Champs
Played our third tourney as team "balls of fury" today. This time, appropriately placed into the recreation division rather than intermediate.
Our first two tourneys we went in as intermediate assuming that recreation was the beginners bracket and that we had more finely honed skills than that. Apparently, we do not. We were little more than target practice for most teams on those two days. Today however, was a different story!
The day didn't start off like a finely tuned machine...in fact, quite the opposite. We almost missed our first game because the bus ran out of gas after picking up Travis on the way to urban beach. We knew this would happen eventually because our gauge doesn't read anything lower than 1/4 tank, making it a bit of a guessing game. When else would it happen...in the middle of three lanes of traffic and running late! Luckily, we travel with a jerry can of fuel for just such an instance. All hopped out of the bus, Jen flagged people around and Trav fashioned a funnel out of cardboard (to ensure I could pour at least the majority of the fuel into the tank) and we were on our way in under 10 minutes.
Why is this experience noteworthy? Well, its another first for us in the bus, and another reason to love the pacific northwest... we die in the middle of three lanes of traffic and spend 10 minutes filling our tank in the middle lane and we didn't get so much as a single honk or negative comment. not one.
The sun came out in full force for our day of volleyball, and apparently it helped our skills as well. We played great today. Ran through the morning rounds and defeated all teams except the one that was meant to be in (and got upgraded to) a higher bracket...and even that game was really tight. Our lunch break consisted of games of horseballs and knock-over-the-energy drink (red rain=sponsor) contests. Jen won a free bikini in that one and was stoked to sport it in the final rounds
In the afternoon we struggled a bit more as the competition increased, especially when going up against the young college team that had to combine for maybe half our age...but we mounted a strong comeback and won in the final seconds! Awesome.
That game sent us into the finals where we played a really fun team that we had met earlier in the day and actually pulled through to win the cup!! Okay, technically to hold the cup. Apparently they keep it and simply put our names on it... But, we did win a bottle of Appleton's Rum and Barefoot Bubbly (also sponsors of the event), and tshirts proclaiming our championship status.
Lesson learned...offer bubbly as a reward and superjen brings her A-game. No, seriously, we were all on fire...
We spent the afternoon enjoying our moments of glory and headed out to the farmers market (maybe jen's single favorite summer activity) for some produce to grill up a nice victory feast. It didn't exactly live up to the standards that Travis set for us at the post game BBQ in whistler, but fresh corn and turkey burgers combined with the pride of being the champs...was plenty enough for us.
