the language barrier as only 3 year old kids can. it was an admitedly moving gesture. 
so mystery French kids you might grow up to play frisbee at the highest levels for France but  my impact on your life will always be dwarfed by the impact you had on mine.

Ok so after much procrastinating my "article" of the ECBU:
 last weekend was the ECBU in Le Pouliguen in France. I was lucky enough to be representing Ireland at this genuinely amazing event. according to some of my team mates (who play for an Irish club called: Captain Drinking Binge) ECBU replaced a long running tournament called Yes but Neu for this year, and if next years tournament had half as much effort put into it as the ECBU I’d recommend everyone go if they have the chance.

 So we arrived in France from gorgeous Ireland to some much unappreciated le rain. after much waiting for trains and such and sampling French bakeries and beer we managed to wind our way to the beach to see a team of around 20 people lining/raking and generally preparing the pitches. Blah blah blah we got registered same ole stuff for anyone who's ever been to a tournament other than the awesome fact that each player got a folding beach/camping chair with the ECBU logo printed on it.

That evening came with a free BBQ and free wine, however the two hours of sleep all of us copped at my place the night before we caught our 6 am flight took its tole and most of us were in bed by a reasonable hour. 
Friday we woke to some more disappointing rain and made our way to the beach for the "opening ceremony"

I have to say now that I wish the next part of the story was made up. 
We all were put up in the stands of the main pitch. President of BULA (beach Ultimate Lovers Association) Patrick gave an opening speech welcoming us and the Mayor of Le Pouliguen gave a speech (in French) welcoming us and the TD gave us a speech welcoming us. then we were all called down country by country to stand around a circle coned out on the beach called "The Circle of Friendship (I shit you not the circle of friendship) Patrick said a little something about each country before calling them down to the circle for example "And they have a tournament whose motto is 'We Don't Need an Ocean" it's Switzerland!" For us he actually said "Party at every tournament and have something that goes on in Cork its Ireland!" so we walked down through the gauntlet of gay (which was more impressive and uplifting that I originally gave it credit for)

our first game was against France. A team made up of many players going to Vancouver in August. The final score being 13-2 to the frogs. The only point of note being that our all star Bobby Mac told us that the reason we lost was because he didn't get enough pitch time. 

Game 2: the Dutch Impressively bright orange jerseys were held back by the Irish for the first 3 points. However after that we made the mistake of resting Bobby Mac and ended up losing 13-3.

Finally we got shat on by the fantastic Belgians losing 13-1. I through my first ever Callahan (one of 2 we gave them) and All-star Bobby Mac not only didn't get enough pitch time he managed to drop a pull as well.

So we retreated to lick our wounds. And by lick our wounds I mean drink. So we met up with the Austrians and drank then the Dutch and drank, and finally the Swiss... and drank. We also managed to find a pizza place that gave a can of beer with each pizza ordered! 
This was followed by a trip to a bar we lovingly renamed the "Quack bar" due to its selling of the fantastic double strength beer: Quack. After much drinking and going around drawing correlation between various teams manliness and their ability to consume beer we stumbles home.

Day 2 was met with scorching heat. And the old expression is true my friends: and Irishman on the beach is like a fork in the microwave. The German masters seemed to be at ease (and the bastards were largely not drinking the night before) in the hellish temperatures.  Our legs were slow our heads were sore our mouths were dry and Bobby Mac didn't get enough pitch time. The Germans (not a man of them younger than 33) ran out winners 10-4.

I feel it's important to point out now that after this and every other game before or after we did a "call" after our games. For those of you un-aware with the tradition it's a game played between the two opposing teams after the ultimate is finished that has nothing to do with ultimate. For example which team can bury their smallest player in the sand first.

The German's gave our MVP (Old Man Tony) a bottle of German Beer for their call which he promptly drank.

We then faced the Czech's in a seemingly close game that they got the better of us. alas if only we had given Bobby Mac more pitch time.10-4 to the Czech's

our last game of the day was on the show pitch (the pitch with the stands from he opening ceremony) we played the Austrians in a very close game with one point lasting 15 min and 13 turnovers. However we managed to lose 9-4 in a score line that the Austrians admitted was flattering. its funny to note that one of our players managed to break his knuckle diving for a disc in the warm up (on sand)

 that night went uneventfully for me  as we I was wrecked and tapped out early. Highlights of the night include scoring Parisian women and beginning the destruction of our new best Dutch friend Wesley.

