My heart exploded last night.

Last night, Mike and some very dear friends hosted a happy hour fund raiser for me at Black Sheep Lodge, a new Austin bar owned by Austin Ultimate legend Keith Sandel. The UPA reimburses the team for a certain amount of travel expenses and we are doing team fundraisers, but I was surprised how quickly that stipend was depleted with all the traveling to practices and tourneys.

It turns out that living in Austin does have one drawback; it is geographically isolated from the Ultimate dense pockets around the country and therefore it is expensive and time consuming to consistently reach those pockets of high level frisbee fun. This is not a new development-- teams in Texas have always struggled with having to spend more money and time flying to far away tournaments for good competition-- but involved a lot of traveling within a two and a half month period. Team U.S.A. attended practices, tryouts, or tournaments in Florida/L.A., Denver, San Francisco, Atlanta, Seattle, and two in Ohio over that short time period.

So, that is why I am so incredibly grateful to all the people that have shown support (both physically and monetarily) to this cause. Thank you for working out or practicing with me and pushing me to be a better player and athlete, thank you for helping me attend the World Games and all those practices without going into extreme debt, thank you for teaching me, putting up with me, supporting me, and loving me. I can't thank you all enough, but I shall try. Special thanks to:

TUFF, Sheila Ogden, Bryan Campbell, David Natenberg and Ellie, Sharon and Steven Natenberg, Lindsay Lowe, Laney Bevill, Homie and Molly, Max and Casi Cook, Kiran Thomas, Sarah Blyth, Terry Jungman, Mia Iseman, Lisa and Brian Ward, Lorig Hawkins, Nazish Waliany, Vanessa Wagner, Hannah and Elliot, Rachel Massey, Mariah, Aaron Smith, Mark Krasniewski, Zack Sumners, Steven Alford, Mark Warren, Stoney and Ying, Matteo and Kim, Stephanie Redfern, Matt Clark, Ben Simms, Corina Lucas, Amanda Chisholm, DJ Loskorn, Stevie Franchise, Skizip Hobbie, Chase, Bjorn Schey, Judson, Scott, Wheels, Rory Orloff, Andrew Vickers, Andrew Foley, Don Tom and Judy, Adam Keeling, Marcus Gavin, Julia Echterhoff, Paul (TUFF), Fortner, Dana, Turco, Becky and Karen, Scott Gross, Michelle Ng, Madison Berger, Marjo Manalang, Kyle Kretschman, Rachel Nolan, Amy Kendziorski, AJ Moore, Chris Jew, Darbi Donaldson, Daneil Knoll, Kim Breese, Carlos d'Avis, Todd Geldon, Becca Shelton, Peter Lewis, Ellen Wyoming, Phil Wendel, Alexa Tang, Jason White, Crystal Willis, Kevin Gaffney, Cassey and Michael Crouch, Andy Crouch, Bea Brown, Faye Smith, and many others.An extra special thank you to Mike/Tank and Skizip Hobbie for putting the fund raiser together.

I'll definitely do my best to represent you all on and off the field in Taiwan.

Cara

Party pics!