My blog's been kinda quiet lately, not only because of workload, but also due to weekend trips I've been taking with my son Ryan, who's 21, to a couple flying disc freestyle tournaments, where we competed together as a team.
The first was in Narragansett, Rhode Island, where we took 6th place in a very strong field. If I'm not mistaken, each of the five teams in front of us had at least one player who attended the recent freestyle world championships in Seattle, plus there were two former world champions competing in the tournament. It was tons of fun, despite the significantly hot weather.
The second was outside Louisville, Kentucky, where we managed to take 2nd place. It was also really hot, but also a lot of fun. Freestylers are just the coolest people on the planet.
Here's a couple photos of Ryan making some catches during our Narragansett routine:
The second catch is called a flying gitis (pronounced "GUY-tiss"), where the catch is made in the air with the opposite hand over the leg with the palm of the hand up. Try it, it ain't easy.
And here's a couple of me, with the first showing me setting up for a back roll, where the disc rolls from right fingertips to left fingertips across the top of my back:
In the second one, I'm rolling the disc across my chest with the disc upside down. Ryan threw the disc to me with counter-clockwise spin, which I caught spinning on my fingernail on my right hand (which is called a "nail delay"), and then with the fingernail of my left index finger, pressed on the top of the disc to turn it over into an upside-down clockwise spin, and then chest-rolled it from left to right. I can't jump like Ryan anymore, so I like doing a lot of slow, smooth body rolls like these.
Thanks to my friend Mark Ide for the photos.
Dave might like Ultimate, which is cool, but having played both, freestyle is just way ahead for me in terms of both challenge and fun.