Troubled in Vegas, Part 1

Not a typo!

I skipped all my classes on Thursday to handle some last-minute homework and (unnecessary) travel preparations, then met the team at the Gunswick train station around noon-thirty. Train to air-train to terminal, played some cards and bought an iPod charger (expensive, but worth it) before boarding the plane. Worst plane ride ever--long, and there were a couple bad swoops where the floor dropped out, which really makes me uncomfortable. Not in the sense that I feel sick, but in the sense that I get freaked out. After reading the first act of Othello, I rocked the iPod for the rest of the flight, fading in and out to the sounds of Alice in Chains, BNL, the Cranberries, Savatage, and Streetlight Manifesto (recently acquired). Approaching Vegas at night was pretty sweet, with the lights stretching for miles in the middle of desert so dark, it looked like ocean. Touched down, picked up the rental minivans, divided into groups, and made it over to the hotel to check in before a late dinner. I went to a Japanese steakhouse with Mio, Pete, Thales, and Andrew, choosing a nice rice/chicken/egg dish and sampling a shot of the most delicious alcohol I've had the pleasure of drinking, TY KU sake liqueur. After dinner, we pretty much went right to bed, because we had our first game at 8am the next morning.

I slept well, but woke up before my alarm went off and stayed in bed for a while thinking about the day ahead. I got up and showered, we headed to Jack in the Box for some breakfast sandwiches, bought $1 Powerade at the attached convenience store (money!), got to the tournament and found our fields. It was chill, with dew on the ground and the sun barely coming up. Even though most people were still wearing UnderArmour and warmup gear, I had mentioned before that I would wear only shorts and my jersey no matter how cold it was in Vegas. I delighted in the chill, because it was only an early-morning chill and would quickly evaporate with the day. A quick bathroom stop to make sure my urine was clear, and we warmed up. I didn't get a lot of throws in, but I was feeling pretty good nonetheless. Even though Dan Johnson kickblocked me six times in a row during the 3-man marking drill. So began game 1 vs Western Washington B. We started out slow the first half, clearly out of practice and rusty, and were down at half. We picked it up our offense a little, though, and won the game by a smallish margin. I can go over this game in more detail later, if the mood hits me, because we got most of it on tape.

Game 2 was against the University of San Diego, and we went down even worse in the first half of this game. I think it was 2-7 USD at one point, but we stepped it up and won the game on universe point. We then had two bye rounds, during which time I sucked down water, watched Wisconsin beat UCSB, watched a couple girls teams duke it out, met Bob, and threw around shirtless in the sun. Our final pool-play game was against Chico State, a team of funky dudes who moved the disc much more quickly than the previous two teams. They were also fairly athletic, came down with a lot of jump balls, and beat us 8-12. Again, the first half featured us tanking and in the second we tried to crawl back, but this time the hole was too deep. Taking second in the pool, we had to play a final game on Friday against USC. I had some Monster before the game and felt really good, played pretty well in the first half but got sidelined a lot in the second as we let them run away with the game. I wish I could have played more, or had my PT more evenly distributed, because it really sucked to see us lose such a winnable game. We let them beat us in the air, and though our defense looked marginally better we gave the disc up much too easily on offense with a lot of mental errors. We lost, went home, and I crashed.