Ultimate in the Snow

Phil has been thinking, for a while now, about writing a post about one of his favorite past times here in Germany, Ultimate Frisbee. After playing in 6 to 8 inches of snow this week, he was ready to blog about it. Enjoy!

One of my favorite things to do here in Germany is to play Ultimate Frisbee. Ultimate is pretty hardcore here, and you can find a tournament around this area just about every weekend of the year. When the people get together to play Ultimate, even if it’s on the weekend for fun, they have a collective warm-up and do drills before actually playing a game. I usually train with them every Monday in Nuremberg and every Thursday in Erlangen.

The thing that makes it so much fun is the people – ranging from college students to people in the 40’s (but play like they are 25!), the group that has befriended us is super friendly and almost always up for playing. A few weekends ago, the weather forecast was promising: a few clouds and sun after a week of rain. So I emailed everyone and asked if we could get a weekend Frisbee game going. Ten of us showed up on the cool November Saturday afternoon with light rain that never let up while we were out there, but no one left! It wasn’t the best conditions, but we had a lot of fun playing in the rain (unfortunately, the picture from that day didn’t come out since the guy’s phone short-circuited shortly after taking the picture!).

Which brings me to this past Monday – my first snow Frisbee!! It was absolutely beautiful standing in front of this pristine field covered in snow before we started trampling all over it with the snow falling in buckets around us. I ran around like a goofball for a while just trying to figure out how to run in it…getting my ‘snow legs’ I guess! And tell you what, it’s a workout running in a foot of snow…extremely exhausting! Running did however warm my frozen toes.



Diving into the snow after Frisbees was fun! Even I was doing it, and I never dive. Of course, the last dive attempt wasn’t great cause the snow was packed down and I slammed my knee into the hard ground underneath the snow.…but it was ok after a few minutes. A couple of hours later my first snow Frisbee experience was over, and I knew I was gonna sleep well that night.