Strangely enough, we're starting to have ugly games. This surprises me, because we don't intend to have bad games: some call or incident will set us off, and snip snip snip, we become little children calling tit-for-tat.

I feel we're becoming the Donner Party of this year: seemingly spirited to outside observers, but horrible to play against.

Today's game was against Night Train started fine. We were on fire, on a roll, and playing hard. If two points can be called a roll, that is.

A NT throw then went up, and, as it flew out of bounds on a trajectory that would bring it back inbounds to a player streaking deep, it hit an out-of-bound player standing over 8 feet outside the sidelines. The trajectory changed, and the disc landed out of bounds, short of the player running deep. A player on NT freaked out, and immediatelly yelled violation, and demanded the disc back.

Now, any ultimate player who knows the rules (speaking of tenth edition rules) knows that any contact with an out-of-bound object makes the disc out of bounds. That object can be a tree, a fence, the ground or a person. Any contact, even if the disc comes back in bounds, makes the disc out-of-bounds, and possession switches to the other team.

The NT player, who we shall name Mel, because that's her name, however, insisted on the violation, and demanded the disc back. Kyle asked me for my rule book, which I handed to him after showing him the rules, and he dashed over to the sideline, to explain to her she was wrong.

She was insistent. She was upset at the turn-over and, despite the inaccuracy of her call, refused to budge. And that's putting it mildly because I'm trying not to curse. I stayed out of the argument (yay me!), but it was hard.

Hard because of our history.

Six years ago, I was playing on Special K, and she was playing on a team called Mirage. Mirage entered sectionals (of 22 teams) seeded last, even though they knew they should be seeded much higher (they finished ninth). During this game, Mel and I had issues, then words, which turned ugly and I called her a fraggin' biotch (using real words). Her team was up about 12-5 on our team, game to 15 at the point of this altercation.

She flipped out, and spent the next many points on the sideline. I took myself out of the game because I was so unbelievably angry I wouldn't be able to play well. I was silent on the sideline. She was not. She began a litany of verbal abuse, complaining to every teammate who would listen, ranting about how our altercation. I went to the other sideline, fuming,
and stayed out of the game.

After a few points, Mel went back in the game, and proceeded to turn over huck after throw after throw. Our score climbed, while their score stagnated. Before long, we were back in them, and just after that, our score was tied. Two points later, we were up 14-12. I went in.

Play this, play that, Mel on Lisa, Lisa went long for a huck, and I trailed her cut by a few yards. Lisa caught the disc just outside the endzone, and turned to throw an easy pass to me in the endzone. I caught it, then raised my arms up in victory: our team was going to Regionals for the first time! Exciting!

For seasons after this incident, Mel and I ignored each other during games, avoiding anything but the most cordial of "Good game." during the end-of-game line walks. Last year was truly the first season I had no ill feelings to her, or felt any from her. I no longer know if she remembers the incident.

Today, however, was hard, watching her complain about a rule. She's been playing ultimate long enough to know the rules. She should have known better.

We won the game 15-8 in a remaining ugly game of tit-for-tat and unreasonable calls ("You fouled me." "I contest." "You hit my leg, that's a foul." "Yes, I hit your leg. I'm still contesting." "You know the rules say contact is a foul." "I know the rules." "You don't, because you hit my leg." "Yes, I hit your leg, I contest the foul" - actual conversation with another player and Kyle), but the team is now on our ask-for-observers play list.

It's early morning, and I'm heading back to the hotel. Several teammates have left jerseys and shoes and other stuff in their hotel rooms, and I'm going to pick them up. I have mixed feelings about this tournament, feelings I need to resolve, preferably quickly.

I went to the fields on time with Kris and Brynne, and thus was remarkably on time. On time to see the frost on the ground and my breath in the air, which, by the way, is a little disturbing when viewed in a port-a-potty. After I made it to the fields we are going to play on all day, I settled in, and watched the team warm up, wishing beyond hope that I could be out there warming up with them, the butterflies in my stomach in anticipation of the game ahead.

Instead, I was taking pictures on the sideline with Doyle's camera, crappy pictures, but ones that will commemorate the warm-up event, wondering when the sun will finally come through and and start to burn off the layer of fog that settled on the fields (answer: 8:26 am). Several teammates asked me after the warm-up how my ankle was, and I had to admit I wasn't playing this tournament. My 20 yard run last night, on a flat sidewalk, managed to injure it again, so any uneven surface would be worse.

