hey cow!

one of the highlights of my trip to the bay area (besides hanging out with my old teammates and playing ultimate in awesome weather and on grass!) was a game called "hey cow!" that was introduced to all of us by my friend meryl. meryl currently lives in minnesota, and this is one of the games that her and her friends do on road trips to entertain themselves. when they drive by a field with grazing cows, someone rolls down the window and yells "hey cow!" at the cows. The objective is to get the cows to look at them, which is apparently really hard to do because you're usually driving on an interstate with lots of cars zooming up and down.

there's a field with grazing cows near the highway that takes us to and from santa cruz that we (elvio the driver, meryl, doris, and i) had noticed on saturday morning. when we were driving back to yelena's house on saturday afternoon, i pulled out my camera to snap a picture of them (i haven't seen cows in a long time!), and the next thing i know, meryl rolls down the window and screams "hey cow!" in a really deep and really loud voice (like, the loudest that i have ever heard her yell). if you've ever met meryl, you'd know that she's a really really sweet girl, and i've never heard her really raises her voice or gets mad, and she definitely does not have a deep voice. the greatest part was that not only did 3 cows look up, they also started running away from the highway!!! (i was really kicking myself at this point for not recording a video of it, but i had missed the explanation of the game completely!)

happy cows come from california right?

so the next morning, we decide that we have to try this again, partly because cathy had missed out on it the day before (she rode back with yelena), but mostly for our entertainment. however, elvio had left on a bike ride, so this time meryl was driving, PLUS she'd have to yell across 4 additional lanes. doris tried first...

...and couldn't do it. so meryl turns to cathy (who is in the passenger seat) and says, "can you steer for me?" and then rolls down her window...(keep in mind, this is probably 3/4 of the volume that she got the day before)



sMITe, and sMITten (sMITe alums) are notoriously bad at thinking up of cheers. i think i've cheered "second half intensity" and "sMITe!" about 200 times throughout my college career because no one could think of anything clever. but thanks to meryl's brilliance, we now have a new cheer! :)



so the next time you are driving by a field of cows, you know what to do. :D