I decided that on my way home to Melbourne I would stop in Dubai for a few days and visit my mate Coby. Coby had moved to Sharjah (the emirate next to Dubai) to teach at VISS, which is basically a Victorian School that operates out of the United Arab Emirates. Coby had only arrived in Sharjah a few days before me and so he was still getting his head around everything.

I landed in Dubai at 6.30am and the pilot politely informed us that the temperature outside was already 33 degrees. I caught a cab to Sharjah and after getting to Coby’s apartment I spent the morning asleep on his couch. That afternoon we went to a shopping centre and Coby bought a bunch of things for his new pad.

By some incredible stroke of luck, Australia happened to be playing a ODI against Pakistan that night in Sharjah, so of course Coby and I went along. The game didn’t start til 7pm because it’s just way too hot to do anything outside during the day. After buying our tickets (the ticket booth looked like a dodgy school canteen) we went in and found ourselves amongst a crowd full of Pakistanis. The ground looked in good condition and was surrounded by a single level grandstand (one section had a second level). What an atmosphere! Coby and I were both wearing Australia gear and so we were constantly asked to pose for photos with what felt like almost half of the crowd.

Between innings’, we moved seats and found some other Aussies who turned out to be teachers from another Australian School in Sharjah. Together we tried to ‘out cheer’ the Paki’s, but it was a lost cause as we were probably outnumbered 1000 to 1. In terms of one day cricket, the match was pretty boring, and once you add the heat (it was probably still mid 30s), and the fact it went til 2am, I was getting pretty tired. At one stage a cat walked out onto the field and that provided excitement for a few overs. Australia won in the end. Stark took 5 wickets and both Bailey and Clarke got half centuries.

The next day we went into Dubai to check out the ridiculously large Dubai Mall (it has a waterfall, aquarium, ice-rink and theme park inside it), and the equally ridiculously large Burj Khalif (the tallest building in the world). Both were amazing and pretty much beyond belief.

Last night I got a couple of hours sleep before getting up early to catch a cab to the airport for my 11^th and final flight of my adventure. The last 2 months have been amazing, but I’m looking forward to getting back home to the best city in the world.

So in the end I decided to cut my Scotland visit short and fly back to England to compete with Burro at UK Nationals. It added an extra $350-$400 to my trip, but if I was in Australia and had been offered the same opportunity for the same price, I probably would have taken it. That was my reasoning anyway.

I am glad with my decision, although my body really hates the fact that I put it through 2 days of Ultimate after not having done any exercise for the last 2 months. My muscles are aching and I’m sure that I’ll still be feeling it in a few days time (so much for marathon training)!

It was great to play with and get to know a new bunch of guys, but it was hard at times to break some of the Heads Of State systems that have become ingrained in me over the years.

Burro finished with a 1-4 record for the weekend which placed us 12^th out of 16. This meant that we beat our seed (13^th) although we would have finished top 10 had we not crumbled in our second last game (we were up 13-8 and lost 13-15).

Clapham won the open division (for the 12^th time in a row) whilst Iceni won the women’s (no surprises there either).

For what I think was the first time, UKU ran the mixed division at the same time as open and women’s (similar to USAU). So whilst there were still 16 teams in open, running mixed at the same time meant that there were only 6 teams in the women’s division. I’m not sure on their (UKU’s) reasoning to make that change, but I’d be interested to find out if they consider the move to be a success.

The draw was really bizarre. It’s basically a knock out system. If you win your first game you are into quarters. So the two teams that were in the final (‘Fire of London’ and ‘Clapham’) played three games on Saturday and then just the final on Sunday, and the final was on fairly early when most other teams were playing games. It’s such a weird system and everyone I spoke to hated it. Apparently the top 3 teams are the same every year, so this draw makes it fairer for the next bunch of teams to have a shot at making Euros (top 5). So maybe it does make some sense? Having just bagged out the draw, I was more than happy to only have to play 2 games on Sunday.

Playing Nats was also a great chance to catch up with a few people that I’d met at various World Championships over the years.