Lori was one of the people who asked me. After I answered, she honored me with one of the biggest requests a newly-wed can offer a friend: she asked me to wear her wedding ring until JJ showed up at the fields. I was so honored! I'm totally with the bling-bling now: three rings on my left hard!

Brynne had left several jerseys in her room, so I handed her my jersey. Then I heard Adam Fagin asking if anyone had extra cleats: he had left his shoes in his room.

So, back to the hotel rooms to gather the crap everyone seems to leave behind. It's a good thing I reserved rooms in a hotel so close to the fields.

Kevin sent out an email a few days ago about the death of two Gendors, Gendors being a coed ultimate team originating from Southern California. We've played the team several times over the last two years, sometimes winning, most recently losing (I call extenuating circumstances surrounding a combination of both our lack of ability to adapt to their style of play and their cheating a little bit (yeah, yeah, yeah, always an excuse, but this time, I think it's somewhat valid when you have players double teaming the marker, then claiming that Kris has a reach of greater than 10 feet, which I assure you is not true)), and I played with several of the players 9+ years ago when I was learning to play in Los Angeles.

Good lord, have I really been here that long? Ugh.

According to the first article Kevin sent out, the players died while trying to avoid hitting a coyote driving home from Regionals in Scottsdale, Arizona. The driver and the front seat passenger were both killed, the two passengers in the back survived with scratches. All four passengers were wearing seatbelts.

Over the next few days, more details were told about the accident. The driver swerved to miss coyote, sending the car broadside into the guardrail, causing the vehicle to roll.

The driver swerved to miss a coyote.

As I read the words, I paused. Kris and I had hit a coyote several weeks ago, and as I read the words, I couldn't help but think if Kris had reacted differently, would we have died?

Our plan after spending part of the week with Kris' family, his parents, his sister and his sister's family, was to head to Phoenix to fly to Albuquerque, New Mexico for Kyle Smith's wedding. Our flight out from Phoenix was around 9:00, so we needed to be at the airport around 8. I recalled Mom saying Flagstaff was about three hours from Phoenix, so we figured leaving by five would be plenty of time for the drive down.

Problem was, we were at the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon is another 80 miles north of Flagstaff.

So, instead of 146 miles in three hours, we had 226 miles to go in three hours.

We left by 4:45 AM, but didn't realize the extra 80 miles until we were leaving the park and saw the signs. We immediately began trying to figure out if we could make the flight, or if we should just start driving to Albuquerque. We could make the wedding if we started driving immediately, the flight was questionable. I pulled out the map, told Kris which way to go, and off we went, in an attempt to make the flight.

Unfortunately, I told Kris wrong. The map was misleading, and the road I asked him to drive along wasn't a multi-lane freeway-like road, but a forest-lined two-lane highway, He drove as fast as he dared along the road.

At one point, a coyote jumped out in front of the car.

Kris slammed on the brakes when he first saw the coyote, but was unable to stop in time. The car struck the coyote. We killed it. We believe it died instantly, based on the lack of movement looking back, but that may have just been wishful thinking, we don't know.

My reaction was much different. I screamed and brought my hands to my face, covering, perhaps to ward off the impact, much the way a mother throws an arm out to stop the passenger from flinging forward. I started crying. I cried for the coyote. I cried in frustration of the events of the previous week. I cried for the rabbit I struck driving 15 years ago. I cried and cried, and Kris couldn't do anything but drive, reach out to touch me and watch.

Ten minutes later, a migraine started and I began to lose my sight.

I told Kris what was happening, crawled into the back of the car and fell asleep.

Three hours later, I woke up 10 miles away from the Phoenix International Airport. Kris managed to get us to the airport in record time. He may have been driving over 100, I don't know, I was asleep, but it was a fantastic drive made while I was sleeping.

We made the flight, and made it to the wedding (which was awesome with the lightning and thunder punctuating the ceremony).

The image of the coyote, its final moments of life, are still remarkably, tragically fresh in my mind. The loss of two ultimate players reminded me of that moment. I believe the loss of their lives, two young men in their early twenties, is far more tragic than the loss of the coyote.

Would the driver had swerved if he knew the outcome? If Kris had swerved, would that have been our fate?

