Weeeee Are the Chaaaaaaampions, My Frieeeend....
Friday night Tesse and I did a Right Rides shift which was fun. By the way, did you hear?
Guess who was named RightRides February Volunteer of the Month? Me!
Anyway, so Friday night was fun, if a bit offcourse. Our first pickup was at the Pleasure Chest, a sex shop in the Village near Marie's--we picked up 3 workers and were told to take them to various parts of Brooklyn. The navigator app routed us through the Battery Bridge Tunnel...which happened to be closed and under construction. We then tried to go via the Brooklyn Bridge but there was construction there as well and we were cockblocked at the entrance we wanted and had to go out of our way (and wade through traffic) before finally we were on our way to Brooklyn. We kept seeing Popeye's which started me craving a biscuit (I quoted one of Jason's best bons mots when he said excitedly "it's like the flour is made of butter!")--weirdly after we dropped off the Riders, we didn't pass any more Popeyes! And so alas, my craving was not satisfied :( Trying to go back into Manhattan caused us to rerouted over the Manhattan Bridge, and then on our way to the next pickup I accidentally took us over the Williamsburg Bridge. To cap it off, in driving the last pickup home, we ended up going to the GW Bridge. *cue sad trombone riff*
In my head, I now think of that night as The Bridges of New York County.
And in more exciting news, my league soccer team (Dolphman FC) won the championship title again! Very exciting, as we had a ROUGH start this season. We lost our first game, tied our second, and were HAMMERED In our third game, 9-3. Oy. The third game was against a thoroughly disliked team that I found out later basically everyone in the league can't stand. In fact they were docked a sportsmanship point in their game against us--they'd scored very early (in the first minute or two--our goalie was injured) and as they jogged back to midfield they were saying to each other "okay, so the goalie sucks." I glared at them and point-blank told them to shut up, it's not that kind of a league. Seriously dudes, there are a ton of leagues out there for aggressive assholes--go join one of them! I did score a goal against them which gave me a grim pleasure. It was another game in which we had no subs--for some reason half the team wasn't there--and yet AGAIN it was just Nikki and I the whole game! Not the first time :/
But that seems to have been the turning point--we won every game after that. I had a kind of cool goal in one of them--I was deep on the other team's half of the field, and someone on our team (maybe even me, I can't remember) kicked it out. One of their players was technically on the sidelines but very close to the goal, so he threw it to the goalie, thinking (I suppose) that I would just let them have it, that I wouldn't challenge them. Oh no! I scooted up and intercepted the throw (as I did so, I heard the goalie say "oh shit...") and quickly whipped off a pass to one of our forwards, Brian, who scored. Yay! I like to think of that as carving out a goal where there wasn't one before--I created that goal! :) Brian totally gave me props later. I had another moment when one of their players was dribbling about mid-field--a little casually I thought, so I came from behind and just took it away from him. I was telling my mother about it on the phone later and she was all "you used to do that all the time as a girl, you'd just sneak through their legs and take the ball away from them." Some habits die hard!
So yeah, we had the quarterfinals last week which we won, and then the semis yesterday, against a team which we'd beaten in the regular season, but just by one goal. We beat them again and we were off to play the grey team, who'd been undefeated in the regular season. They were GOOD. Very, very strong. And we had just finished our game, whereas their semifinal had been right before ours and they'd had some time to rest. But I felt that both teams were playing sort of tentatively in the first half, although they were slightly dominant. But in the second half we finally scored, and then another one--they scored as well but to no avail, and we ended up winning. Really, we were pretty shocked! What was really nice is there was no grudginess about it--we played hard but clean, and several times one of their defenders and I helped each other up after hitting the other. Just a nice classy team. And they applauded us when they got to the bar, which of course we returned. One of their girls is known for making cake pops and other yummy things for the games, and she'll share them at the bar--I told her how the previous week I'd made homemade chocolate toffee (I have a great recipe for it, you don't even need a candy thermometer although it did take me a few rounds to get the toffee consistency perfect). Their captain's eyes gleamed (he's British, they love toffee) and he TOLD me "you have to bring that for the spring season!"
We had a lot of fun at the bar--the newer members of the team were marveling at the victory, since our first two titles came before many of them had joined the team. *I* was marveling, since we'd had such a terrible start! Our worst season (in fact we still have a negative goal differential!) and yet we ended up as the champions. Apparently this did not sit too well with the black team--one of them drunkenly told one of our teammates that we "didn't really deserve to be champions." Uh, not only did we beat you TWICE, we also beat the grey team who beat you! So suck it :) Anyway we were bonding quite a bit at the bar, and then I found out that two of our other players also had motorcycle licenses. That was it--the Dolphman Biker Road Trip is ON. How much fun would that be, a bunch of us all on bikes, with a few sidecars? Seth, our large-ish goalie, "called" sitting in my sidecar which made me giggle--little Clara atop the bike with big Seth squeezed into the sidecar! Get your motor running...