Our final day of pool games was against the French masters on the show pitch. We were greeted with a moderate spectator crowd of passing French people alas we did lose 5-13.

Next we faced Spain. we managed to make another marathon point for the first point lasting 5 min before the Spanish took their timeout to regroup and rallied to win by allot (I can't remember). The biggest memory of course being that Pitch Time Bobby failed to get enough pitch time.

Our final game against the Swiss was a tiring affair for us. Losing 13-4.

That night was a party in some community hall with a great dinner and lots of free wine. A Beatles tribute band was met with much appreciation. Myself and Pitch Time Bobby danced ourselves very sweaty. Outside the Dutch challenged us to a car moving competition till we got yelled at by some French guy. 
Much rejoicing, top-gun enactments and dancing later we went in look of a new bar alas we found none open and retired to bed.

Our final placement game for 7th place was against the Czech's finally Bobby Mac got some more pitch time and we managed to rack up 8 points. Alas it wasn't to be and the Czech's won 10-8.

The final was a one sided affair between Switzerland and France. The Swiss managed to rack up several scores early. And though the French managed to battle back it wasn't enough. Switzerland running out 12-8 winners.

The closing ceremony was an emotional and amazingly spirited affair MC'd by Patrick wearing an Irish Jersey which he had asked to trade with us. Lots of speeches in French from local politicians after every award was given. 

In somewhat of an aside I’m going to detail the unique way beach tournaments grade spirit. You give each team 0-2 points in a number of categories on a score sheet you fill out after every match. The categories go from maturity to knowledge of the rules, to avoiding contact to the other teams spirit compared to yours. Meaning the team who won spirit had to do it not by being the drunkest at the party or having the hottest girls but by being fair-minded ultimate players. Truly a prestigious award to have been given.

The Spirit award was won by us. Yay us!

so after some Mac line and a final night of drinking we headed home to Ireland to tell everyone how great we are for winning spirit and the hunt goes on for more tournaments to find Bobby Mac more pitch time.
 

Apologies to all who competed in the mixed division I made some friends on the Danish team and watched several of their games but not enough to really write an opinion. They did seem very spirited and it looked to be a fantastic competition in its own right.

So our second and last training sessions before the European Championships of Beach Ultimate was yesterday on a suprisingly sunny beach in Wiclow. it seemed to go well (and blah blah blah about team gelling and describing our drills i've read enough boring blog posts dedicated to that).
what's pissing me off is my camcorder wont be back from the shop till the thursday after the event so i'm hoping one of the lads will bring his and i can shoot my first footage for the pilot. i'll be sure to blog about it but i'm sure you'd much rather see it so i'll see what i can do.
thats all for now more musings to follow soon
Jim

Sorry about the radio silence. been busy with work and training and being Lazy.
so since my last post i opened my camera tried to film and found out my LCD screen on my brand new camera was broken! as in it only showed up in negative. so i had to send it back to my friend in Michigan to bring it back to best buy, however we did manage to lose the recipt. but good news is to be had, while i was over there buying the yoke the salesman was extremely helpful and so i tipped him $20 even tho i know he gets commission i thought i'd be nice. so i'm hoping Karma will help me out here.

in other news i'm getting ready for the European Championships of Beach Ultimate. playing for Ireland, we've had a total of one training session and our second and final one is this weekend next week we fly off to France to ware the Green. we do have hope however since 3 of the 8 countries were playing don't have coastlines.

other interesting things for the summer include my college team's trip to Windmill Windup in Amsterdam in June and an all Ireland mixed team that formed but doesn't know where to go to play for the summer.
also i need a job for the summer, my easy ass well paying job teaching dumb ass IT students in Limerick physics ends next week so any one out there who wants to give me a job please feel free to offer.
Jim

ok
so second post now.
well i'm mostly pre occupied by working at the moment. i'm looking into buying a laptop which is my last major piece of capitol before i have to start saving for the trip. i''m estimating it'll cost me $10,000. this is getting easier at the moment as the dollar is dropping against the Euro and will probably keep doing that until at least November.

