Jason's trip to the
2004 World Boomerang Championships in France
July 9-25, 2004
I've edited
together several of my emails to try to summarize the trip. It's a little
long on the return trip and it all probably needs more editing.
Sorry. Hmm... Maybe I need to post this
online somewhere... Well, here it
is. J
The trip
to France was great. The championships went
well. We did not do nearly as well this year as we did in 2002 when we
won. But it was a learning experience for us. We had several tactical
errors to learn from. I'm thinking of it as a rebuilding year for
us. The US squads finished 4th and 8th out of
17 teams. The Germans were machines and essentially had the tournament won
before we even began the last day of competition. In fact the only two
teams that moved in the standings between the second and the third (final) day
were the two last place teams.
In the
individuals, I ended up 19th out of about 100. I was pleased with that. I
also finished 9th in the GLORP (freestyle) championships, 15th in the long
distance championships, and 4th in the Maximum Time Aloft (MTA) unlimited
championships. Overall it was a fun trip.
Tournament
Picture Time (Most of these pictures were taken by my German friend Stanislaus Plewinski.):
I made an
effort to hang out with, talk with, and become friends with the French
throwers. It had always been easy in years past to hang out with the
Germans, the Swiss, the Dutch, the Danes, or the British. So, I
focused in on meeting and talking with the French speaking throwers.
I was able to re-invigorate my high school French and communicate with
them. I often had a hard time understanding exactly what they said, but
if they spoke clearly and slowly enough I usually got the idea. And
I could usually communicate my thoughts to them. I'm sure I butchered
almost every verb conjugation, but it was close enough and they seemed to
appreciate the effort. I got to know pretty well one of the throwers from
each of the three French teams, one of the French speaking Swiss, as well as
one of the non-throwing organizers. I felt tremendously enriched to form
these new friendships.
At the end
of every World Cup, we hand out Team Gel Awards to every thrower, organizer,
family support member, cook etc. Gel is the nickname of one of the most
enthusiastic boomerang throwers in the States. He's been on US teams, he
was one of our coaches in Germany in 2002, and he was one of our
coaches again in 2004. Unfortunately he was unable to be with us in France, but his spirit was there.
Gel Awards are his way of encouraging everybody in boomerangs. Everybody
gets an award. Usually the awards are based on some attribute or
characteristic that the person displayed during the week or some spectacular
event that the person was a part of. For example, the "Trick
Catching Above and Beyond the Call of Duty Award" for the Australian who
chased his trick catch boomerang to the edge of the field, navigated through
boomerang bags, tried to lift his foot to "hackey"
the boom but kicked my boomerang box, lifted his foot over the box, made the hackey, and succeeded in catching his boomerang
anyway.
My efforts
to meet people were aided by the ubiquitous t-shirt swapping. I went
with 13 Sonic Boom (our US squad) shirts to trade, and I
traded every one of them. They were pretty hot items. Thanks to Betsylew on our team for getting them
made. I traded all of mine and even went so far as to arrange trades for
many of my teammates. I even traded their shirts without their "a
priori" knowledge. My gel award was simply "T-shirt
Pimp." :-)
After the
team tournament and the individual tournament, a bunch of us traveled to Haguenau, a small town about 30 minutes from Strasbourg,
for the long distance (LD) and maximum time aloft (MTA) unlimited
tournament. The tournament director, Roland, was a
gracious host and invited about 20 of us over to his house for a
barbeque dinner the evening before the tournament. Our hotel was
literally right across the road from the field. It couldn't have been any
more convenient. Our field was the old aerodrome (airport). The
grass was a little long, but Andy (center),
Clay (right), and I were just happy to be throwing LD. The new aerodrome was on the same side of the
road as our hotel. The prime activity at the aerodrome was flying
sailplanes, gliders with extremely high aspect ratio wings. There were
often three or four of these circling over our heads.
The LD
tournament was fun. Manuel from Switzerland is the world record holder at 238
meters with a complete return. He astounded us again with a throw of 180
meters when many of us were struggling to get over 100 meters. I threw my first valid return in international
competition. It was only 94 meters, but
it was better than zero!
After the
LD tournament, seven of us (5 Americans, 1 Canadian, and 1 Australian) went on
to tour Strasbourg.
It's a French city, but the German influence
is very easy to see. The cathedral is most impressive when you stumble
upon it from a small alley. The three story buildings surrounding it are
dwarfed. We went inside and saw the astronomical
clock strike at the local noon time. (Because Strasbourg is in the western part of the time
zone, the astronomical noon was about 12:30.)
We climbed to the top and had a magnificent view of the city. Two
of us hiked down. When we got to the bottom, the group up at the top
threw a plastic boomerang that circled gently almost all the way down before it
hit the building and slid down to us. We should have timed it for
MTA. :-) When we all got to the
bottom, we posed for a picture together
with the boomerang. We hiked up the Ill
River and spent the afternoon in Petite France which had many beautiful
timber frame homes.
The trip
home was good. I left Strasbourg around 5:45 Saturday evening, arrived at the Brussels airport around 11:00 that night, called Laura,
read a teammate's copy of The Pastures of Heaven by Steinbeck, and then
slept fitfully in the airport for about 30 minutes at a time over a two hour
period. I started my “day” by eating a croissant.
I was the
first person to check-in (at 7:30) for the (10:30) international flight to Newark, NJ. Passed through
the security checkpoint. Browsed some shops, didn't find anything worth
buying. Walked toward the departure gate at the end of the
terminal. Was directed to another security search area
mid way down the terminal. Bags and person were searched. The security
people were confused about what to do regarding the boomerangs (MTAs and one Long Distance boom). They searched their
master list of prohibited items, didn't find boomerangs, let me go, but
suggested that I check the boomerangs next time. They also confiscated my roll
of packing tape that I had used to seal my boom-box. That was fine by me. :-)
I sat at
the end of the terminal watching planes land and take-off. Boarded. Talked with
my neighbor from NJ about the world cup, the plans for the '08 world
cup in Seattle, boomerangs in general. Watched the "Cat in the Hat" movie while I ate lunch.
Slept solidly for 4 hours. Read another
teammate's National Geographic magazine. Landed.
I had a 1
hour layover in Newark. I knew it might be tough to make
the connection, so I tried to do everything fast. I passed through immigration quickly. Waited 25 minutes for my bags to get to the baggage claim area.
Lesson learned with bags: first on, last off. Had to wait
about 5 minutes in line at customs. They were just gathering the
declaration cards. They didn't even look at them. Had to wait
about 10 minutes to recheck my bags. I was confident that they wouldn't
make my flight. Even though the bag
handlers let me cut the line because my flight left in 20 minutes, they put the
bags at the end of a long line of bags that needed to be resent through the
x-ray machine. I ran to the inter-terminal train station. (The Atlanta flight was one of three connecting
flights that were in another terminal.) Waited for the train.
Rode the train from terminal C to terminal A. Ran from the train to the
terminal A security check. No problem, no line. Ran
the length of Terminal A to the gate, and finally boarded about 5 minutes
before the scheduled departure time. It turns out that I boarded about 15
minutes before they actually closed the door. Whew!
The flight
home was uneventful. Laura and Emma met me just outside the
secure area at the top of the escalators. I was afraid Emma wouldn’t recognize
me. But as soon as I kissed her, she
looked up at me and gave me a big smile. She melted my
heart. :-) It's good to be home again!
-Jason
--
Jason’s home
2004
Word Cup Website
Dave
Richardson’s photos
Pumpkin’s
photos
Stanislaus Plewinski’s
photos
