Lady'scjonctées 2012

Last Sunday the Dijon Ultimate club, Les Discjonctés hosted an all-women's tournament and four of us from Besançon plus two pick-ups from the Ultimate Troopers (near Nancy), teamed up to form the Free-Bises. The day started off right when upon entering Clémentine's car for the hour-drive to Dijon, Vanessa offered us all a potpourri of morning beverages, including, but not limited to: coffee, cappuccino (in both Milka and Toberlone varieties), hot chocolate, and tea. 

The day only got better from there... the tournament was a lot of fun -- very well-run and a very positive atmosphere. Since it was the tournament's first year there were only four teams (the ladies from Dijon, a high school team, and a middle school team coached by Bruno, the former captain of the Discjontés who is the girls' gym teacher). The set-up was a round robin in the morning, a 25-minute break for lunch, then another round robin in the afternoon. Only the matches against the Lady Discjontés were really challenging, but it was a good opportunity to work on the fundamentals and a good learning session for the two pick-ups, Marie-Eve and Pascale. 

And I had a wonderful time playing with Clémentine, Franzi and Vanessa, who all play for the Friz'Bistonins. It's unusual for us to have more than 2-4 girls total at any given practice (Lucie also comes regularly, and sometimes we have Caroline), so more often than not I'm playing against the only other girl on the opposing team. It was good to play together, since Clémentine is also going to be on the team for the phase retour (round 2) of the regional tournament, the last weekend in February.

For the record, we won all 6 of our matches and ended up also winning the "Spirit of the Game" award (which makes 3 weekends in a row for Friz'Bistonin teams).

Here we are proudly displaying our loot (from left to right): me with a bottle of Arbois, Franzi with the trophy for winning the tournament, Vanessa with a party game which was also part of the prize (?), and Clémentine with the trophy for best spirit, then Pascale and Marie-Eve. This was on top of the goody bag that each player received for attending the tournament (which had various contents including candies, a little toiletries bag, a Discjonctés cup and a small pot of Dijon mustard). We're going to save the bottle for the phase retour, because Pascale and Marie-Eve will be there and we can all enjoy it together then! Overall a really great Sunday!

Les Cowboys Fringants

This past weekend was a very exciting one! On Friday evening I went to a concert in Geneva with a bunch of people from the Ultimate team including: Gaëtan, Fred, Lois, GuiGui, Franzi, and Clément. We weren't the only ones though: lots of people brought along friends and family, and so we were closer to 15 in total. I brought along Kati and she brought along a friend named Ian, who turned out to be an American from Nashville who is doing his third year at UNC-Asheville at the university here in Besançon. The three of us drove down with Fred, plus GuiGui and met up with the group at the venue. The fact that the concert was in Geneva isn't hugely relevant... we really didn't see any of the city besides the inside of the concert venue. We met up with Franzi and her friend Tiny, who was visiting from Germany for the week, Clément and his fiancé, Lois and his girlfriend, Gaetan and his mother, brother, aunt, and cousin. The concert was held at a multi-purpose venue, that was, say, closer in size to the Taft Theatre and than to US Bank Arena (sorry for you non-Cincinnatians). We were in the standing area in front, and I won't bother to estimate the crowd size since I'm horrible with those kinds of estimates.

The group, Les Cowboys Fringants, is from Quebec and was started in the mid-1990s. Their genre is alternative rock-folk-country, although I could classify it as closer to rock than the latter two. The principal band members are, from left to right: bassist, a singer/guitarist, electric violin player (Marie Annick), and keyboardist. Marie-Annick, who also plays the accordian, the mandoline, the piano, and the guitar, totally stole the show.

They also had a drummer and a couple of back-up guitar players. I went into the concert having listened to nothing else but their music for the three or so weeks leading up to the concert, but only knew all of the words to a handful of songs. Their songs are very catchy but incredibly fast, so I really could only retain the lyrics if I looked them up online and practiced following along. My personal favorites are Plus Rien, Chêne et Roseau, and Tant qu'on aura de l'amour. They played the first and the third, but not playing all three wasn't for a lack of playing time. The concert started around 8:45pm and didn't finish until nearly midnight!