Val Henson invited a group of women to listen to Dr. Louann Brizendine, the author of The Female Brain, at a Commonwealth Club presentation in San Jose. I'd never been to a Commonwealth Club talk live, nor to the San Jose State Martin Luther King Library, nor to a non-SHDH event with Val, nor a doctor's talk about anything remotely female, and all of these firsts sounded interesting so I rsvp'd positively. We went last night.

On the way down to the talk, Val and I chatted about the upcoming lecture, what we were hoping to learn from the lecture. I was interested in learning about how the female brain differs from the male brain in structural ways, and how (or if) that influences what are generally considered "female traits" of more socialable and able to multitask. I was also curious about how the differences may be attributed to social influences and early development, rather than the actual gender differences.

We should have read the book.

The talk wasn't about the brain in particular, but more of personality and trait differences between the genders. The best part of the talk was the description of the hormonal development of the human brain, but that particular part of the talk was much too short, and the seemingly only scientific part (I preferring the science part to the non-science parts).

Val was a little miffed, also. One of the studies the author quoted had results drawn from not only from a data set much too small to be conclusive, but with only a subset of the data set skewed to the result the author wanted. As Val said, "If you analyze the data the way he did, every data set will reach the same conclusion!"

Worse, that study had an entire book based on it, influencing other researchers in potenially culturally damaging ways.

The hormonal development of the human brain was the best part of the lecture. All human brains start out structurally neutral, which is to say female, for the first eight or so weeks. Around eight weeks, the male embryo starts pumping male hormones (most notably testosterone), which influences the brain development. Turns out, from birth until around age two, brains of both genders pump out the same amount (wasn't sure if the same amount means equivalent for body size, or same gross amount, Brizendine wasn't clear) of hormones as the (young) adult body (like twenties). From two until puberty, there's a lull in the estrogen and testosterone, during which the levels are low and steady. Everyone knows the surge in puberty.

That's about the extent of interestingness of the lecture. The rest seemed to be talks about how women tend to be more depressed, have more of this illness or that, blah blah blah. I guess Brizendine tailored the talk to the audience (there were a lot of mommy and children questions at the end of the talk), but I was still hoping for more of the juicy science facts and less of the, yeah, women are women, and what do you know, blah blah blah this research "supports" some culturally biased notions of women as second class citizens.

Someone should mention that "different" doesn't mean "inferior."

On the ride over to the lecture, Val commented that, in developing countries without any gender bias for science and technology professions, over half (not half, not close to half, but over half) of the students are female.

U.S. culture is way too heavily influenced by gender generalization and gender sterotypes.

If you're a boy, stop reading.

Actually, if you're a girl, you may want to stop, too.

Last year, I was introduced to liquid iron supplements by my nutritionist. At some appointment, I expressed concern to her about a drop in my fitness for which I couldn't find a cause. She looked at the insides of my lower eye lid, and commented the color was very pale, implying a lack of iron. She then asked if I had menstruated recently. When I answered yes, she explained the drop in fitness was probably due to low levels of iron, and suggested I purchase a liquid iron supplement that I could get at Whole Foods or an organic nutritional store. I found the product, Floradix, and started taking it.

The improvement was dramatic. Within a week, I was back to my feelings of previous fitness levels; I had more energy. More importantly, I was able to run run run again, without feelings of cobwebs in my legs (a feeling which takes approximately 17 points in ultimate to clear).

So, I continued taking the iron supplement, even after my immediate lack was fixed. When I stopped, I felt my fitness level dropped, so, for a year I didn't stop: except for missing a day or two here and there, I continued taking the iron supplement.

Fast forward to earlier this year, when I mentioned to my nutritionist that I was continuing to take the iron supplement, but couldn't figure out where the iron was going. She immediately became very concerned: except during menstruation, most women do not lack iron, so the continual supplemental use could lead to essentially iron poisoning as the iron (potentially) built up in my body. Great, I thought, something that helps me in a natural way to perform better might just be awful for me. Figures.

I had several blood tests done to check the levels of free iron in my system, as well as general iron absorption. Both were normal, so my nutritionist said, sure, continue the supplements, but maybe let up a little bit: no more than once a day for the supplement (which was the most I was doing anyway), or even skip every other day.

But even with the go-ahead to continue the supplements, there was still the little nagging concern: where had all that iron gone?

I found out today just where all that iron had gone.

I did tell you to stop reading, didn't I?

Yeah, thought so.

The only thing I could think of looking at the mess, was, well, look at that: insides as black as night.