The next season starts in a month or so--we're back at Baruch Fields on Sunday nights. I detest that crappy field, but I love the bar! The bartender there is really cute ;)
Guess who was named RightRides February Volunteer of the Month? Me!
Anyway, so Friday night was fun, if a bit offcourse. Our first pickup was at the Pleasure Chest, a sex shop in the Village near Marie's--we picked up 3 workers and were told to take them to various parts of Brooklyn. The navigator app routed us through the Battery Bridge Tunnel...which happened to be closed and under construction. We then tried to go via the Brooklyn Bridge but there was construction there as well and we were cockblocked at the entrance we wanted and had to go out of our way (and wade through traffic) before finally we were on our way to Brooklyn. We kept seeing Popeye's which started me craving a biscuit (I quoted one of Jason's best bons mots when he said excitedly "it's like the flour is made of butter!")--weirdly after we dropped off the Riders, we didn't pass any more Popeyes! And so alas, my craving was not satisfied :( Trying to go back into Manhattan caused us to rerouted over the Manhattan Bridge, and then on our way to the next pickup I accidentally took us over the Williamsburg Bridge. To cap it off, in driving the last pickup home, we ended up going to the GW Bridge. *cue sad trombone riff*
In my head, I now think of that night as The Bridges of New York County.
And in more exciting news, my league soccer team (Dolphman FC) won the championship title again! Very exciting, as we had a ROUGH start this season. We lost our first game, tied our second, and were HAMMERED In our third game, 9-3. Oy. The third game was against a thoroughly disliked team that I found out later basically everyone in the league can't stand. In fact they were docked a sportsmanship point in their game against us--they'd scored very early (in the first minute or two--our goalie was injured) and as they jogged back to midfield they were saying to each other "okay, so the goalie sucks." I glared at them and point-blank told them to shut up, it's not that kind of a league. Seriously dudes, there are a ton of leagues out there for aggressive assholes--go join one of them! I did score a goal against them which gave me a grim pleasure. It was another game in which we had no subs--for some reason half the team wasn't there--and yet AGAIN it was just Nikki and I the whole game! Not the first time :/
But that seems to have been the turning point--we won every game after that. I had a kind of cool goal in one of them--I was deep on the other team's half of the field, and someone on our team (maybe even me, I can't remember) kicked it out. One of their players was technically on the sidelines but very close to the goal, so he threw it to the goalie, thinking (I suppose) that I would just let them have it, that I wouldn't challenge them. Oh no! I scooted up and intercepted the throw (as I did so, I heard the goalie say "oh shit...") and quickly whipped off a pass to one of our forwards, Brian, who scored. Yay! I like to think of that as carving out a goal where there wasn't one before--I created that goal! :) Brian totally gave me props later. I had another moment when one of their players was dribbling about mid-field--a little casually I thought, so I came from behind and just took it away from him. I was telling my mother about it on the phone later and she was all "you used to do that all the time as a girl, you'd just sneak through their legs and take the ball away from them." Some habits die hard!
So yeah, we had the quarterfinals last week which we won, and then the semis yesterday, against a team which we'd beaten in the regular season, but just by one goal. We beat them again and we were off to play the grey team, who'd been undefeated in the regular season. They were GOOD. Very, very strong. And we had just finished our game, whereas their semifinal had been right before ours and they'd had some time to rest. But I felt that both teams were playing sort of tentatively in the first half, although they were slightly dominant. But in the second half we finally scored, and then another one--they scored as well but to no avail, and we ended up winning. Really, we were pretty shocked! What was really nice is there was no grudginess about it--we played hard but clean, and several times one of their defenders and I helped each other up after hitting the other. Just a nice classy team. And they applauded us when they got to the bar, which of course we returned. One of their girls is known for making cake pops and other yummy things for the games, and she'll share them at the bar--I told her how the previous week I'd made homemade chocolate toffee (I have a great recipe for it, you don't even need a candy thermometer although it did take me a few rounds to get the toffee consistency perfect). Their captain's eyes gleamed (he's British, they love toffee) and he TOLD me "you have to bring that for the spring season!"
We had a lot of fun at the bar--the newer members of the team were marveling at the victory, since our first two titles came before many of them had joined the team. *I* was marveling, since we'd had such a terrible start! Our worst season (in fact we still have a negative goal differential!) and yet we ended up as the champions. Apparently this did not sit too well with the black team--one of them drunkenly told one of our teammates that we "didn't really deserve to be champions." Uh, not only did we beat you TWICE, we also beat the grey team who beat you! So suck it :) Anyway we were bonding quite a bit at the bar, and then I found out that two of our other players also had motorcycle licenses. That was it--the Dolphman Biker Road Trip is ON. How much fun would that be, a bunch of us all on bikes, with a few sidecars? Seth, our large-ish goalie, "called" sitting in my sidecar which made me giggle--little Clara atop the bike with big Seth squeezed into the sidecar! Get your motor running...
The next season starts in a month or so--we're back at Baruch Fields on Sunday nights. I detest that crappy field, but I love the bar! The bartender there is really cute ;)