Jamie Thingelstad

Open Loop #4 - Enough Win for Everyone

Open Loop 4

2012-10-12: Dallas!

Notes & Links:

Transcript

Speaker-labelled transcript, machine transcribed and cleaned up with AI in October 2026. It may still have mistakes. Also as WebVTT and JSON.

Jamie: I’m recording AIFF 16-bit, 48 kilohertz.

Garrick: Very good.

Jamie: And doing Mountain Lion.

Garrick: Huh.

Jamie: So, you know, it still works.

Garrick: Huh. What do you know?

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: But you did have some technical difficulties getting here. I just want to be clear about that.

Jamie: Hello there. Chords and such.

Garrick: A poorly timed shutdown?

Jamie: Yeah. Hey, check this out.

Garrick: Hey!

Jamie: There we go.

Garrick: That sounds like a podcast.

Jamie: Now we’re podcasting. What do you have? Are you drinking a beer?

Garrick: I am drinking a beer. Oh, that’s the whole reason I was taking a look at that recipe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to put the

Jamie: I thought you were gonna say that’s the whole reason we’re doing a podcast tonight, so

Garrick: Damn straight.

Jamie: you can have a beer.

Garrick: Yes. I don’t have enough reasons to have beer, so I need to make a podcasting. Yeah, yeah. So I’m having my Roggen, my Roggen Brett. This is my 60% rye beer with only, only Brettanomyces yeast. It’s its own Brett.

Jamie: A what?

Garrick: Brett

Jamie: A what? A what? A what yeast?

Garrick: Brettanomyces. So

Jamie: What is that?

Garrick: Brettanomyces is the yeast in sour beers. It’s It’s got some interesting characteristics that I have declared, after I opened this bottle that blew up all over my sink, I will conquer this yeast.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: Yes. I am tired of it being delicious and yummy and perfect the two weeks after I bottle it, and then two months after I bottled it making a mess all over the kitchen. That’s, I don’t like that. Especially because that means delicious beer is all over the kitchen. Exactly.

Jamie: Being wasted. Is there any rye in it at all?

Garrick: 60%, yeah.

Jamie: Right, really?

Garrick: Yeah, it’s, aside from the mess, it’s one of my most delicious that I made yet, yeah.

Jamie: I haven’t had this, right? Yeah.

Garrick: You haven’t had this? No, no. It’s a… But you’ve had sours before? Yeah.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: Like really good ones that sort of have this like a, like a

Jamie: There we go.

Garrick: like sour cherry thing going on in them.

Jamie: Yeah, they’re delicious.

Garrick: Yeah. Yeah, it’s just like that.

Jamie: I am having a Sweet Child of Vine.

Garrick: Oh, yum.

Jamie: Yeah, I picked up a

Garrick: I thought that was really nice of you to give Dobby a sixer of that.

Jamie: know, and I was happy because he hadn’t had it. And I had emailed them to ask him if he was into hoppy beers and he said he was. And so I figured, well, then you got to get a Sweet Child of Vine.

Garrick: Yes.

Jamie: And I got to say that I continue to be super happy with what Fulton is doing. Everything that Fulton is doing. They please me and

Garrick: Good. Good, good, good. I’m happy to hear that. And it’s a great beer.

Jamie: If you like hoppy beers, this is a great beer and it’s not stupid hoppy. It’s not like crazy. It’s not like a hopsicle or triple hopsicle or quadruple hopsicle.

Garrick: What I’ve always liked about that is it’s… man, what a horrible website they have. Good golly. The Fulton Sweet Child of Vine is there. That’s a reasonable URL for this beer. It’s got a really nice

Jamie: That’s a reasonable URL.

Garrick: It’s got a really nice hop aroma, a really

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: nice hop aroma, unlike the ones that are just bitter to be bitter. This one says, no, no, hops can be fun.

Jamie: Yeah. And it’s not, you know, have we talked about Lonely Blonde on here?

Garrick: We haven’t, but I always like to say that we know why she’s lonely.

Jamie: It’s no good. But I talk to people and I mention Fulton and they say that they just love Lonely Blonde, and I don’t get it. I’ve tried it, you’ve tried it. I think it tastes like dirty socks. So it, and it’s, I don’t know if there’s, I guess it’s probably a good thing that they make two beers and I like one and the other one, you know, they’re hitting a market then, right?

Garrick: They make four beers. Now,

Jamie: All the time?

Garrick: yeah, the

Jamie: What are the other two?

Garrick: Libertine, which

Jamie: Oh.

Garrick: is an Imperial Red Rye Ale. So, I think it’s delicious. And the rye

Jamie: Of course. It’s got rye in it. Check.

Garrick: is going to be delicious. The other one is the Worthy Adversary. And if you haven’t, I highly recommend it. It’s their Russian Imperial Stout that they serve in the small glasses because it’s very dangerous.

Jamie: Oh, I think I have had that.

Garrick: Yeah, 9.2.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: Yeah, so

Jamie: You know, I think that beers can have too much alcohol.

Garrick: Sure, sure.

Jamie: I’m going to go on record as saying that. The new, that Surly Six, too much alcohol.

Garrick: There are a lot of complaints. I haven’t had it, but I heard a lot of complaints about that beer.

Jamie: I had it where, I had a friend over, we were cooking, nice congenial evening, we only had some wine, we had some beer, then we opened up the Surly Six and the next thing you know, we are drunk. Like, like we went right from hey, nice barbecue in the backyard and hanging out and having fun, to like drunk, you know. Yeah, yeah, I blame the Six.

Garrick: I don’t even know how you can do an umlaut Y, in all honesty. What does it taste?

Jamie: Just press Y and hold down, yeah.

Garrick: ABV 15?

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: Dang.

Jamie: No, it’s ridiculous.

Garrick: Wow. Wow.

Jamie: That’s dangerous.

Garrick: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Jamie: So do you brew more, do you do more home brewing in the winter or summer?

Garrick: I like to do it in the spring and the fall.

Jamie: Perfect.

Garrick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Winter is hard because historically I’ve only done small, I mean, historically I’ve done it on the stovetop and so that just makes a big old mess in the kitchen with all the steam and everything in the winter. This year I might try brewing outside. If it’s mild like last year, I will totally brew outside.

