Welcome to the first issue of SVOSQR. In Q2 I thought I would report on "up-and-coming" obscure sports (read: I'm lazy and the sports on meetup.com are not currently at the bleeding-edge of obscurity). Meetup.com links, pics and summaries follow.
Kickball
Friggin R
ocktackulous. About 20 people show up. Pleased to find that although I am now older, heavier, and weaker, I can still get that satisfying PWING! sound out of kicking the ball and deforming it into a lively ovoid before the other team catches it. Margaritas afterward in Willow Glen. Surprising amount of blood involved.Ultimate Frisbee
Super friendly pickup game at Eagle Park in MV. Show up to learn ahead of time. Usually works best if you pick someone approximately your own body shape to cover. Couldn't tell if we were keeping score - could be that I was unaware of the scoring mechanism, but I prefer to think that it's really that casual of a game. They meet in Sunnyvale, too.
Dodgeball
Silicon Valley is in desperate need of Dodge
ball leadership!! Things are getting so bad that I have had to find pictures from other sports. The one silicon valley dodgeball meetup was held at Sky High, where they have a dodgeball room made out of trampolines (walls, ceilings, etc). Mixed group with lots of li
ttle kids and a few adults. It felt a little unfair to whale on the kids with a red rubber ball, but the realization that I could actually make them rotate on any one axis with a dodgeball strike kept my interest. Apparently, it's next to impossible to get old people to show up to a Dodgeball game. I tried to help and bring in a few folk, but could only drag one brave soul in with me. We were about half the group. Of course, now that the meetup group has gone inactive, there are dozens of interested people pledging to help. Will you be our Dodgeball leader (left picture - the guy who's winning), or will you be woefully unprepared for the next random strike (right picture - that is you).A warning: There is not enough research to determine what obscure sports do to our bodies, exactly, but we do know that they fully condone the Bush adminstrations definition of torture. Any single obscure sport, picked up for the first time in maybe-ever, will find and cruelly torture muscles that you didn't know you had for weeks. Middle-aged humans are supposed to be dead, and therefore have not evolved to handle more than one attempt at obscure sports per month. Don't do it! But do let me know if you find an obscure sport in silicon valley that you would like me to try.
