Ok, I was going to talk about weather and food, but I am dying to update everyone on my ultimate tournament, so the rest will have to wait! I can’t guarantee that those of you who don’t love ultimate will enjoy this post, but you can decide for yourselves!
Last weekend, I traveled to Queretero to play in an ultimate tournament! After failed attempts to ride with some random ultimate players from Puebla (who I had not yet met), I was resigned to public transit. I am still trying to adapt to accepting that, when traveling in Mexico, things never happen as fast as I want them to! So, the travels began…..I left work at 5 on Friday, took a local bus to the big bus station here in Puebla (30 minutes), and then took a bus to Mexico City (3 hours). Rather than continuing on to Queretaro that night, I stayed in Mexico City with a friend. The next morning, I figured if I left Mexico City at 7am, I should arrive in Queretero by 10am, which would put me there an hour late. Technically, Queretero is only about 100 miles from the DF, so I was pretty confident with my estimate. WELL, after an hour ride on the Mexico City metro to "la estacion del norte" I boarded a bus to Queretero at 8:25. I soon realized that I made a poor choice when saying, I’ll take whichever bus leaves first, rather than saying I’ll take whichever bus will arrive in Queretero first! Before we were out of the city, we made at least 4 stops, and often at the stops food vendors would hop on, walk up and down the aisle selling food, and hop off. The trip to Queretero took for friggin ever due to the fact that I took the bus which made lots of local stops! I finally arrived in Queretero at 11:30 am and took a taxi to the fields, where I arrived in the middle of my team’s second game.
I played with a team called Candela, which in Spanish means candle, but apparently also has some sort of connotation similar to sass. My teammates had a hard time describing the translation! My team was pretty excited that I was there, because they only had 2 women before I got there, which means that those 2 were playing the entire time. Also, the offense can choose to play with 3 women, which meant that my team had to play down a person on several defensive points.
Let’s see….Mexican Ultimate vs US Ultimate…in my experience! First, there was absolutely no wind in Queretero, but teams were LOVING zone defense, my team included! We maybe played man (or “persona” as its called here) for half a game. Those of you who have played ultimate with me know that it is hard for me to keep my mouth shut on the frisbee field. I’m constantly talking or yelling or saying “clear the lane!” (Paul Graham you better be reading this). Well, it’s a lot harder to yell when you don’t know what the heck to say. You might also know that I like to give directions and talk strategy on the line...again…wasn’t happening. I was reduced to mumbling a mix of spanglish that most of the time made absolutely no sense! I think I actually learned a lot of new spanish ultimate vocabulary this weekend because I was so motivated to communicate!
With ultimate, the central philosophy is “spirit of the game,” which means that the most important aspect of the sport is playing with good sportsmanship. Usually, after games in the states you informally do the whole “good game, high five, line thing” right? WELL, in Mexico, you start with the line thing, except it involves kissing and hugging. Have I mentioned that here in Mexico, everytime a girl greets a guy or a girl greets a girl, you kiss on one cheek? Well, you do. And guys usually give hearty hand shakes and hugs to one another. Back to ultimate…during the good game line you do the whole kissing and hugging thing as well, with every single person on the other team! That's right - sweaty stranger kisses! After the “good game line,” both teams get together and sit in a circle. Usually the teams are really mingled and it’s not one team on one side and the other team on the other side. (Ok - this is my favorite part) Once you circle up, the captain of the winning team gives a little speech, usually along the lines of a post football game press conference speech. Something like “That was a really hard fought battle and both teams played really hard. You guys are great competitors and had really good spirit, and blah blah blah.” The blah blah blah is the Spanish that I didn’t understand. Then after the winning captain talks about how good of a game it was and how well the losing team played, the losing captain says a few words about the spirit of the winning team and blah blah blah. THEN, everyone gets together around that disc and does some sort of short cheer, like for example, a combination of both of the team’s names. Anyway – a very cool tradition. I'm not sure I explained it well, but the cool part is the mood after the game. Everyone gets together and is joking around and talking about both the good and the bad parts of the game. The atmosphere is neat in the way that everyone is on the same page and is grateful for having gotten to play.
In other exciting news…I bought a disc there! Yay! I have a disc in Mexico! There is this one guy in all of Mexico who sells ultimate paraphanalia (ok - there might be more than one, but probably not!). I was surprised by how many people had Gaia gear or were wearing 5 Ultimate shorts – I’m pretty sure this is the dude who makes it happen. Being desperate for a disc, and this being THE guy, I was willing to pay the steep price of 150 pesos for a disc (15$). I’m pretty sure he just buys the Discraft multipacs of random discs and then makes a sweet profit! The disc I got was from World’s in Vancouver this August, but was the design of the Mexican team. I can’t complain, it’s a nice disc. All in all, Candela went 3-3, not a bad showing. Because things happen slowly, and you just can’t rush them, I didn’t leave Queretero until 9:30pm Sunday night. I got a ride to Mexico City with some other ultimate players and then brought a bus back to Puebla, where I arrived at about 2am Monday morning. Without traffic and with a ride from Queretero, a 7.5 hour trip was shortened to a 4.5 hour trip! Nice!