Jamie: You got the turkey thing, right?

Garrick: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Jamie: You could do that in the winter, couldn’t you?

Garrick: You know what doesn’t work though, which is probably not surprising to anyone who took at least, you know, a freshman course in thermodynamics. Snow does not cool.

Jamie: Cool what?

Garrick: Cool boiling pots of liquid.

Jamie: No. No. No.

Garrick: What, just

Jamie: Not unless you put like shovelfuls of it in there.

Garrick: Yeah, you know, something that could put the snow in, which I didn’t want to do. I just wanted

Jamie: You know that they have snow melters, you know that? That’s what they have at the airport. That’s how they clear the snow at the airport. And I’ve been thinking about putting one in in my driveway, because they got no place to put the snow, so

Garrick: Right, right, right, right, right.

Jamie: I figure a metal trash can, a turkey propane thing and a hose and I’m good to go. Or just a flamethrower, and I’ll just flamethrower the thing instead of the shovel in it.

Garrick: Your driveway is small enough, I would think just a flamethrower.

Jamie: Yeah, it would work.

Garrick: Oh.

Jamie: Well, I’m enjoying this beer. I’m gonna have it too for sure.

Garrick: Is it still brewed in…

Jamie: You know, it is still brewed in Wisconsin, yeah. Stevens Point, Wisconsin. I would think you’d be kind of proud of that.

Garrick: I

Jamie: Sure.

Garrick: was super excited for that, if it weren’t for a couple of things. One of which is that, you know, Fulton has a brewery, not, you know, just miles from here. And the second of which is everything is different in Point.

Jamie: Everything.

Garrick: Is water different? Are they going to ship over a gazillion gallons of Minnesota water over to Stevens Point? No, that’s ridiculous. And so that’s my complaint, is that it’s

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: a different beer. I actually — have we talked about this? How many times I get asked about this?

Jamie: Yeah. You want to talk about some Kubb?

Garrick: Oh yes. I am over. I just added the link on the show notes for the Dallas Oktoberfest tournament.

Jamie: That was awesome.

Garrick: That was way more fun than I anticipated it being.

Jamie: You expected that it would be almost negative fun.

Garrick: Yeah, I did almost expect it to be.

Jamie: Because you thought, I’m going to stand here holding one baton, wait, I don’t know, several minutes, throw, wait several more minutes.

Garrick: You know what I think it is? I gave myself a job.

Jamie: What? Oh, team captain? So then you were occupied?

Garrick: I was occupied, and I was thinking, and I was, you know, trying to at least keep the roster moving. I remember playing a couple games early.

Jamie: You know, in terms of overall job performance as team captain,

Garrick: towards the end,

Jamie: I don’t know.

Garrick: Towards the end, I think the majority of my team captaining was saying, Jake,

Jamie: Jake, throw, it’s your turn. So the Kubbchucks — we played under the Kubbchucks banner. You and I were the only official Kubbchucks. Cooper, I think, is an inherited Kubbchuck, and Jake is an adopted Kubbchuck. So Dallas was the very first Kubb tournament in the United States that required six players, which is why you were a little concerned about it. Because you didn’t

Garrick: That’s a lot of people. And I don’t know if there was a team that didn’t struggle.

Jamie: I think everything’s certain. I mean, interesting enough, right, when you look at the stats, nobody, there was a five-round round robin. Nobody left the round robin 5-0.

Garrick: Nope.

Jamie: Not a single team. There were five teams that left the round robin 4-1, Kubbchucks being one of them. Nobody 5-0.

Garrick: Like nationals, we played

Jamie: Played a long time.

Garrick: a long time, and I want to say that, like, our games are war of attrition, we don’t want to lose the game, so we just keep playing.

Jamie: Yeah. Which I think means we just, like, yeah, we just claw into the dirt with our big front teeth. Let’s go through the rounds. So, yeah.

Garrick: Walking into this, or imagining this, I just imagined it to be tedious and annoying, and just a lot of people, and

Jamie: Like a day at work.

Garrick: Yes.

Jamie: We need a meeting.

Garrick: What it quickly evolved into towards the end — what I saw it quickly evolve into — was the chance for some of the most elite play in the Midwest. I don’t know. This wasn’t like the Loppet, where you’re just trying to figure it out, or even Nationals, right? If you’re going to go to Dallas in 30 degree weather to play Kubb outside all day. Yeah. You’re gonna

Jamie: Well, and there was one local team, the hometown Cougars, and it was their first tournament. They never played in a tournament. But everybody else were all people that we’ve seen at other tournaments. They were all, you know, some of them I would say almost super teams, you know, comprised of the best of the best. I mean, the team that won it, right, Six Pack. You know those guys are, you know, heavy hitters. Everybody on that team was a heavy hitter. Sweden’s Amateur Ringers — I mean, there’s no novices in that group. Fox Valley Kubb with the Big Red Machine. I mean, there’s some serious horsepower there. So yeah, it was not there. There was nobody there’s no easy prey, right? I mean, it wasn’t like the round robin, you didn’t have just you know, lots and lots of, you know, teams that have never played in tournaments or just kind of were goofing around in the backyard. Everybody knew what they were doing and was ready to go. But still,

Garrick: But when the schedule came out and it said that we were going to play Steve Feathers in the first game, in the round robin, right away, I thought, okay.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: We’re going to start serious.

Jamie: And we’re going to start serious.

Garrick: And then we didn’t. Instead, we started with Big Red Machine. Yeah.

Jamie: I mean, yeah. But I do want to say that what I thought was interesting is that it was Grade A Kubb, but it was also fun. Everybody was really lighthearted. Actually less testy than at Nationals, right? I mean, at Nationals, I think there were some teams that were pretty testy. None of that. And I think in part because everybody that was playing was — I mean, most of the people that were playing had played in tournaments and kind of knew how the flow, and were kind of veterans of it. So you kind of, you know, wasn’t a need to get all kind of, you know, up in anybody’s face or kind of, you know, the pounding chest and anything like that.

Garrick: But it’s tough to get all feisty when there’s lefse just a couple steps away.

