What’s that? This weekend? Drat.

Drat indeed. While MME and CUT are exciting there’s a far more important tournament this weekend. A tournament with 40+ Mixed teams. A tournament that’s practically next door to me. A tournament that I will not be here for.  That tournament is Gender Blender (GB).

In case you haven’t heard about then allow me to enlighten you to what is amongst the greatest tournaments in the world.  A tournament so great that non-Ultimate playing locals show up just to party with the teams.  You see GB starts on Friday and not just Friday evening but Friday morning (and sometimes Thursday).  You don’t actually play Ultimate (organized Ultimate that is) until Saturday morning but Friday is for…presentations.

Held in the small town of Fergus in the grand province of Ontario we camp on the edge of a forest beside the fields.  On Fridays we setup our campgrounds, our tents, our chairs, our bamboo poles for cups, some cones for a bit of double disc court (DDC), perhaps a few torches to keep the insects at bay, the blenders for mixing drinks, the games that people need to compete in to win the drinks, the good drink mixture, and of course the bad drink mixture.  Following me so far?  No?  Ok, as plain as I can make it:  Each team has a campground where they present their game, participants play a game (as many times as they want) and get a shot of either the good drink or bad drink depending on how they did in the game.

Most players though find themselves having too much fun to care what drink they have and with 40+ teams and at least 12 on each roster one ends up with quite a bit of drinking going on.  Luckily for the rest of you some of us happen to be teetotalers and are content to play the games (and have you drink our winnings) and stay compass long enough to remember that you burned through the games so quickly that 30 minutes into the evening you were puking and then passed out (Lenny).  Oh the memories.

Now the scale of the games that people play are vast in scope, simplicity, and complexity (none are short on fun).  I remember a few from last year.  There were two teams with dunk tanks.  A team that brought classic 5.25 inch floppy discs to throw at targets.  A giant sausage tied to four trees with a saddle on it (even raunchier than it sounds).  Santa’s Village which was setup by a team named Bad Medicine (each year they manage to top themselves and from what I hear they have this year I can’t imagine how they’ll top it next year) which turned out to be a large dance area/disco…in the middle of the forest.  A full life size setup of Family Feud by The Big Hammers (fun team and by life size I mean they had the full score board, all the little answers that pop up with the correct numbers, the music, and well…it was like being on the set of Family Feud…and it went until 4 am).  An ATV converted to a tank with semi-working cannon with plenty of room for boat racing (I remember GangGreen trying to get back to their campsite which was about a one minute walk away and it took them over two hours due to the constant boat racing).  Oh…GangGreen and Frogger (a player on Tundra) launching fireworks until 7 am.  Oh and GangGreen playing the guitar right beside my tent until 7 am.  Oh…and Frogger almost hitting my tent with a sound shell only to have it go off directly outside my tent and deafen me.  Oh and in the middle of it we had a thunderstorm.

I’m going to miss it sorely this year and you might have as well if it wasn’t for Steve from Blockstack.TV coming over to play in the tournament.  Steve will be playing and you’ll get a chance to hear about his experience on Blockstack.TV.  As for me, I’ll be at CUT playing and previewing Ironside and GOAT.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwxTayhIRMc

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