A big goal for me is to try to obtain the full whack innovation grant from the UPA. Any one out there have any advice. what i'm hoping to do isget some sort of a presentation accompanied hopefully by an Irish/European Episode as a Pilot. 
what about Irish Ultimate you ask. Well there's a few things i'l like to cover. Personally I'm on the national beach team for the upcoming European Beach Championships. eligibility on the team was determined by an ability to answer an E-mail that went around a few months ago. but still saying we have apretty good standard with most of the team having tried and failed to get on the national team for Worlds. the added edge we have is that wehave a whole Island worth of shitty coastline and biting wind, where on contrast three other countries competing in this don't have coastlines. so while we have to freeze our tils off in the wind of Portmarnack strand at least were not the Swiss training on mountain.

other topics include the fact that up intil very recently Irish ultimate has been very much centered in Dublin. Now however existing teams in Cork and Belfast are starting to really make progress against the Dublin teams. new teams are also forming in Limerick (the team i founded) and Galway. 

Another interesting topic i want to cover is the Northern Ireland Issue. what country these players are eligible to play for has been cause for hidden debate for years now. other issues such as which governing body is responsible for the North has been softly stepped around by both the Irish Flying Disc Association and the UKUA. players can however play for either great Britan or Ireland on an international level.

to further complicate the issue i'm going to explain how the system has worked for other sports. 
the most popular sport accross the two countries is probably Soccer. however at an international level the UK doesn't compete as the UK it competes as England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. with Ireland competing as The Republic of Ireland.

The second most popular sport would be Rugby with the countries competing as England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland competing as one nation.

to further complecate things the Olympics compete as Great Britan and Ireland and Northern Ireland left in an undisclosed no man's land. though it has been said that Great Britan (the olympic sport team) includes Northern Ireland. Britan also goes so far as to not even enter a team in the Soccer event at the Olympics (the national sport of both England and Scotland) because they normally compete as four seperate entities and it would be too complicated to amalgamate for one event.


that was kinda a digression. back to buisness. i will also be attending windmill windup in Amsterdam in June as well as competing in the British Mixed Tour event which is basically the Britis equivlent of the club series in america.

so that was long hopefully if you have any questions you'll let me know.

and apolagies to the girls of Scorch at the University of Arizona. they were the first College team (male or female) to get back to me and i am very sorry for forgetting to include you in the above list.


Limerick Jim

wow writing. it's been a while since i've done this. Putting in Capitol letters, weird.
OK.
the point of this blog is to give everyone out there in ultimate land an insight to the behind the scenes action of what i've done in the planning of my trip. what trip? glad that you asked:
    next year, hopefully early 2009 depending on sponsorship possibly earlier, i intend to land in America and start going from ultimate team to ultimate team learning how to be a better ultimate player. Along the way i want to meet the best in the major teams we've all heard of  and learn my trade. I also want to learn what makes this sport so different. Why can i expect to land anywhere in America and be able to post on any major message board and be able to find at least one pick up game, a couch to sleep on, a buddy to drink with and a couch to crash on (at least i hope).
   
    There will be more to this than just meeting Elite players and leeching their skills away. as in all things ultimate exists at many levels and i want to see this from a top notch level level down through every variety of level to the grass roots make up of ultimate. How are people recruited whats the best way to expand your club? what doesn't work? these are questions i want to answer.

    so far i have around forty  locations around America with teams or people willing to meet me, host me, and show me what ultimate is like in their area. for a look at these locations here's a map i compiled:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=116449010286698690601.000443eb0a0bc26b918a1&ll=33.137551,-87.802734&spn=47.206723,82.265625&z=4


so far i've got about 9 elite mens teams who have agreed to meet me (sorry if i left you out i'll correct it if you get on to me):
Seattle Sockeye
Pike, NJ
DoubleWide Austin TX
Boston Ultimate
GOAT Toronto
The Condors Santa Barbra CA
Jonny Bravo Boulder CO
Ring of Fire NC
Machine Chicago IL

5 elite ladies teams:

Riot Seattle WA
Lady Godiva Boston MA
Black Hoe NC
Ambush NY NY
Layuma Florida

I won't list all the wish list teams i don't have down yet but i'll put that in a follow up post.

all the following are elite colleges who agreed to meet me:
Florida
North Carolina
Georgia
Indiana
Williams
Delaware
Wisconsin
Stanford
New York (i think purple Haze)
Arizona

on the ladies side i haven't been nearly as lucky:
Florida have been the only ladies college team to get back to me so far... please i'm not a stalker i promise!

many many people have also promised to contribute across america but at the moment i'll hold off on mentioning you guys till a later post.

so i finally bought my first camera last week so the first big step to this trip is made and now all i have to do is fund raise €10,000 and i'm away!

next time i'll talk about my plans for an Irish episode
wish me luck and advice is always welcome
Limerick Jim