Month: September 2019

In addition to the airline joke, I love the trophy.

Flashback: September 1990. I was at UMR, brand new to the whole college experience, looking for activities where I could get involved. The resident assistant on my floor, Matt Groves, taught a group of us how to play this sport called ultimate. I’d never heard of it before (nor had any of us, I think) but I really liked it. I wasn’t really very athletic, but ultimate can be played at a variety of athletic and skill levels, so I didn’t feel completely outclassed on the field.

Although Matt only organized that one game, afterward I continued gathering the group together. We’d walk down to Schuman Park, near the residence hall, and play on the small field there. One endzone was marked by a huge oak tree; the other was a swingset. There was a pond on one sideline… and yes, the disc went into the drink far more often than we would’ve liked. I actually have an old photo of one of our games:

You can’t see it in the picture, but I was playing barefoot. I started out that way, and never stopped. Hence, I became “Shoeless Jeff” on the field.

Over my five years of college, I was the guy who was always calling up friends and telling them we were heading out to play. We upgraded to UMR’s athletic fields, which were much better than running into playground equipment (although one time I hit a 55-gallon trash barrel at full speed when I was watching the disc instead of where I was going). UMR didn’t have an official ultimate team, or even an intramural sport, but eventually we had enough “regulars” that we organized some tournament teams and played in Kansas and Indiana.

Once in Colorado, I found a pickup group in Aurora and played there, and a few years later I joined Grass Roots Ultimate in Boulder. I also organized a Longmont pickup group. So many options! In later years I was probably playing ultimate three or four times a week. And through this entire period, from that first day in college to this week in Longmont, I never missed a month. I played at least one day of each month from then until now. Twenty-nine years. 348 months. Straight.

And last night, I played for the last time. After a fabulous afternoon pickup game, I stopped by the Longmont league evening game.

I’d intended to just hang out on the sidelines, talking with friends, but one team was short-handed and needed someone to fill in for missing players. I played that entire game, and then picked up with another team for a few points. It was a beautiful evening, and a lot of fun to play one last time. Then the fields cleared as we headed out.

And that was it. After 348 straight months of ultimate, I’m done. The sport changed my life, although I think more to the point, the people did. There’s something special about ultimate. It’s different than other competitive sports. There’s a deeper, richer connection between players, even when they’re strangers. It’s hard to describe, and it’s something I’ll always treasure.

Thanks for 348 months of memories. Now it’s time for a new adventure.

Laralee has been growing out her hair for many months. I don’t think it’s because she likes it long– in fact, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like it long– but rather, it’s because she doesn’t want to make a trip to a salon and drop fifty bucks or whatever for a trim.

I happen to love long hair, and I think hers is gorgeous.

But she finally decided it was time to get a trim, and headed over to the salon today. She lost about eight inches of length:

Of course she’s still gorgeous. When I saw it, I told her something like “I really like your new haircut!” to which she replied, “Have you been practicing saying that?” She knows me too well.

Today was officially “Shoeless Day” at the biweekly Boulder ultimate pickup game. Since it’s my last day playing ultimate in Colorado, several people in the group suggested we have a game where everyone went shoeless. As it turned out, only three or four actually did, but it was still fun to see the group one last time. We had a huge crowd today:

I think it helped that it was perfect fall weather: one of those beautiful days when it’s great to be running around outdoors. It was fun (and hard) to say goodbye to so many friends, some of whom I’ve known for almost two decades. I hope to organize a pickup group in Montana, but I know it won’t be the same. Boulder ultimate will always have a special place in my heart.

Yesterday I learned a new word: vexillology. It refers to the “scientific and scholarly study of flags”. Yeah, flags.

I learned it because Laralee asked what the Montana state flag looks like, and I showed her:

It’s, umm… something, isn’t it? It looks like it was drawn by a third-grader, which is either absolutely horrible or spectacularly fun. La was surprisingly annoyed by Oro y Plata, which is Spanish for “Gold and Silver” and apparently the state motto. Remember: despite what its license plates say, Montana is the “Treasure State”.

