Frisbee

My hands are sore today. Throwing a frisbee is harder than it looks.

After Tanner and I had lunch, we went over to Blue Heron park to play catch for a bit. One of the local real estate agents had distributed logo frisbees around my neighborhood, so I was looking forward to putting the thing to good use. Tanner (pictured above) has been an Ultimate Frisbee enthusiast for several years now, and has developed a somewhat snobbish attitude toward the hardware. "I can't play with that frisbee," he said. "It's too light."

"But it has a real estate agent's logo on it," I replied. "It's very pretty."

"It's a piece of crap. It's flimsy. It won't fly very far." OK, whatever.

We ended up going to Kallas's house and asking "the guys" if they wanted to come to the park with us. Kallas has a professional model disc, and supposedly could educate me on why my imprinted promotional item was not as good as the "real" thing. Clint (the drummer) and Andrew (the bass player) joined us for an unstructured session of "tossin' the plate".

Of course, the very first throw left the Official Model Ultimate Frisbee® deeply embedded high up in a pine tree. No problem: Tanner could dislodge it by throwing his shoe at it.

I walked over to my car to get my extra-long ice scraper to use as a poking device to hopefully retrieve the frisbee and both of Tanner's shoes (which were even higher up than the frisbee). It was a bit tricky, since the tree had a zillion little branches shooting out in every direction, effectively preventing a climbing solution to our problem. But after several minutes of stabbing, shaking, and cursing various branches, we were able to dislodge the disc and the misguided footwear, and resume our game.

Tanner was right. We did an apples-to-apples comparison of the store-bought disc vs. the freebie, and there was a HUGE difference. The good one flew straighter, further, and with less wobble. And not only that, but his claims of our comparative throwing skills were borne out as well. In short: I stink, Andrew is slightly better, Clint and Tanner are lots better, and Kallas...well, Kallas is just lights out. He could snuff a candle from 50 yards, and can catch anything he can get to. These kids put on a clinic for me.

I tried every type of technique, having the best luck with a sort of underarm/sidearm toss, and by the time the sun went down was achieving moderate distance and accuracy. But my hands hurt.

They say it gets easier with more practice, though, so I think I'll continue to play catch with the boys on a semi-regular basis. Should be fun—I'll let you know how it goes.