Thanks to the Burro boys for letting me play with them, and a big thanks to Ellie for looking after me whilst I was in London. If all goes according to plan, this will have been my last weekend of playing Frisbee for a while.

I flew into Aberdeen (Scotland) on Monday evening and was greeted by Jill and Carol who I’d become friends with whilst they were living in Sydney last year. We drove to Jill’s family house that night and had a BBQ in their backyard. The next morning we went on a tour of the Glenfiddich distillery. Scotland is famous for it’s whisky and apparently Glenfiddich produce the most awarded single malt whisky in the world. Jill’s dad has worked in the whisky industry for 40 years and so I had learnt a bit about it the night before.

That afternoon we drove to Loch Ness and visited the ‘Loch Ness Centre & Exhibition’. It is rated the #1 tourist attraction in the Scottish Highlands and had been awarded 5 stars by the Scotland Tourism Board. A quick word of advice, don’t ever go there. It is terrible. We laughed most of the way through due to how absolutely awful it was. It has been the source of many jokes since.

After a quck look for Nessy (we didn’t see her) we kept going across Scotland to the Isle of Skye. It is a lovely tourist area but unfortunately it rained the whole time we were there. We stayed at a hostel that night and then left the next morning, leaving Jill behind as she was working in Skye for the next few weeks.

From Skye we went back east to Carol’s family house and spent the night there. The next day we went down and checked out Edinburgh. The city was a buzz due to both the Fringe Festival and the Military Tattoo happening this month. We walked around the city for a bit (crazy people everywhere) and then decided to go to a few shows (3 in fact). We were lucky enough to get last minute tickets to see Rhys Darby and he didn’t disappoint! On a side note, we also walked past The Hoff. Yep, it was actually him (apparently he was performing at the Fringe). We caught up with one of Carol’s Uni mates and then spent the night at her house in Edinburgh.

Today we drove around a bit more of Scotland before heading back to Aberdeen to catch my flight back to London.

Scotland, despite the rain, was really nice. Big thanks to Carol for being my knowledgeable tour guide, driver and travel buddy for the last week.

After leaving London we spent a few days in Wales. On the way to Cardiff (where we spent our first night) we stopped at Stonehenge to take the tour. This was pretty cool. I like that fact that even though they have their theories, scientists still aren’t quite sure exactly how or why it exists.

We explored Cardiff for a bit that night (and saw the castle) but it was back on the road the next morning. We stopped in a lovely little seaside town called Tenby for lunch and some of the boys went for a swim at the beach. That night we stayed in Caernarfon, which was another little town with another castle. We watched Bolt win the 200m that night.

The next day we drove to the base of Mt Snowdon and then caught a train to the peak. It is the highest mountain in Wales and therefore had quite an amazing view. I made another Panorama at the top (which you can see on the photos page). That afternoon we finished our tour of Wales and boarded the Ferry across to Ireland.

Oh yeah, the Welsh langauge is bizarre!

I was lucky enough to be able to catch up with a few friends whilst I was in London. Janine (who has been studying in England) came down to London and we spent the day wandering the city. We stopped at one of the ‘live sites’ and watched the Olympics for a while which was quite fun. Even though everyone was sitting on some grass, effectively just watching tv, the “Olympic atmosphere” was about and it was quite special. Unfortunately we were watching the men’s triathlon and GB won (another) two medals.

Another night I caught up with Latsy, who had been living/working in London for the past few months. It was good to find out how he’d been going and interesting to find out about the Aussie Rules team he had been playing for whilst in London. They league has a rule that each team must have at least 4 Europeans on it or they forfeit.

London was a great experience and well worth the trip. The athletes had freetime for most of our stay and they also had the opportunity to meet some London Ultimate players as they were all billeted with locals. Thankfully the public transport was really easy to use (although a bit expensive) which meant we were able to let the athletes free to go explore whatever part of London they wanted. Other than one training session, the weather was really good to us whilst we were in London.

Sorry for the lack of updates.

The Australian U/19 team I’m coaching finished 11th out of 20 at the World Championships here in Dublin. I will write another update tonight.