Jamie: Really good lefse, too. That’s the other thing great about that tournament, right? That it goes with their Oktoberfest. So you’ve got great beer, you’ve got lefse being made right there, you’ve got brats. I mean, those brats, dude, the

Garrick: Amazing.

Jamie: best brats I’ve had in as long as I can remember, and they were so delicious. And water ball, I mean, so

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: during lunch we walk over to get our brats and there’s a fire truck with two fire hoses coming out, one on either side of about a about a 50-foot kind of, I don’t know what you’d call, lane, and then they’ve got a ball in the middle and they’ve got fire hoses and they’re spraying the ball with fire hoses trying to get it through the other side. That’s what water ball is. Awesome. It was awesome.

Garrick: And there were spectators for water ball?

Jamie: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I think there were as many spectators for water ball as there were for the Kubb tournament. But, I mean, water ball, I got to say, probably a little bit more exciting than the Kubb tournament.

Garrick: Absolutely.

Jamie: I mean, next time we play Kubb, I’m bringing a fire hose. I bet I can knock some kubbs down with a fire hose.

Garrick: Right. That’s right.

Jamie: So yeah, so we played Big Red Machine in the first round. That round did not last long.

Garrick: Nope. It never does with the Chads or Bobzilla Kubb.

Jamie: Yeah. No, even if they only throw one baton each. You know what part of it is? Like, I totally — that’s the first time we played those guys since when we played them at the Loppet last year. And I was a little intimidated. I was. Yeah, when they — they both, I mean, they both got those beards, I

Garrick: Yes, yes.

Jamie: mean Yeah. And they all have the red. I mean, it’s just that red. You know, it’s kind of like that Minor Threat song. I’m seeing red.

Garrick: So good.

Jamie: That game lasted what, 20 minutes?

Garrick: Yeah, but it was, you know, as painful as that was to To lose right off the bat, I didn’t care.

Jamie: Yeah, it was fine.

Garrick: I was a blast by then. Yeah.

Jamie: It was actually tons of fun to play, though.

Garrick: Yes.

Jamie: And we did lose that one. That was our one loss. And we lost it, what, 0-2, right? I mean, we didn’t win a match. And it didn’t take all the time. So we had a little bit of a break. Then round two, we went into Who did we go on in round two? I just wrote this up. Wasn’t the hometown Cougars.

Garrick: And it wasn’t — was it Steve? Was it Des Moines?

Jamie: Round two we went to — no, Cynthia Plaster Casters.

Garrick: Was it?

Jamie: Yes, the fellow Minnesota team.

Garrick: Oh, that’s right. That’s right.

Jamie: Very well-dressed. Very well-dressed team.

Garrick: Well-dressed team.

Jamie: They struggled. I think they had some people on some cold streaks. Man, they put us on the ropes. I don’t remember how that one ended. Did that go three matches?

Garrick: I want to say it did.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: I want to say it did. I want to say that was the first time that after the second game where it was split, where Cooper says, why do we have to play them again?

Jamie: Yes, yes, it was. Yeah, so talk about Cooper. He was playing with us.

Garrick: He was playing with us. He was doing pretty well, pretty well at the beginning. I think towards the end he was annoyed with his team captain, but, you know, that’s fine, that’s fine. He got some, you know, everybody — he got some shots when nobody else got shots.

Jamie: Boy, it wasn’t — Yeah.

Garrick: He got some doubles when nobody else got anything, and that was nice.

Jamie: He had fun. Did he have fun?

Garrick: It was nice. It was nice to have a teammate on the team that would get the shots when nobody else would.

Jamie: Did he have fun? What did he say the next day?

Garrick: He had fun. Took him a half a day to get over it and then admit that he had fun. Yeah.

Jamie: How old is he?

Garrick: He’ll be seven next month.

Jamie: That’s impressive.

Garrick: Yeah, he held up pretty well. He held up pretty well. He did have a meltdown, you know, right when we got home, but you know,

Jamie: Oh.

Garrick: he held up pretty well all day, so.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: Nice.

Jamie: So we played Cynthia Plaster Casters A, and we won that one. I felt like that one we were good. We had good rounds. We had good batons, and we played on a good pitch. I liked that pitch all the way at the end. And then, actually, we played…

Garrick: We played most everything over there, like, every one we could.

Jamie: We played every other game on that pitch, didn’t we? Only round one we played on the different pitch. And then we played the Hometown Cougars, which was the local Dallas team. They were awesome.

Garrick: They were?

Jamie: They actually, it looked like they were having a ton of fun. And I talked to their captain a little bit before the game, and he was a super nice guy, and he was like, hey, it’s our first tournament, and if we’re doing anything, you know, wrong, let us know, et cetera. So of course I had to get in their head a little bit.

Garrick: Just enough.

Jamie: Yeah, just, you know, just a little line violation there, you gotta. And we won that. They came — did they beat us? They did, they beat us as well. They beat us in a round, they beat us in one game, because I remember that, you know, they took us down.

Garrick: And at that point we had given them their only win. I don’t know if they had additional wins throughout the day,

Jamie: Oh, we did, yeah.

Garrick: but their first win was against us.

Jamie: That we did, we did give them their only win, so. I mean, just because we’re nice guys, you know. I mean, there’s a lot of love, a lot of love here.

Garrick: There’s enough win for everyone.

Jamie: So then we had the break for lunch. Now we came back and played Steve Feathers and the Shufflers, which was awesome because I hadn’t played Steve Feathers before. And I love Steve. He’s awesome. He’s got those overalls with the extra pockets, and the shuffling thing was hilarious. Just a great guy. And, well —

Garrick: That was a long, hard slog.

Jamie: That was the one that nobody won. That was the one that we didn’t even finish a single game. 0-0, called after an hour and 15 minutes.

Garrick: It was. Yeah, right. We just played one game for an hour.

Jamie: We didn’t even play one — I mean, we didn’t finish it. We only got one game, 0-0, and we won because we had two baselines to their one. That was it.

Garrick: I am, you know, I am always, since nationals, any game, I am always counting base kubbs.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: Well, you gotta, you know.

Garrick: But that was, you know, I think that really says just how how good the players that came to this tournament are,

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: right? You play for an hour and it’s still a tie.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: There are only a handful of sports where, you know, soccer maybe, hockey maybe,

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: right, where that happens on a regular basis.

