NPS Sports

Despite living in the middle of nowhere I have been able to continue my participation in team sports here. When I arrived I was relieved to see a basketball hoop in the parking lot by the seasonal housing, a way to get some exercise without having to run laps on the access road. I go out there and shoot around pretty much every day, sometimes for up to an hour. Most of the time it's so windy I have to aim 5 feet to the right of the basket to have a prayer of making the shot, but shooting around it more about the time I spend out there than my shooting percentage. It's a great way to relax after a days work, though it's not like I need to de-stress or anything given all I do is hike and talk.

In any case, I was shooting around enough I got my jumper back. I found this out while playing 2v2 against some guys on the fire crew last week. For the first time in 4-5 years I was able to break down a guy off the dribble, and pull up and make a shot. And the fire crew guys were decent too, it's not like I was schooling chumps. Now the fire crew is trying to put together a team to go and challenge the best 5 Carlsbad Caverns has to offer. I'm looking forward to that game.

Speaking of schooling chumps though, I've also found a pick-up frisbee game. It's Park service employees only, and we play once a week in Carlsbad. I'm usually the only one who drives all the way from GUMO, but I've had company a couple times. It's by far the lowest quality pick up I've ever played. There's no stall count, no real understanding of the rules (tons of picks, no calls), and turnovers are so prevalent that playing 4v5 isn't looked at as a disadvantage. No one aside from me has a forehand or has played organized ultimate. I'm like Blake Griffin playing against a highschoolers. Despite all that though, I love it. It makes my week. Something about playing the sport of ultimate just washes away any bad or troubling thoughts and lets me simply run around and have fun. Plus as always the people who play are really cool, and it's great to get to know people outside of my 10 person social network at GUMO. Cave people and the cave itself are all very interesting, but that's the subject of another post.