There is never even a breath of wind where I play my ultimate. The sun is always shining and it's always right around twenty-five degrees. The grass is lush and there are actually lines on the field that mark the end zones and sidelines. In other words, everything is perfect. That's why I can throw a pinpoint hammer from anywhere to anywhere on the field.
But this past Sunday I got a chance to see what I've been missing out on. I watched some games at Tournament of Fools at Dalhousie University in Halifax. There was a steady forty-kilometre-per-hour wind blowing and it rained almost half the time. And it was there that I witnessed some of the most beautiful ultimate I have ever seen.
I'm used to turnovers being rare. But I saw one team that was able to generate turnovers by seemingly doing nothing! Their defenders looked like they were just standing around, but then all of a sudden the other team would throw the disc straight into the ground or way up in the air where it would sail off into oblivion. I couldn't really understand what was happening but some of my fellow spectators explained that this team was so skilled it was actually able to use the wind to its advantage.
So then I wondered if the other teams would be able to use the wind to their advantage on defence too. It turned out that sometimes they could, but other times this one team was so clever that they would heave a huge huck into the air, where it would float around randomly seemingly forever, and finally come down into the waiting arms of one of their players! It was quite something to behold.
So I'm thinking I've had about enough of my ultimate world, where hard cuts and precision throws rule the day. Give me some nasty atmospheric elements to contend with, and I'll switch it right around on them. It's just a more creative, more aesthetically-pleasing game.
That's the view from here, keep on huckin'!
Wultimate is one of the players in the smash hit computer game from Infiniversal Software that bears his name. The View from a Simulated Ultimate World is a regularly recurring feature in Broken! Magazine.