Jamie: So then after that, and I think that was their only technical loss. Steve Feathers, and then — yeah, because they beat — yeah, they beat Big Red Machine, and they also beat the other team. Anyways, then we played Team Kaboom, a

Garrick: Yes, also fun.

Jamie: couple kids on their team — talk about those kids. Oh my, wow.

Garrick: Great inkasters. Yes.

Jamie: Their driller is, what, eight?

Garrick: I would estimate, yeah, eight or nine, yeah.

Jamie: I mean, this guy’s — he was throwing groups that were crazy. I mean, spot on. And the little kid,

Garrick: For what it needs to be.

Jamie: what was he, like four? I mean, he was, he looked really little. But he was — yeah, and he was like going on 30.

Garrick: The kid that was assisting in Casters A? Yeah, it was —

Jamie: Like, I mean, the kid, he stood there. He didn’t even, like, you know, bounce around like kids do. I mean, he was like just totally like hands in his pocket, you know, watching. Yep. All right.

Garrick: Yeah, I’m guessing that’s what these kids do.

Jamie: Good. Play Kubb all day.

Garrick: Yep.

Jamie: They live on Championship Hill.

Garrick: You’ve got to, then.

Jamie: Two houses down from Eric Anderson.

Garrick: What are you going to do?

Jamie: I was glad that we played Team Kaboom though, because you know what, I had kind of in my head, I was like, okay, Team Kaboom, I was kind of worried about them, really worried about them, and I mean, not to say that there’s not reason to be worried about them, they’re good Kubb players, but I was kind of like, oh no, we’re walking into like the meat grinder here, this is just going to like saw us in half, but we totally saw them,

Garrick: We held them.

Jamie: yeah, but that game got called as well, remember?

Garrick: That’s right, it was — what, we won?

Jamie: It was 1-1.

Garrick: We won one, and then it got called on time.

Jamie: No, it was 1-1, and then the final one got called on time.

Garrick: Yep.

Jamie: It got called on time, if I remember right, we were behind on the baseline. Then we moved ahead on the baseline, then it got called on time.

Garrick: You know, there’s nothing more that inspires me to hit a couple of baselines than Eric Anderson saying, I have five minutes.

Jamie: Standing there looking at you. Arms crossed, no smile, just like —

Garrick: Damn straight, I’ll hit the baseline right now. It’s like, you guys are taking too long, I’m annoyed. Yeah.

Jamie: You’re getting your game called. But that’s something I think we gotta work on. That’s part of, I think, what the Kubbchucks — we gotta work on closing our matches.

Garrick: And the reason — that was what we came out of. Didn’t we come out of the Loppet? We came out of some tournament with that exact same thing, like, we gotta close this.

Jamie: No, that was nationals, but we closed. Yeah.

Garrick: That was nationals. We just got it. It just feels so long ago.

Jamie: That was, yeah. And then we go on — so then I gotta talk about it. So we come out of that, we go over, Eric is figuring out the rankings.

Garrick: Hold up, hold up, hold up. We have not, I think, sufficiently exclaimed how enjoyable our DMK interlopers were.

Jamie: Oh, yes. They were really cool.

Garrick: They were really cool and super fun and they were, I think, a perfect complement and a perfect rounding out of our team for this tournament.

Jamie: It was Heather, Mike, and… Who’s the other dude I love? Jeremy.

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: I loved — I wanted Jeremy to just be like — he was a great trash talker and had a great throw.

Garrick: It was a trash talker.

Jamie: Oh, was that okay?

Garrick: The guy who started drinking as soon as —

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: Yeah, that was my —

Jamie: We started drinking as soon as the tournament opened. He had this flask of whiskey. That was awesome.

Garrick: Yeah, they were super fun and it was great to have a cadre of competent players that mostly wanted to play, but

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: knew that they didn’t want to play all the time. Yeah.

Jamie: Yeah, it worked out perfect. So then after the five-round round robin, we come out 4-1.

Garrick: Blew my mind.

Jamie: And,

Garrick: But at that point, I was in seventh heaven. That’s more than I was expecting.

Jamie: Well, then we go over, and Eric is calculating things, and he had Steve Feathers and the Shufflers as the one seed out of our group, and then we come over 4-1, they’re 4-1, but we beat Steve Feathers and the Shufflers, so we go one seed. I tweeted, run around like, we got one seed, super stoked, and then we realized it was one of these weird triangle things. We were 4-1, Steve Feathers and the Shufflers were 4-1, and yeah.

Garrick: You know, I had to put this into terms that a six-year-old could understand. I told him it was just like Cars.

Jamie: And who else? Oh, Big Red Machine was 4-1.

Garrick: Yep.

Jamie: So, but this is where the fact that we didn’t close games down killed us.

Garrick: Yes.

Jamie: Because… We beat Steve Feathers, Steve Feathers beat Big Red Machine, and Big Red Machine beat us. So it was a three-way triangle, and

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: at that point it’s a complete even-steven tie. So then you count up the number of individual games won. We had only won five because our games went too long. Steve Feathers and the Shufflers won seven. Big Red Machine won nine. So Big Red Machine takes first seed, Steve Feathers second, and Kubbchucks comes in a distant third in games won.

Garrick: Yes.

Jamie: So then we go in to the quarterfinals and play Six Pack. And we got killed.

Garrick: And we got smoked, which was fine.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: I didn’t really want it to do.

Jamie: Chris Hodges? That guy can play some Kubb. Seriously. I don’t know. Where is he in the ladder in Des Moines? Because I’m thinking, I don’t know, if he’s not one, I don’t think he is. I think Davi is number one and Grant’s number two. That just shocks me because Hodges is good.

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: Really good. And they had a Minnesota guy too because they had one of the guys from — what’s his name? It wasn’t a John Cougar Mellencamp guy. It was one of the — why am I forgetting it? Totally forgetting it.

Garrick: I don’t recognize —

Jamie: It’s a Rosemount guy.

Garrick: Anyway.

Jamie: Yeah. Okay.

Garrick: Anyway, we deserve to. By that point, I think we were just done.

Jamie: Yeah. Well, and we lost.

Garrick: We did.