Many people have asked me what I’m going to do when I quit Ultimate at the end of this month. Last night I found out. Check out Slacklining:

The final chapter of the 2012 Australian U19 Ultimate campaign began on Saturday night when the two teams (and support crew) arrived at Heathrow Airport. I was at the gates ready to welcome them to London and boy did they look professional in their travel uniforms. They also looked really tired, and rightfully so, as some had been travelling for the last 36 hours.

After I explained the London public transport system and helped everyone get their Oyster cards (think Myki), the teams left to meet their billets and get some much sought after sleep.

The next morning we all met at Clapham Common for a light training session before we set them loose on the city. Having already spent a day walking around London on Thursday, I instead decided to go find a quiet cinema to watch ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. It was good (obviously), but I’d like to watch it again soon to pick up on a few things I may have missed (it covered a lot quite quickly).

This morning we once again met at Clapham Common for a training session. Today it was for a few hours as we went through all of our offense and defense structures. Well, almost all the team trained. Unfortunately 3 of the boys had been up all night vomiting (some of the girls too) and so they stayed home and got some rest. It appears to be a 24 hour bug and fingers crossed will be gone by tomorrow.

The teams had the afternoon to explore again today but were encouraged to stay off their feet as much as possible.

The weather has been pretty good here, although it did rain for our first training session yesterday and at times throughout today.

Tomorrow night Thunder are playing against Burro (see earlier post). I am very much looking forward to it!

I played London Regionals on Saturday with a team called Burro Electrico. Apparently it means “Electric Donkey” in Spanish. Anyway, the tournament only went for 1 day with 12 teams competing for 5 spots. It wasn’t really 12 teams as one was mixed and one was women only. So I suppose it was 10 teams going for 5 spots. Realistically only 6 teams were ever going to make it though, and we were the team seeded 6th. So after winning the first game (against the women), we only had to beat the next team (to win our pool of 3) to advance to the semis and a guaranteed spot at Nationals. We lost.

That put us in the 5-8 bracket and fighting for the final spot to Nationals. We won our third game easily and so we had made our way into the game to go against Fire (of London) 2. This game was all it had been cracked up to be and it went down to the wire. Conditions were gusty which meant scoring upwind was the key to winning the match. They broke early, but we managed to get a few back and took half. From there we held our lead and managed to win the game and qualify for UK Nationals (I was even lucky enough to catch the winning goal!).

It was great to play with a new group of guys and to learn some tactics I’d never seen before in Australia (some good, some not so good).

At the end of the day Burro joked about all putting in some money to get me to fly back to London for Nationals. Little did they know that I will be in Scotland at the time, so it is actually a realistic possibility. The big question now is, do I cut my time in Scotland short so that I can return to London to play Nationals? I think I will, but havn’t fully decided yet.

I got to London safely and after navigating the Tube (it’s really easy) to Ellie’s house (Ellie was Dan’s busking partner in Sydney), we left straight away to go play a game of frisbee. It was good fun, but showed me how unfit I am, and how much I’ll need to train if I’m going to complete the Melbourne Marathon in October. I also managed to find a team to pick up with for London Regionals on Saturday, so that should be a lot of fun.

Yesterday Ellie was “sick” and so she took the day off work. We decided it would be a good challenge to get a photo at the actual location of every section of the Monopoly board. We gave ourselves the added challenge of doing it in the correct order (clockwise around the board) and by wearing an item of clothing that matched the colour of the Monopoly Street (make sense) in each photo. This resulted in asking random members of the public if we could borrow their clothes for a photo. Sometimes this worked, and sometimes it didnt, but it was challenging everytime. After many tube rides, overground train rides, multiple bike hires, lots of walking and over 10 hours we had finally done it. Mission complete, what an adventure!

After finishing with Monopoly (at 10pm) we met up with my friend Crystal (and her friends) for dinner. Without knowing it, they had planned to go to one of Jamie Oliver’s restuarants, Barbecoa. So 40 pounds and a full stomach later, the day was complete.

Tomorrow I am playing Regionals with ‘Burro Electrico’ and then I’m going to the airport to welcome the Australian U19 teams to London.