Back to vexillology. This flag was apparently ranked the third worst flag in the fifty states by the North American Vexillological Association. I can only imagine the meeting of NAVA where the members sat around discussing this, compiling a list of the fifty flags and arguing about which was really the worst. Georgia came in dead last, although they’ve since changed their flag (possibly due to the embarrassment of their NAVA ranking?). Nebraska’s flag was voted second-worst, and with a bit of reading I learned that in 2017 one of Nebraska’s state senators introduced legislation to redesign the flag, citing the fact that the flag had flown upside-down at the capitol building for over a week with no one noticing.

In the end, both Laralee and I agree that Colorado’s flag is pretty awesome. It’s simple, has no Spanish (or Latin) phrases, and has meaningful colors (sky, snow, sunshine, red earth).

Look at me, analyzing the flag… maybe I should become a vexillologist!

This week will be my last hurrah playing ultimate in Colorado. Some of the guys in our pickup group have organized a “Shoeless Day” tomorrow:

Longtime Longmont pickup stalwart, GRU board member, swilling barefoot-running all-around good guy Shoeless Jeff will make his final (outdoor) pick-up appearance tomorrow at Valmont.

While no doubt true that the brutal desolation and loneliness of a long windy dark Montana winter will bring him back soon, and the likelihood that he’s so far from finished packing up his house that he’ll show up again on Tuesday, we should send him off in style tomorrow. Guard him lightly, compliment his errant throws and tentative soft cuts, and let him score at least once.

Bring your old and extra cleats, old smelly GRU shirts and visors, and cracked discs for Shoeless to take with him, box up and move to Montana to start a new pick-up game in Big Sky country.

And a tent. Shoeless is always on the lookout for a good tent to borrow.

I’m looking forward to one last game. And some good heckling.

I stumbled across some pictures of Kyra from a “photo shoot” we did a few months ago. I couldn’t resist making a little collage.

For the last couple of years, my friend RaeAnna has told me I need a new hairstyle. Without directly insulting my barber (Laralee), she’s said things like “You actually want your hair to look like that?” and told me how much better it would look if I’d let her cut it and add some “product”.

She also gives free haircuts to local missionaries, since they don’t really have the money to spend on a “professional” barber (25 bucks for a five-minute trim?). So she agreed to cut Zaque’s hair as well, since he’s about to be a missionary.

Zaque and I took a quick photo before we headed over:

His hair wasn’t nearly as poofy as usual, because he’d just taken a shower and it was still wet and somewhat matted down. But it was pretty much in full ‘fro mode.

We sat down in RaeAnna’s kitchen and she went to work. Zaque’s hair took nearly an hour to finish– she kept trimming this and that.

At one point she’d pretty much shaved the sides, but the top was still long and curly, and he looked somewhat like Titan from Megamind:

Then she went to work on me. She trimmed the sides and back, pretty much like Zaque’s, and then added some “product”. She insists that “even engineers can be hot”.

The results:

Today I bid farewell to my good friend Dave, with whom I’ve enjoyed a thousand lunch conversations over many years.

His startup, KickView, continues to thrive. He started it a few years ago, and in a way I was one of the founders, but at the time I was pretty busy with Zing and couldn’t dedicate enough time to really help him get off the ground. So instead I fell into the role of an advisor, and the two of us talked about strategies and business ideas and all sorts of things. He drew from my experience starting and running a company, and I learned a lot from him along the way. It’s been fun to watch his journey, and I’m sure going to miss those lunch conversations.

Tonight was my last GRU board meeting. I’ve been on the board for the past three years, and before that I was a league coordinator, tournament director, captain, webmaster, official scorekeeper, and a host of other things. This organization has been a huge part of my life for the past twenty years, and it was (as always) bittersweet to bid farewell to the rest of the board.

It’s always amazing to me to see the power that a group of passionate volunteers can have. GRU has come a long way in twenty years, due in large part to the tireless work of the board. I’m leaving it in good hands, but that doesn’t mean I won’t miss being a part of it. Thanks for all the memories, guys.