Savannah Memorial Day Hat 2005

Well, wow.. it’s been a week and half since I got back, so this is going to be my dim, fuzzy recollection of events. In any case, here goes!
I went to the Savannah Memorial Day Hat Tournament this past weekend. That marks the third time I’ve been. The short form? Superfuntastic. If you play disc and live in the vicinity of Savannah (and by vicinity, I mean between Miami and Boston), do yourself a favor and go 🙂
I carpooled up with Helen in her Jeep, which was quite something, as I’ve never travelled any great distance in a Jeep before. Aside from guzzling the gas, it was actually quite a pleasant experience. It’s pretty neat being exposed to the open air as it whips by.
We made it from St. Pete Beach to Savannah in just under seven hours, including two stops — in time to catch the sunset (as Helen remarked, it was strange seeing the sun over something other than water when it went down). After we got our stuff put away and we waited for a few people to arrive at the condo, we went for dinner at the Crab Shack. It’s something of a memorial day tradition. Of course we all ordered shrimp and crab, even though it was to be our dinner the next night. It’s kind of hard not to when you’re at the ‘shack. 🙂
At 1am, after kicking back a quantity of, um, refreshment, it was time to hit the hay. I had a good sleep, probably because the room I was in was freezing (just how I like it). We we all up by 8am; we sunscreened, coffeed, ate bananas (known for their high cramp-reducing potassium levels) and piled into David’s car for the 1/2 hr trip to Forsyth Park.
I ended up on the white team with a bunch of great people. We named ourselves “White Rabbit”. My teammates were from Atlanta, Savannah, Cocoa Beach and probably a few other places, too. Mad props to everyone on the team for being so much fun to play with: Jenny Lee, T, Mike, Pappy, Sarai, Sam, Dave, Katie and Brian (hope your knee feels better). We had two wins and two losses over 72 points. Not a bad day’s work. Oh man did it feel good to have a shower and get into some clean clothes.

Team White Rabbit.
That night Woody and Jenny made everyone at the condo a spicy shrimp, crab, corn and potato dish — also known as a low country boil. Very tasty.
And of course no late May hat tournament would be complete without singing Happy Birthday to Helen (her actual birthday is nearly a month before). Woody and Jenny brought along a fantastic ice-cream cake for the occasion 🙂
Afterwards we were all stuffed — there was far more food than we could possibly eat — so Lisa decided it would be a good idea to have us all participate in “bat races”. If you don’t know what they are, I’m not going to spoil the surprise — let’s just say one person ran, against their will, into the ocean. 🙂
Sunday morning Woody made his trademark omlettes with all the fixins (soo good), and we were off to beach for day two of the tournament — a whole two blocks from the condo. White Rabbit would end up losing in the first round, but not without a fight — it came down to a 12-12 sudden death game point, and we just ended up on the wrong side of the win/loss.
Not that you could really call watching the semi-finals and championships on the beach drinking free cold 1s a loss. The girl-girl sumo wrestling at halftime wasn’t too taxing either.
Heh. Later that night, after some coaxing from Winton, the condo residents all wandered down the street to a house party being thrown by the Savannah Ultimate Disc Society. They had a keg of New Castle. If that ain’t class I don’t know what is. We hung out on the street, where dozens of people were playing some kind of nifty disc-relay game — something like Cups on drugs. You could MAC the disc for bonus points. Awesome. So awesome, the owner of the house where the party was at asked the party to move, because they were probably going to get a visit from the cops. Hahah.
At that point we trundled back home, where, shortly after a group of us awarded Woody and Jenny a jalepeño popper for their three-year anniversary, we found out they got engaged. It was all very sweet. Like the jam we drew a heart with around the popper. Congrats to both of you. 🙂
And that’s it for Savannah 2005. Thanks to everyone I hung out with, you all made it great. Yeah White Rabbit! I’d especially like to thank Woody and Jenny for organizing the condo, and to Helen for being my wheels and keeping me entertained there and back. Can’t wait till next year.
Here’s a few photos (each is a gallery with 40+ pics):