Kickin' it with the Hoars

As I've mentioned in passing in some other posts, I play on a kickball team. It's more social than exercise, but that's why most of us are there. But then we have games like last night, when we only had one extra person (and only four women, which is the minimum, so we got to play in the field every inning), and there's so much more running around. And I got up to kick three times (and scored once, woohoo!).

Most of the exercise comes from foul balls. You kick the ball foul, but you still have to run, just in case it turns out to be fair. And when you're on base and the kicker kicks it foul (on the ground), you still have to run just in case it's fair. And then there are the superspeed intervals, when you're on base, the ball is popped up, but the fielders drop it and you have to streak to the next base before they get the force play on you.

The other part of the exercise is the fact that it's just so damn cold that you have to jump around to get warm (ok, so maybe I was the only one dancing around and doing jacks, but hell, it was damn chilly, even through a long sleeved shirt, fleece, and team shirt!).

Our game last night was really fun. It was the best kind of kickball - everyone is really good natured and having a great time (even the team that got crushed, which thankfully wasn't us this week). Because smiles burn more calories than frowns right? I'd rather lose a game and have fun than win a game and not have fun because everyone got so super-duper intense. Thankfully, we had fun AND won last night (17-2), which is just the best of both worlds.

Then at the bar afterwards there are the bicep curls in carrying beer pitchers and flip cup (if you do enough of them, maybe it's even a full set!).

So here's the exercise spin on kickball, but really we're all just there to have a good time. And we've got a great crew, do us Hoars (team name= Horatio Alger, aka the Hoars. This becomes interesting when you're eating dinner with the folks and just out of the blue, total non-sequitur say "I'm a Hoar." Everyone just freezes, forks halfway to mouths, thinking "WHAT did she just say?!" What can I say, I like shocking people on occasion ;)

"Drinking beer doesn't make you fat, it makes you lean"

I started drinking beer pretty late. I've heard all the old battle stories about beer and parties and tipping pools off stilts in college (true story, frat related, didn't actually witness it). If you've got any funny stories, please feel free to share!

People don't believe me when I tell them I didn't drink in college. Not because I had any moral issues with it, I just didn't like the taste of alcohol, and hadn't discovered alcohol that actually tasted good. Fast forward a couple years, my late 20s, and finally I discover mixed drinks and wine. I just started drinking beer this past fall, and all because of kickball.

I played three full seasons of kickball never drinking beer. Believe me, I tried. But I found I needed to wash the beer down with french fries, and our bar doesn't really have the healthiest fries... But then, I was missing out on the flip cup matches! And let me tell you, kickball is all about flip cup (we're more of a drinking league that happens to play kickball). I've played flip cup with water before (though my brilliant brain never considered that possibility until AFTER I'd already started drinking beer). I've seen people play flipcup with vodka drinks too (I don't know how they were still standing after the number of rounds we usually play...

Then all of a sudden, last fall, it's like a switch was flipped and I could drink beer. Not good beer. In fact, mostly just the light beer most people call water (Bud/Miller/Coors Light). Plus, I drink beer VERY slowly, so I end up drinking less, though it does go flat by the time I get to the bottom of the bottle (why is it that beer goes flat faster than soda?).

I tried a blueberry beer this weekend and it was pretty tasty. Blackberry wheat is also pretty good too. And I can pretend it's healthy for me. Or is it?

It turns out that there may, in fact, be some health benefits associated with beer. Who knew?! Just like wine, drinking beer (in moderation, dagnabit) has been shown to raise good cholesterol, raise folate levels (preventing cardiovascular disease), help prevent blood clots and prevent osteoporosis. That's the boring stuff. How about the fact that it promotes bonding ("I love you, man! You're my bestest friend in the whole big entire world!") and it's cheaper than mixed drinks (more beer's the better, right?). And apparently some researcher actually got funding to test whether beer after exercise is better than water. Apparently it is! Who knew?!

The negatives (there are negatives? Well, damnit!) - getting arrested after dancing topless on the bar. Getting the digits of some random guy/girl who looked really hot through beer goggles and turns out to be as attractive and charming as the road kill you saw last week. Having to pee every ten minutes, but the line to the bathroom is 8 minutes long, leaving you two minutes to talk to friends or chat up the hottie at the bar. (Oh, you were hoping for real negatives? Liver disease, weight gain, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome for pregnant women, among others)

Anytime you get a whole slew of people in one place with a bunch of alcohol, something interesting is bound to happen. I witnessed my first ever bar brawl at the last kickball party. Involving a beer bottle broken over the head of someone, the culprit sprinting through the crowd (picture not-so-slow-motion cups of beer flying in the air and cascading down dresses and hair and faces), and the dude hit by the beer bottle lying on the floor for a good deal of time.

Then there are the people who just go overboard.

Got any good beer stories?