Jamie: So we were done and we decided to not score the matches and instead head home and see our families. And Jake Freiberg played with us, which was awesome.

Garrick: So much fun to play with Jake.

Jamie: Loved having Jake on the team.

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: Even though he throws that weird way.

Garrick: I like him because he throws that weird way. I think it’s a good… I think we keep ourselves just a little bit more humble.

Jamie: Yeah. Throw in the weird way.

Garrick: Yeah, because, you know, I’m sure he looks at us and says, why are they throwing that weird way?

Jamie: Hey, I’m going to get my beer.

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: Be right back. I’m back.

Garrick: Nice.

Jamie: So we’re definitely going back to Dallas next year.

Garrick: Oh yeah. Yeah. And I hope it’s not because

Jamie: 30 degrees, snowing and windy.

Garrick: That’s a fantastic Oktoberfest and I felt bad for all the vendors, and I just know that if it was just a little bit better weather, that place would have been hopping.

Jamie: Oh yeah. Yeah, I think next year I want to bring the family. And they…

Garrick: Want to stop by and talk to the Amish guys and maybe buy some honey from them.

Jamie: Two bottles, because we forgot to this year. Or we ran out of time.

Garrick: And they were packing up before we were. I feel so bad for the horses.

Jamie: So on the way back, so we’re driving back, right, I sure wish that more Kubb teams had websites. And then I say, you know, I think Planet Kubb should make it so that more teams can have websites. You should be able to host a team website on Planet Kubb.

Garrick: You should be able to do that. It should be a one click. You should just be able to do that.

Jamie: And that was just such a good idea that it had to happen, and now it’s happening.

Garrick: I love how in our, in some change drive, we completely re-architected, theoretically re-architected Planet Kubb.

Jamie: Yeah. So this is really exciting and we haven’t announced this yet on Planet Kubb, but it will be announced in the next couple of days. And I’ve given kind of an early peek to a few people over email. But Planet Kubb, we’ve redesigned, redone Planet Kubb a little bit. So now when you go to Planet Kubb, you’re not immediately just thrown into the river of news that we poll and post. That’s still available, it’s on world.planetkubb.com. Planet Kubb now does show that, but it also highlights the recent stuff from Ask Planet Kubb and also the recent things from Pitch, and the recent stuff from the Planet Kubb Wiki. But it now also hosts team websites or a club website. So if you’re a Kubb team and you want to have a website, contact us, and this is the part that I’m still figuring out, but contact us and we’ll set you up with a website. The Kubbchucks were the first website to use it, of course, since we run both of those and

Garrick: This is our backyard. This is what we do. Yeah.

Jamie: this is what we do. So we moved Kubbchucks from kubbchucks.com to now kubbchucks.planetkubb.com and I just am totally excited about this. I think we need to get more Kubb — so this is interesting to me on a bunch of different levels. First of all, this concept of Kubb teams. And we’ve really discussed the challenges with how ephemeral Kubb teams are, that they might exist for a single tournament and never exist again. I mean in Dallas we just mentioned, you know, Cynthia Plaster Caster. Or the, what, the Who Shot — who

Garrick: Who’s that? Kubb Shot J.R.

Jamie: shot J.R. Yeah, those are teams that I’ve never seen before. The people who are in them are in other teams. But we really think that as Kubb develops that we need to, or that it would be beneficial to Kubb to have long-standing teams that are just known. When you say team Knockerheads, people know who that is. You say the Ringers, people know who that is. Say the Kubbsicles. People know who that is.

Garrick: When you say Manchester United, you know who that is.

Jamie: Yeah. Or the Steelers.

Garrick: Yes.

Jamie: Just saying.

Garrick: Or Soul Asylum.

Jamie: Yes. So

Garrick: So just a quick detour. There was an article in the Strib. I’m reading the Star Tribune off the Kindle Fire these days.

Jamie: Yeah?

Garrick: It’s quite enjoyable. I’m sorry, yeah, I’m using an app for that, yeah.

Jamie: Does that use an app for that? Does that use an app? It’s called your web browser?

Garrick: There’s some article about how — here’s how poor I am remembering and doing my research for these things — either the bassist or the drummer for Soul Asylum just left.

Jamie: Okay.

Garrick: But hey, but that little story had us singing Runaway Train in the kitchen to the kids over breakfast who were like, stop, please God, stop. Worth any subscription price to the daily paper.

Jamie: So I think having a web presence for a team is one step towards getting a team that’s just kind of more consistent and you know who they are and they have a — you know, they have a way to publish information about themselves, their roster, write blog posts about going to tournaments, share videos, what have you. So

Garrick: Yeah, having a place to smack talk between tournaments.

Jamie: Exactly.

Garrick: Eat that.

Jamie: And I mean, a lot of this happens on Facebook. But the way it happens on Facebook is very short snippets. You know, there’s no long form anything. It can’t easily be syndicated outside of Facebook. So, you know, none of that stuff appears on the Planet Kubb feeds. All of the Planet Kubb team sites, of course, will be syndicated on Planet Kubb. So you instantly get distribution. And anyways, I’m just ridiculously excited about this. I think it’s the most exciting thing that we’ve done with Planet Kubb to date. And I’m really hoping that a lot of teams adopt it and use it, and it will just make the kubb ecosystem on the web better.

Garrick: Oh, I think definitely more concentrated, and it could for sure use that.

Jamie: Right. So —

Garrick: No, I’ve switched beers.

Jamie: What?

Garrick: I’ve switched beers.

Jamie: Oh, what are you drinking now?

Garrick: Now drinking the Lakefront Brewery Wisconsinite Summer Weiss beer.

Jamie: Summer of Vice?

Garrick: Summer Weiss. It is a 100% Wisconsin beer.

Jamie: Well, you better drink.

Garrick: It says right on the label, if it’s not from Wisconsin, it’s not in this beer.

Jamie: Wow, even the hops?

Garrick: Even the hops, the malt, even the yeast. Captured wild yeast from Milwaukee.

Jamie: That’s brilliant.

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: Is it good?

Garrick: Nah, it’s alright. It’s a light Weiss. I like the Hefeweizen myself, but, you know. Did I lose you?

Jamie: No.