My original plans did not involve going to France, but seeing as my friend Laura was going to be there, I decided I’d fly there for a few days before making my way to London. Laura had kindly organised the accomodation for us, it was a 2 bedroom apartment close to a train station and a block away from Sacre Coeur. I arrived in Paris in the afternoon after a full day of flying from UB. After meeting up with Laura and her bro (Martin), we bought some dinner and then walked up the hill to Sacre Coeur. The church building sits on top of a hill which is the highest point of Paris, so as you can imagine, the views are quite amazing. It is a popular tourist spot in the evening and so it was a hive of activity with street performers and locals (illegally trying to sell their goods) all over the place.

One of the street performers blew my mind, so much so we went back the next night to watch him again. His name was Iya (we had a good chat to him) and he did the best freestlye soccer I have ever seen. Here’s a photo of him hanging (horizontally) from a lamp post whilst balancing the ball between his foot and shin. You can see more of his stuff on his website.

The next day I went with Laura to meet up with one of her friends. We spent the afternoon walking around Paris and checked out some of the sights I missed last time I was there (Notre Dame Cathedral, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees). One cool thing we saw was a pair of Policemen on rollerblades. Amazing.

The next day I chilled out at our accomodation in the moring and video-skyped both my small group and the U19 Australian team. It was really good to catch up with my small group and great to speak with the Thunder Boys before they flew out. That afternoon I caught the Eurostar across (under the water) to London. Fun times in France, thanks Laura and Martin.

The plan for my last few days in Mongolia was to ride the motorbikes some more and drive a tank/fire an RPG (seriously – have a look). Saturday we called up the place and they said that we wouldn’t be able to do it until the next day. So Andy, Pete and I took the bikes and went riding in the afternoon instead. We went up some pretty cool mountains and had quite an amazing view of UB. Unfortunately neither of us took a camera and so we didn’t get any good photos. I had so much fun on the bikes and am really keen to get my license when I get back to Melbourne.

Sunday came around and this time it was Andy, Tom and I who rode the 60km out of UB to get to the place where we could drive the tanks (I sat on the back until we got to the dirt roads). Apparently this place was an old soviet army base that had been turned into a kind of tourist park where people could pay to use the equipment. We arrived at what we thought was the right place, pretty excited for the next few hours of play, but we’d somehow turned up to an actual Mongolian Military Training Centre. Surprisingly, we (Andy) almost convinced them to let us in anyway, but it was not to be. The soldier out the front was pretty friendly (although had limited English) and directed us a few kms away to where we might be able to see a tank.

When we got there we realised that this was the actual place we were supposed to be in the first place. There were some old Russian tanks lying around and a shooting range. Unfortunately today was not the day and the guy here told us to come back again tomorrow as well. We played around on the tanks for a while before getting back on the bikes and exploring the hills. I was leaving early the next morning so the RPG and I were just not to be.

That weekend we were also able to catch up for a meal with some of the other Red Cross Volunteers. It was really good to meet and hang out with Amy and Andy’s friends over there. They are a good group of people.

The last thing I did in UB was climb up the side of Amy and Andy’s 3 story apartment with Andy and sit on the roof watching the stars. Good (but scary) times.

Amy and Andy took a week off work and kindly planned (and paid for) a 5 day trip through Central Mongolia for me. They booked it through Meg, a local Mongolian who runs her own tourism company and whom Amy and Andy have become good friends with. The week before I arrived in Mongolia Amy and Andy had met a British couple (Tom and Rach) who had just ridden motorbikes from London to Ulaan Baatar (what a trip!) and after deciding they were pretty cool, invited them on the trip as well. So on Monday morning, the 5 of us, plus Meg, her driver (Sundik) and assistant (Orkah) all jumped into Sundik’s seven year old Russian beast and left UB for a sweet adventure.

Day 1
After leaving a little late we headed off through the busy UB traffic and before long we had entered the Mongolian country side. It’s really like nothing I’ve seen before. Amazing flats surrounded by hills upon hills, with herds of cattle, sheep, goats, yaks, and horses scattered all over the place. The lack of fencing meant it wasn’t unusual to have to slow down and sit on the horn until whatever livestock was standing in the middle of the road decided to move.

