Some of the fine folks I met at Worlds and I took off on a mini Italian adventure...we popped up to Lake Como and boated around some of the most beautiful country I've seen. Swam and lazed around there for two days and then made our way south to the Italian Riviera for Portofino and Cinque Terre. Absolutely gorgeous! We did the hike to all 5 towns, not as leisurely as expected but that made it even more of an adventure. Beautiful cliff sides overlooking the Mediterranean and tons of vineyards and little hillside farms. Camped and made good use of the tent for another couple of nights, ate some amazing food and loved every second.
Worlds! My next destination. I've been looking forward to this since Candace & I started the trip. It's the biggest Ultimate event of the year where the top Club and National teams from all over the world meet up for a week long tournament. It happens every two years and they always pick a pretty sweet venue to host. This year it was Lecco in Northern Italy...not too shabby playing with the Italian Alps as a backdrop. The region had experienced a whole bunch of unseasonal rain which caused a bunch of issues...a flooded athletes village, power outages, and some of the worsts field conditions I've seen. They had to resort to calling in a heli to blow off some of the water on the fields..pretty extreme but necessary. I was invited to play with the Israeli Mixed National team again but couldn't convince myself to shell out the 900$ bucks to do so. Especially when I could volunteer and get free accommodation, food, and transport all in exchange for watching ultimate all day. Not a bad deal if you ask me. It wasn't all easy going though, lots of mud and manual labor especially in the days leading up to the tourney. Lots of perks from the hard work, like being on the field and scoring all four finals! I met some of the best people, other volunteers and players from allll over. Even met up with some familiar faces from the US Masters team Boneyard. |
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