Garrick: Oh,

Jamie: I was just shocked. So we’re going to announce the Planet Kubb Sites probably this weekend.

Garrick: I think that’s good.

Jamie: I got a couple —

Garrick: I think there’s a little bit of housekeeping to be done. And then there’s sort of a phase two effort. I’m fine with announcing before that phase two effort.

Jamie: Yeah. And we already got a couple of teams starting up, you know, so there’s something there when we do announce it. But yeah, I think it’s going to be really good. Wolfpack. That was the name of the team. That’s the guy that was on six pack was from Wolfpack.

Garrick: We played those guys.

Jamie: We didn’t play Wolfpack.

Garrick: We didn’t play Wolfpack in nationals.

Jamie: No, no, no, no. We watched them. They were in the quarter. Yeah,

Garrick: The quarter, yeah.

Jamie: they made it to the quarterfinals. I think Kubbsicles took them out.

Garrick: Yes.

Jamie: Pretty sure Kubbsicles.

Garrick: I believe that there is a game in the Planet Kubb wiki that declares that.

Jamie: Yeah. So, Planet Kubb Sites.

Garrick: We have two, just roll back half a step. The Kubbchucks have two goals for next year’s tournament season.

Jamie: Oh, what are they?

Garrick: Close games. Make it past the first,

Jamie: Quarterfinals?

Garrick: yeah, the quarterfinal, whatever that first championship bracket is. Because whatever that is, whether it’s quarterfinals or not, that’s where we fall down.

Jamie: No, no, no, that’s right. That’s a better way to put it. Make it in, make it past, because we’ve actually never made it past the first round of the championship bracket, have we?

Garrick: Oh, never. We get there, and then we fall apart.

Jamie: I mean, we did make it into the bracket at the Loppet, but we were in the consolation bracket. So every time we’ve entered the championship bracket, we’ve lost in the first round. I think that’s absolutely the right objective.

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: One more round.

Garrick: Round. That’s a nice chant. One more round.

Jamie: Let’s go, Kubbchucks!

Garrick: And then goal number three, bring the flag.

Jamie: It’s on my list now. I have. You know, people out in this podcast probably don’t know, but I mean, I’m not a GTD nutbag, you know. I mean, I’m not like crazy guy over here, but I got OmniFocus, and I decided actually recently I created this folder, and the folder is on the very bottom, it’s called Templates, and the Templates folder has projects in it that are — they’re paused, and those projects then are are template projects. So like one of them is pack for a trip, and it’s got the stuff that I tend to forget to bring on a trip. But I added one for pack for a kubb tournament, so I can remember to bring the table that I never remember to bring.

Garrick: Oh, right, right.

Jamie: and remember to get the flag. Jake’s got the flag, so.

Garrick: I actually think that’s a way to guarantee that he’s on the team.

Jamie: He’s got the flag. That’s what he’s doing, he’s holding the flag hostage.

Garrick: So you’re taking the flag and

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: invite me to play.

Jamie: He had a good tournament.

Garrick: No, I mean, if — obviously, if the calendar fell differently, Jake would have joined us for sure. I think he would have had a fantastic time.

Jamie: Next year he’ll be on there.

Garrick: Sure.

Jamie: So, is there anything else with Planet Kubb? We got the Planet Kubb Sites, Ask Planet Kubb has recently gotten a redesign, but that’s nothing all that exciting. And I mean the wiki, I really, I’m going to tee up a bunch of stuff. You know, if you go to the Planet Kubb wiki right now and you look at the Stapp King entry, I’m really proud of that. There’s not a ton of content there, there could be more, but it’s really good. It’s got images, it’s got all the right stuff. And over the winter, when there’s no tournaments going on for a while, I really want to get folks in the kubb community to work together to try to — like, I want to do a project around the glossary on Planet Kubb wiki, and really just kind of get the content richer and deeper.

Garrick: That’s bolder, because coming into next year’s 2013 tournament season, having Planet Kubb and the wiki as a resource is going to be hugely helpful. Do, and I know both of us vented about Madwood on Ask Planet Kubb.

Jamie: Well, I don’t know if vented is the right word, but you know, we commented.

Garrick: Commented. A constructive —

Jamie: Yeah, so

Garrick: constructive feedback.

Jamie: So Dallas — every kubb tournament uses the Old Time Games set. And Dallas was the very first tournament, not only was it the first six-person tournament, but Eric Goplin also used it as the very first time to try a non-Old Time Games competition set. So we played with the Madwood kubb sets.

Garrick: You may have been able to find it at Menards earlier this summer.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: But they weren’t stock Madwood. Eric painted them.

Jamie: The paint I loved.

Garrick: Yes.

Jamie: I really, the kubbs particularly, being blue and white, was awesome.

Garrick: And it totally confirmed a hypothesis I have that there’s something that has said, no, all the pieces need to be the same. No. No, the pieces don’t need to be the same, and there are things you can do to the kubbs themselves that make the play better, and one of them is painting them two different colors.

Jamie: Yeah. I’m going to do this with the wood burning. I’m going to — and I’m not going to plan it, but I’m going to take one of my sets.

Garrick: Wood burning is too hard. It’s — no.

Jamie: No,

Garrick: just paint them, just paint them.

Jamie: no, no. You listen, what I’m going to do. I’m going to take the 10 kubbs, I’m going to number them. I’m going to put the

Garrick: Oh, you’re talking about Mölkky.

Jamie: What?

Garrick: That game, the Mölkky game.

Jamie: Oh yeah, that’s great, but it’s not — it’s not Mölkky. What is it? It’s Mölkky or, I don’t know. Davi did that write-up on it, I don’t know, it was weird. I’m going to number them, and I’m going to put A’s and B’s, so then when you’re looking at it you can say like, yeah, three should go up on B, two should go up on A, because

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: that’s where the colors are really helpful.

Garrick: Did you resign? A and B and 3 and C, and yeah.

Jamie: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.

Garrick: Paint —

Jamie: The paint wears off. I don’t know.

Garrick: Yeah, I think that’s a good thing. Anyway, anyway, it got me right excited.

