Forgetting Stevie, and Other Short Stories.

The All Star Ultimate Tour.

Where to start.

Twenty one days, ten games in nine cities across the country. A travelling band of female athletes caravaning in two vans fondly dubbed “Slim” van and “Shady” van. These are some of our stories.

Day 1
Location: Washington
Kim has had almost two weeks to adjust to America. When shopping in the supermarket, she buys what she thought was a banana but actually turned out to be a plantain, much to the amusement of the rest of the team.
It’s going to be a long trip.

Day 2
Location: Washington
“Remember, your brains are your best insurance” – Qxhna
Wise words that we would carry with us and reflect on throughout the Tour.

Day 4
Location: Driving from Seattle to Eugene
Janina: “Soo, why are you wearing overalls on a road trip?”
Soo: “It’s denim Sunday…duhhh”
We appreciate Soo’s commitment to her team’s tradition of denim Sundays. We also appreciate knowing what day of the week it is.

Day 5
Location: Oregon
The general consensus is that people on the Tour don’t separate their lights and darks in the wash. Except Hayley, she’s a separator. She rocks the blinding white tees.

Kim has decided it is genius to buy canned food to save money.
She did not buy a can opener.
At what point does it get awkward to ask a restaurant to open your cans of tuna and beans… 
#fromspraggstoriches

The drive as we came in to San Francisco was eventful. We missed two exits off the freeway. When we turned around we missed the same two exits on the way back. Good thing we have a whole tour to perfect this driving thing.

Day 7
Location: Utah
We were about an hour out of Salt Lake City when we saw a meteorite. The van quickly escalated from confusion to full scale flipping out as we figured out what it was we were seeing. As it continued its arc across the sky, it became more broken up as if they were little meteorites chasing each other across the sky. This was one of the coolest things seen on the Tour to date not including Hayley’s sock tan line.

Conversation with our Utah hosts:
A: “Don’t listen to him, he’s wearing sweat shorts”
B: “They’re from H&M, that means they’re hip”

Day 9
Location: Driving through the woods to a swimming spot in Colorado:
JWei: “OMG they have a zoo down there!”
Scarth: “That’s a farm”

Day 10
Location: Colorado
Janina stayed home alone while everyone went to play or watch Colorado Cup to recover from her concussion. She had a couple of options to keep herself entertained: going for a walk either along the road or in the woods. She opted for the one-way road so she wouldn’t get lost in the woods. She got lost anyway.
It’s a work in progress.

Day 11
Location: Colorado
Eddie, Claire, Kim, Scarth and Shiori watched the sunrise from Red Rocks. They were half way there when they realized that they had forgotten Stevie.

When playing games it was decided that Janina had to wear her concussion helmet. A Hawaiian flower decorated bicycle helmet. Throw back to Q’s words of wisdom “Your brains are your best insurance”.

Day 12
Location: Kansas
We have twelve leftover hard-boiled eggs from breakfast. Qxhna, with all her great ideas, turned it into an egg-eating relay contest to avoid the impeding disaster of twelve eggs in a warm van. Thanks Qxhna.
We never realized that there was technique to eating an egg as fast as possible.
Option 1: Eating the egg white first, and then the yolk.
Option 2: Taking heaps of little bites
Option 3: Opening your gullet and just swallowing the egg whole

Day 13
Location: Tennessee
Shof: “ What day did we decide it was today?”
Sometimes the tour exists in a time capsule where we can decide what day of the week it is. The general consensus is Tuesday.

Day 15
Location: Driving from Atlanta to Raleigh.
Kate: “Are you speeding?”
JWei: “But I’m still getting passed!”*
Kate: “Is that what you’re going to tell the officers?”
JWei: “Yeaaa…I’ve got a speeding problem, don’t tell Q.”
(*JWei was not speeding)

Day 16
Location: North Carolina
Kim said the words “rubbish” and “heaps of stuff” in casual conversation today, still laughing at her Australian terminology two weeks into the tour.

Arrived in North Carolina. It’s humid. 
We went swimming at a quarry in Raleigh, the water was so warm that we couldn’t quite tell the difference between being in and out of the water. 

A couple of guys showed us a spot to jump off a tree into the water. For some reason they became quite patriotic and started shouting “’MURICA”. We didn’t have the heart to tell them that two of the three of us jumping were from Australia and Canada.

Day 17
Location: North Carolina
Rohre told us that the deadline for our blog post was 10am the next day.
We decided to go dancing.

Day 18
Agenda: Driving from North Carolina to DC.
The house is quiet as everyone takes advantage of a rare opportunity to sleep; we sleepily contemplate the opportunity to capture many more memorable moments on what is left of this Tour.

We are here to showcase women in ultimate and promote gender equity. We are here to play games. However, that’s not the only thing that is happening on this Tour. 

These shenanigans are most likely somewhat familiar to you as you read this, whether you’re on a men’s, women’s or mixed team. This is team culture. This is people in ultimate. And we are a community.

Photo: Courtesy of Natalie Bigman-Pimentel

-Kim Spragg & Janina Freystaetter 

When proof reading this blog post:
Qxhna: “Do you want to include the funny fact that you two are buddies?”
Janina: “No, we’re not buddies”
Kim: “…”