Perhaps it's time for an update...Ulm!

OK, I left off right before traveling to Ulm for my 5th polo tournament. I was fortunate to get a ride from Cologne to Ulm with my friends Jan and Kati. They decided to play at the last minute so it all worked out well. We arrived at the court Friday evening and then found the party which was in a pub by the river. Not long after, the police came and told us all to shut up since the acoustics in the place weren't quite conducive to a polo party. We went to another bar then, causing mayhem the whole way. Poor Ulm. Finally camping at the courts and I enjoyed using my hammock just feet from the court. I played with Chris and Lisa from Nuremberg. The one rain storm all weekend was during one of our games, and it was actually quite fun. The whole court turned into a lake so it was pretty much just playing around with a floating ball. We couldn't pass or shoot or anything; the ball would travel only about a foot in the water. We all got soaked (and so did my hammock, ha). After the game the six of us all gathered around a bum fire and dried ourselves and our polo stuff. Then party time and more camping at the courts! Shenanigans ensued, including the taping of shoe soles with the clip-in cleats attached to flip flops = click flops. Then two guys rode the same bike at the same time with one on each pedal. They did remarkably well! I slept in Jan and Kati's car that night since my hammock was a sopping mess. On Sunday we only played two games but as I recall one of them was quite close. So time for beer drinking and heckling! It was a great tournament! At the beginning of one of the final games, there was an epic crash where Hagen's bike collapsed under him during the joust, and the front end of the bike took out the guy going for the ball on the other team. Fortunately he was fine (scraped up of course) but he was quite shocked to have no bike underneath him suddenly. There were a ton of sponsors and prizes given out at the tournament! I'd never seen so many prizes! After the tournament I rode with a Frankfurt player to spend a couple of days in Frankfurt before heading to worlds in Montpellier.