The part that was sort of surprising for me was that they took a break halfway through. Having an intermission at a rock concert was certainly a new thing for me (not a French thing, but apparently common in Quebec). There was no opening band, just Les Cowboys. They also came back for, wait for it, three encores. Personally I find more than one a little annoying and a little egotistical on the part of the band (I can't help thinking they do it because they like hearing us screaming their name). Each time they played one or two songs... why not just come back once, play four or five more songs, then go home?

It was a really awesome experience though. Their music is the kind that makes you want to jump around and dance, and we definitely did plenty of that. It was Clément's birthday and I had the impression he was pleased to celebrate it with such a great concert. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to bring in cameras, and there was no way I was going to be able to smuggle my Leica in without getting caught. If I find out someone took a picture with their phone though, I'll try to post it.

PS Happy Valentine's Day!

"Ils ont piqués mes deux arrières-pnues!"

Translation of title: "They stole my two back tires!"

This blog entry also happens to be a little bit late... it recounts the events that happened last Thursday evening after the weekly Ultimate session at SUAPS (the something universitaire des activités physiques et sportives) hosted by the equivalent of the Health and Exercise Science department at the University of France Comté in Besançon. The students in this department are required to participate in a certain number of hosted athletic activities per month (or per week, I really don't know), and one of the activities offered is Ultimate, every Thursday night from 8-9:30pm. It's pretty low-key: we throw for the first 30 minutes and then scrimmage for the last hour. Usually a fair percentage of the participants are Friz'Bistonins (the Ultimate team I play for here), and last Thursday was no exception. I think we were 18 or 19 in total, and 16 of us were Friz'Bistonins. We had enough for 3 teams of six players (one sub, since you play with five on the court in indoor).

The evening was pretty standard and without incident, except that we ended up playing a little longer than usual. When all left the gym it was just before 10pm. Someone suggested we go out to Callahan's for a drink, and we agreed to meet up there. Colin was parked in the upper lot, near the track, and when we passed the lower lot, we noticed Lois was standing by the entrance, as if to signal someone. It's a good thing we stopped to see what was up, because it turned out the group wasn't going anywhere soon. Vanessa, who had parked in the lower lot (which during work hours it is reserved for the administration), emerged from the gym to discover someone had stolen the two back tires off of her car! The car was just sitting on the axles (I don't think this is the correct term, hopefully someone will correct me). Although the tires weren't brand new, they were snow tires and less than a year old, which explains why someone took them instead of the tires off of one of the four other cars parked in the lot (all belonging to people on our team). Vanessa called the police, but we had to wait nearly 45 minutes before they arrived!! (It was probably around -5 or -10 Celsius outside, that is approximately 23-14 degrees Fahrenheit). We were pretty annoyed that they took so long, but their visit was amusing because it turns out the officer in charge, Denis, knew one of the players from our team, Fred (who wasn't there). When we found out we were all part of the Ultimate club, he asked "Hey, isn't there an old guy who plays with you?" We thought he was referring to the professor who runs the SUAPS programs, but immediately started laughing when he mentioned Fred's name.

As soon as the police left, we took out Vanessa's spare tire and GuiGui's spare tire (luckily they drive the same car, and GuiGui happened to be there). This required considerable effort, considering GuiGui's tire was frozen into the trunk. Then we used two tire jacks to mount the tires at the same time, and fastened them with two of the bolts off of each of the front tires. It wasn't the most secure set-up, but Vanessa was able to drive home (Gaëtan followed, to make sure she arrived safely) and her parents brought over her summer tires the next morning. She filed a claim with her insurance company and should be reimbursed for the stolen snow tires. She has snow tires on her car because she works in Pontarlier, about an hour south-east of Besançon by car and they get a lot more snow there.

Everyone was pretty shocked that her tires were stolen -- the campus is normally very safe and this kind of theft is unusual. I'm glad that we were all there to help her too, because it made putting the tires back on much easier. Hopefully it's an experience I won't get to repeat again!