Jamie: But your point is that it’s clear to me, and I agree, that a tournament kubb set would benefit from standardized markings on the kubbs that assist in both calling kubbs in and out as well as in raising the kubbs after the throw. That having markings, because we constantly are saying that one goes on white, that one goes on blue, indicating which side it would tip. And I think that the only thing missing from that was some way to verbally identify which kubb you were talking about. If you say three goes on white, four goes on blue, you know exactly what you’re talking about. And then, I mean, they didn’t have a center line, but you know, you did that with a dot, right?

Garrick: Yep, I have that. I’m playing with that right now, and it doesn’t come in, at least in backyard casual play it doesn’t come in, it’s not needed as much, but it came up enough times at Dallas for me to say, yeah, there’s something here.

Jamie: See, I think the kubbs should have a line that bisects them on all planes. So…

Garrick: And eventually that just turns into a painted color, is my concern. Actually, that’s the thing that I struggle with. Like, if I can just solve this problem with a small dot in the middle of the short plane of the kubb,

Jamie: Right.

Garrick: I don’t need to have a line that goes potentially at every angle.

Jamie: Yeah, no, you’re right. Because then if that dot’s over the line, it’s an in, right?

Garrick: Exactly.

Jamie: Is it, would there ever be, get out your geometry books here, is there ever a time when that dot could be out but the kubb’s in? There isn’t, because

Garrick: No. If it’s in,

Jamie: it’s the very center of it, it has to be.

Garrick: If it’s in the middle of the kubb, then it is more than 50% in.

Jamie: Regardless.

Garrick: I mean, then it is at least 50% in, yes, regardless.

Jamie: And they look great. The pictures look great

Garrick: They do.

Jamie: with the kubbs painted. They really made, you know, it made me think that one of the things that I know in kind of the marketing side, we want to make ways for like more news agencies to write articles about kubb. Painting the sets makes

Garrick: Yes.

Jamie: it photographically more interesting, and which, you know, it’s better for getting some newspaper article or what have you.

Garrick: Absolutely.

Jamie: So the Madwood set, they were painted, but that was Eric.

Garrick: That was Eric.

Jamie: So, I mean, I had no issue with the Madwood sets aside from the batons, which is a pretty big issue. But I found the batons were not for me.

Garrick: They were not up to the same level as the play was.

Jamie: Yeah, they just didn’t have any fit and finish. They had the rough corners on them. Some of them were warped. The weight variance was just far, far too high.

Garrick: It was more than the OTGs?

Jamie: The variance was definitely more than the

Garrick: Yeah?

Jamie: OTGs. I mean, in general they were all heavier, but as a result the variance was higher too, because I think they were all three times heavier, but the variance was probably the same, but it was amplified by three. So, you know, like there were a couple batons that you’d pick up and I just thought they’d been soaking in water. I mean, they’re just so heavy, which is weird, because I honestly would have thought that I would like to throw a heavy baton, but I don’t. My throwing said I hate it. I want to throw a light baton.

Garrick: Okay.

Jamie: I don’t know, you know, so.

Garrick: What threw me away and what disappointed me the most is to me, the baton should be thrown 180 degrees and it should impact or slide in impact.

Jamie: And I thought your…

Garrick: That to me is a good throw.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: It was so difficult to get that kind of throw with these batons. Maybe it was because of the lack of routing on the edges. Maybe it was because it was a crap pitch, a combination of the two, the heaviness. Maybe it was just everything, but it was so hard to get the kinds of throws that even a day before I was happy with.

Jamie: You know what? I think you actually had a great idea on this afterwards, and maybe it’s only relevant for tournaments, but I honestly think that it should be for all kubb sets, is that there should be, you know, right now a kubb set is defined by dimensions, and I would suggest that I think what you said was like, hey, it shouldn’t just be that they’re this by this by this. It should be that they are, you know, here’s the range of acceptable tolerances, including

Garrick: Right.

Jamie: things like weight.

Garrick: Absolutely.

Jamie: I mean, a baton, we’re not going to say all batons have to be the same weight, that’d be ridiculous. But you could certainly say that for a tournament, a baton cannot be lighter than this and cannot be heavier than this. And then you simply weigh them. If you get batons that are too heavy, you know, for whatever reasons that section of wood was too heavy, it’s not a tournament baton. You just don’t use that one. And then…

Garrick: And I think they were fortunate in Dallas in that there were enough pitches set up and enough games, especially later in the tournament, that if you didn’t, if you had a baton you weren’t happy with, just, hey, there’s

Jamie: Right, so it’s on… Swap it, yeah.

Garrick: three dozen others lying on the ground, pick one. Yeah.

Jamie: But I really did think that those batons, I mean, I think that’s my number one feedback for Madwood, is I think that the batons just didn’t get any attention. It just struck me that somebody bought a long length of wood at a certain diameter and just sliced it into pieces and that was it. And honestly, of all the pieces that you’re going to give attention to, I think the batons deserve the most attention.

Garrick: Yeah, the one that we’re touching constantly.

Jamie: Right. I mean, kings get all this attention, but it’s ornamental and that’s all fine, but I mean, it’s not going to change gameplay. I mean, I’m going to hit the king whether he’s got a crown on him or not.

Garrick: And I think on the kubb side, inkasting is the only time I really touch the kubbs. And you can adjust quickly enough to changes in anything on the kubb side.

Jamie: And those you thought were fine. Those were great.

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: Yeah, those were great, right? So, I mean, it was cool, though, to get another set. And I think

Garrick: Well,

Jamie: that, you know, hopefully there’s a feedback loop and Madwood can make, maybe they can make a tournament set, a great set.

Garrick: the downside, the only downside I see is that it would have been good if we know that moving forward, some tournaments are going to have Madwood sets, we got to be able to get Madwood sets.

Jamie: Practice with them. You know, Tony said that in Des Moines. He put that on Ask. He was going to get a Madwood set because he wanted to practice on it. And I was, I don’t know, I was like, I mean, I

Garrick: I guess, don’t you want to be all like

Jamie: if everybody’s using it.

Garrick: that we got to get OTG sets, not those silly Bex sets, if we’re going to play tournaments.

Jamie: Hey, we know we’re not throwing Bex. Okay? All right? Okay. I mean, come on.

Garrick: Hey, so I’m watching the Olympics.