We spent most of the day in the car, which provided us with a great opportunity to get to know each other. We really scored the jackpot as Tom and Rach turned out to be absolute legends and I was happy knowing the week was going to be great. Amongst many interesting things we learnt about them, one notable fact was that they ran a charity called Building Mongolia (make sure you check it out).

After many morbid riddles from Meg, and the first of many games of Risk, we arrived at our camping spot for the night. It was an incredible sight, green grass, lovely trees, and a massive rock face protruding from the ground. Unfortunately Andy was feeling pretty ill, so I left him behind and went exploring by myself. After about an hour of climbing and scrambling across rocks I was at the top and was faced with the most amazing views I think I have ever seen. The mountain ranges weren’t huge, but what made it so amazing was the fact that the terrain was either completely flat or a mountain. If that makes any sense? This meant that I could see for miles in every direction.  Simply stunning. Unfortunately the photos didn’t do it justice. When I returned, dinner had been cooked and a fire was being lit. What a way to end the day.

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I’ve been in Mongolia for 4 days now. I got in last Wednesday at 11pm after a full day of travelling (6 hours at the Seoul Airport). Amy & Andy (and their driver) picked me up form the airport. I pretty much spent my first day here sleeping (both Amy & Andy were working). We did go out for lunch and dinner and I met a few of their friends. The next day I went for a run in the morning and then checked out Amy’s work in the afternoon.

Going for a run might sound simple enough, but crossing the road here in Ulaan Baatar is not an easy task. Lanes are more like guidelines, as is the colour of the traffic light. You almost need to wear ear plugs due to the excessive use of the car horns. Giving way is uncommon and it’s kind’ve a case of first-in-best-dressed. The traffic is so bad that the Red Cross (who Amy & Andy are volunteering for) have banned any of their workers from driving.

There has been no hot water at the apartment for the last week and the power was off for most of the first day I was here. The building they live in reminds me of (insert a scene from any action movie based in Eastern Europe/Russia).

This past weekend we took 2 dirt bikes and a 4WD to the Terelj National Park (which is about 1.5 hours out of Ulaan Baatar) with some of Amy & Andy’s friends. It is amazing (think the Grampians but better)! So many places to explore, rocks to climb and views to see. I learnt how to ride the dirt bike and had a lot of fun riding that up and down the tracks. We stayed in a Gur which belonged to one of the families living there, they cooked meals for us as well. Saturday night we went exploring with the 4WD down some tracks that hadn’t been used in quite some time. It really was a great weekend!

On the way their on Saturday, we pulled over on the side of the road where a man was showing off some of his pets. I think the photo says it all.

I spent about 2 weeks in Japan. Whilst most of this time I was involved in the World Championships, I did pick up on some things about the country. Here’s a few of them:

Bikes/Honesty
A lot of people get around on bikes. I assume one reason for this is that there is not much room to park a car (and many people live close enough to the city anyway). This is fantastic and really good for the environment. Because bike use is high, the cities (particularly Kyoto) are designed really well for cyclists. There are dedicated cycling lanes along each footpath and at pedestrian crossings. There are also “bike parking bays” outside supermarkets and people employed to keep these “parking bays” neat. Many of these bikes are left unlocked, which shows a lot for the culture in Japan.

Cleanliness
The streets around our hotel and the whole tournament venue were always clean. There was never any rubbish left lying around, and if there was, it was cleaned up straight away.

Buses
We travelled to and from the tournament venue in buses each day. Our team sung songs loud and proud on the way home each night. One interesting thing we noticed about the buses was that they turned of the engines every time they had to stop at a red light. I assume this is to save energy/reduce greenhouse gas emmissions, but I’m not exactly sure.

Height
Most Japanese people are short. This is especially good when visiting the Osaka Aquarium and there is a large crowd standing in front of the enclosure you want to look at.

$2 Shop
The Japanese version of a $2 shop is the 100 Yen store. Whilst it’s actually 105 Yens, everything in the store is ACTUALLY 105 Yens. Amazing!

Dreads
Everyone (particularly children) stared at me. I like to think it’s because of my amazing good looks, but it was probably my dreads. In fact, on more than one occasion a random person would come up and feel them.

Humidity
It was quite hot and humid the whole time we were in Japan. The most annoying part about this is that it solidified all the snot in my nose. So annoying!

Vending Machines
You cant walk 100m without passing a drink vending machine. Seriously! Soft drink, alcohol, juice, energy drinks or whatever else you want, readily available anywhere!

I have uploaded some Guts videos to youtube and some photos to the photo page of this website.

So we lost the final to Canada, but as a positive we are the second best team in the world (Silver medals are nice and shiny!)

Everyone is super happy with how it finished up. Canada were the best team there and deserve to be world champions. It was a pretty spectacular experience. Massive crowd, live coverage all over the world, a World Championship final!

We went out and celebrated at an all you can eat meat restuarant where you have a burner in the middle of the table and you cook your own meat. It was dericious. We followed that up with Karaoke. It was a good night with many funny moments.

As a whole, Australia probably under performed at WUGC2012. The Dingos (the men’s team) finished 7th, although they very nearly beat the USA (16-17) who were undefeated for the tournament. It’s easy to say that the Dingos are better than 7th, but as happens all too often, they lost the game they needed to win. Sometimes that’s just how it goes. The Firetails (women) had a large round robin (11 teams) which then went straight to semis. They were beaten by 4 teams (USA, Canada, Japan & Columbia) which put them out of the running. Unfortunately their campaign will be remembered for the controversial match against Columbia, which was not the greatest example of Spirit Of The Game. For me, the game highlighted the real need for each player to know the rules inside and out. It was this that spiralled the game out of control. The Wombats (Men’s Masters) took home Silver and the Flying Foxes (Women’s Masters) finished 4th.

We performed well enough overall to once again qualify for the World Games tournament which is happening in Columbia next year. The top 5 countries from this tournament were Canada, USA, Japan, Great Britain & of course us. Columbia will also compete as the host country.

I will write another post in the next few days about Japan and it’s non-frisbee related things.

Today the Mundies won their semi against Japan and so we are in the Gold medal game against Canada tomorrow. It is being streamed live online through Nex Gen, (just google it).

Also today, we found out that the Guts team won Spirit. Will give you more details about it all later.

Go Australia!

It’s been quite an eventful few days. The Mundies have beaten Germany, Finland, Great Britain and China but went down to Canada this afternoon. Assuming we beat Columbia tomorrow morning we will go through 2nd in our pool, which is a good result.

Today was also the begining of my Guts career. We had our first ever game today and were beaten by Japan 21-12. Not bad for our first game ever. We then lost to another Japanese team 21-15 before beating South Korea 21-17!! That’s right, we rocked up to the World Championships having never played a game and managed to win our third game. Amazing! USA then took us down 21-7 but overall it was a great day for Guts. We are going to hopefully beat one of the Japanese teams tomorrow and then win a Medal on the next day, at least that’s the plan.
Oh, my guts nickname is “The Bullet Train”.

The sun is pretty relentless over here. At 9.30am it’s pretty high in the sky already and it certainly makes you aware of it’s presence!

Below is a photo of Dan, Greta and I from the opening ceremony.
Bed time again.

Matt

The U19s camp is over. Everything was succesful and the team is ready for worlds. Very excited about seeing the team arrive in London all dressed in their Aussie gear.

The Ironbarks (the Aussie Guts team I’m playing on) are seeded 3rd (out of 6) for Worlds. This is hilarious as we’ve never played a game before.

I’m currently in the Cairns Airport getting ready to board my flight out of Australia. Greta insisted we stay at a hotel last night instead of at the airport. This was the view from our balcony this morning.

The last few days have been pretty busy. The good news is I’ve almost crossed everything off the various ‘to do’ lists that have been scattered around my room all week.

Today’s list included making this website, making another website, buying a thermarest, finishing handing over my job to Greta, washing, packing up my room, and organising the final Thunder camp which starts on Saturday.

Time to go test out that new thermarest.