Jamie: Yeah, I know the Germans use Bex. I swear.

Garrick: They tell you this?

Jamie: I think the Europeans use Bex all over the place.

Garrick: Oh, man.

Jamie: You look at those tournaments, and the king always has that red cross, red crown, which to me is just signature Bex. I don’t know.

Garrick: And it’s

Jamie: Because I don’t like, I mean, I don’t like those.

Garrick: I was watching this this Berlin tournament. These were the ones with the kubblings. I loved watching the kubblings.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: Tiny, tiny little kubbs.

Jamie: Yeah. I don’t know.

Garrick: I don’t know.

Jamie: They do everything, it’s metric.

Garrick: That must be the difference.

Jamie: All right.

Garrick: So much fun, so much fun in Dallas. Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Dallas.

Jamie: Oh, yeah. Eric, I think he felt that he was trying to do too much playing and stuff. I think he did a great job.

Garrick: He did a great job, but I would agree that I think you can either run a tournament or you can play in it.

Jamie: Yeah. Well, we know you can’t play a game and score a game.

Garrick: It’s the same thing, it’s the same thing.

Jamie: Only to one.

Garrick: You could probably run a tournament and score a game.

Jamie: That, you well, you know, you probably couldn’t even do that. Somebody’d ask you a question and

Garrick: Yep.

Jamie: you’d miss a play.

Garrick: See, that’s the thing. That’s the thing, is I have run enough events to know that I can either participate in the event or I can run it.

Jamie: Yeah.

Garrick: But anyway, he did a bang-up job, as

Jamie: always.

Garrick: always. You were at Iceland. So, okay.

Jamie: I said I was going to talk about the kubb thing in Iceland.

Garrick: Yes, you should.

Jamie: So, I was curious, so, because, you know, Iceland is a Nordic country, had no idea that it was actually the domain of Norway for a long time. Anyway, so when we were in Iceland, we stopped in… I forget, you know, I’m not going to remember the name of the city, but we stopped in the city. We stayed there actually one night. And we went to the Viking Museum. They had a full Viking ship, you know, put back together. It was pretty cool looking. And then the guy there was talking to me. He was pretty helpful. He was telling me all sorts of stuff going on in the town. Anyways, then I asked him, I said, you know, You guys ever play kubb? And he said, yeah, at first he’s like, kubb, I don’t know. And then he’s like, wait a second, the thing with the blocks and those sticks? And I’m like, yeah, kubb. And he’s like, oh, right, right, right. Yeah, he’s like, we play that on our, you know, we have a tournament when we have our Viking Fest. They have a kubb tournament there in front of the Viking Museum. And then he said that in Iceland, most of the gas stations sell kubb sets, probably Beck’s. And so, you know, I didn’t see any kubb in Iceland, but you know, at least from this one guy, it sounds like there’s definitely kubb going on in Iceland. Maybe we could get a kubb team from Iceland with a Planet Kubb site. And I had a great time in Iceland and there’s

Garrick: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you got some good photos out of it.

Jamie: a photography tons of great photos. I still probably have another half to put on my website if you want to go there. It’s photog.thingelstad.com, and that’s just my photography. And you know, Garrick, I actually felt like I leveled up in photography. Like, I feel like it was a concentrated effort to do better photography than I’ve ever done before, with guys that knew what they were doing. We were focused, and I think that I leveled up and I am a better photographer now than before I went on that trip. So it’s great. I loved it. I want to go back. I still, this is honestly, honest truth. Every day since I’ve been back, I’ve thought of Iceland. Is that weird?

Garrick: Not weird. Did you ever travel outside of the States when you were younger?

Jamie: You know, not when I was younger, but I did when I was older, but not when I was younger,

Garrick: Yeah,

Jamie: no.

Garrick: yeah, yeah, no, no. When I was younger and I traveled outside, it would stick with me for a while.

Jamie: I seriously just, like, I’ve thought of Iceland nearly every day, and I keep listening to Sigur Rós, you know, maybe that’s why I keep thinking of it. I gotta stop, listen to something else.

Garrick: You know, some, I forget that crazy chick. Just listen to some of her and it’ll go right away, it’ll just evaporate.

Jamie: But I’m going back, Jamie. Who are you talking about, Björk?

Garrick: Yeah.

Jamie: Yeah. You know what, Iceland has passed Björk. In Iceland there’s no Björk, it’s all Sigur Rós.

Garrick: I remember last time we connected you were talking about going down to Minnehaha Creek.

Jamie: I did.

Garrick: Great shot. Great shot.

Jamie: Oh, you saw it, yeah.

Garrick: I’m looking at it right now.

Jamie: Yeah, the creek is dry, and it was actually, yeah, it was when we were going to the kubb tournament. I said that, you know, as far as I know it might be another 20 years before the creek is dry, I gotta take a picture of this. And you know, it was hard, I went over there right at dawn, it was you know, it’s getting to be dawn later, so it’s about seven o’clock, I got up about six and walked over there, and I actually think I wanted more like nine, like that was the light that I was really shooting for, but it was nice soft light, and got some, I think I got a few nice shots with it. You know, here’s part of what I’m trying to do, and I think this is something that I’m trying to be, a really good editor. And see, you know, I took 30 shots or whatever that morning and I could have put five, I mean five of them were good,

Garrick: Sure.

Jamie: but I’m really trying to just say like, no, what’s the one, what’s the one shot? You know, I think that’s something that, you know, particularly, you know, everybody posts, you know, thousands of pictures from their vacations and then you end up looking at each photo for like a second, right? Like, I mean, like you don’t even see it. And so I’d rather just say like, here’s the one picture. Yeah, take the 14 seconds you would have spent looking at 14 pictures to look at this one picture and you will appreciate it more.

Garrick: Yes.

Jamie: You’ll see things that you wouldn’t otherwise see. So you’ve got to get you doing some more photography, or some photography, period.

Garrick: We are planning this long wandering trip up to the North Shore of Lake Superior in a month or two. I have these romantic ideas of a long wandering trip through Scandinavia with

Jamie: a kubb tournament in the middle

Garrick: And then maybe work your way down on the south side of the North Sea on the way back, but whatever, just make it about Scandinavia. Fantastic. I think this is good.