Go for the gold

If you saw it last night, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh officially announced to NBC that they were going to take some time off from competitive beach volleyball to finally begin families with their husbands now that they're two-time gold medalists.

Karch Kiraly, one of the commentators for television, mentioned that they had hinted at that fact in the few months preceding the Olympic Games.

However, I just wanted to put this out there: I called it first. (Check out the date at the top of that page, booyah!)

Oh yeah, I forgot this in today's other entry...

I'm starting to keep another blog now, mainly for my own reference, of allll the sports articles I've ever written/had published. It's going to obviously go from total garbage, to tolerable -- or decent, I don't know what people think of my writing. So bear with the first few articles I'm beginning to put up.

Here is the link:
http://misssportsscribe.blogspot.com/

I remember there's an entire website for freelance writers for when I come back from France. If I have no idea what to do financially upon my return, I can always go back there until I find something a bit more permanent.

And in other news, Ty Loomis added me on a social network. I guess the pro volleyball players do remember me/like me!

Define "writer"

While I usually write articles for the avp.com website -- WROTE, seeing as how today was our last tour stop!!! -- sometimes I was called upon to endorse the large sponsor checks out to the winners (see above photo from today's tournament).

Well, today after I signed the check and Matt Fuerbringer and Casey Jennings held it up over their heads, a fairly grizzled man looked over at me and laughed.

"That's the nicest handwriting I've ever seen. Seriously, you should consider going into caligraphy," he told me.

Now bear in mind, this is the same guy who apparently does absolutely nothing on site. He's always sitting in the media tent, checking emails and spouting off random obsenities over something. Then checks his "stocks and property values" and proceeds to make another obscenity-heavy phone call to someone important.

Or so he wants those of us listening to think.

Anyways, since I've established that he's fairly off kilter, WHO SAYS YOU SHOULD LOOK INTO CALIGRAPHY? It's not like we need scribes to write pretty ball invitations on scrolls anymore. But what do I know, because supposedly, according to him, there's good money in caligraphy.

Whatever.

Going back to today being my last day on tour, I'm not really sure how I feel yet. First, that means France is right around the corner, and I haven't even stopped to think about that, let alone what the heck I'm even going to pack for a year's worth of living.

But the AVP season has been a serious roller-coaster for me. At first I enjoyed it, then when I found out my boss and the other writer were quitting and I had to go to all 18 stops, I really wanted to shoot myself. And since I didn't know much about beach (or indoor for that matter) volleyball, I was almost convinced that I'd be fired for royally screwing up at some point in the season.

But I made it. And the second half has been much more pleasant. I don't know if I'd want to go back or not, partially because I think I enjoyed this half so much because I knew it was the tail end of the tour. And I didn't really get to say goodbye to all the people I wanted to properly -- people I've been busting my tail side-by-side with for six straight months. I don't think they really got to express any profound goodbyes either, running off to barely catch their flights back home.

With the internet being what it is, I'm fairly certain I'll still retain a good amount of contact with them. I'm just seriously enjoying the fact that I don't really have to do anything for a while now.

It's going to be great. And boring, which is perfect for now. I feel like I deserve a two-week break.

...13 jours!!!

Did I really fly hoem from Vegas drunk at 6 a.m.??

Here's my photo montage of what happened over the past five days. Since I'm apparently still hung over (I slept when I got home from the airport at 10 a.m. until 6 p.m., woke up made dinner, watched a movie and am now sufficiently ready to pass out again), I'll write more about these experiences later.

This is just to remind myself that I really did go to Las Vegas -- and I've lived to tell about it. Oh yeah, if it seems like I live/work like a groupie on the road, that's because I do. I'm not sure how to take that, but I guess it sort of goes with the territory.

My bathroom at Caesar's Palace - note the flatscreen t.v. That came in handy during showers and nightly prep before going out.

The view from my room! Definitely nothing to complain about.

Day one on site at Caesar's... do you blame the fans for not showing up at 8 a.m.? I almost didn't.

Jake "Spiker" Gibb. In hot pink Karch Kiraly cap.

This is the site at night! Selection ceremony for the men's final on Saturday.

Fountain entrance at Caesar's in the lobby.

Ah the famous Las Vegas pools. Caesar's (obviously) by night. I spent many hours there (see: lobster red skin)

The entrance to the designer shops at the Forum! So amazing.

And then after walking through the Forum, I sort of happened upon this fire spectacle. Apparently it was the taking of Atlantis. Whatever.

This might seem odd to those who don't know, but for some reason I always stumble across blinged-out bathrooms when I'm out with the AVP. The one pictured here is in Blush at the Wynn hotel and casino. I do think I have a penchant for silver bathrooms, so much so that I might bling my own toilet room out someday.

Ceiling at Blush. Pretty, no? This is about as far back as my memory goes that night...

Viva Las Vegas!

There are so many things I could write in this post, for never having been to Vegas before, that I don't even know where to start.

I guess I'll begin with the plane. Last month on my way to Chicago, I had a brief layover in Vegas and I could see all the hotels on the strip when we landed and took off. But until you actually set foot in the city, that all means nothing.

The grandeur and sheer size of everything is incredible. I felt like a little kid just taking in all the glittery sights and everything. Fuck Reno! I'm so glad my parents never took me here when I was younger, because that could have been very bad. It definitely is an adult's playground to say the least.

While trying to find the shuttle at baggage claim was a huge ordeal, I shouldn't have ever worried because I'm traveling with a group of 6+ foot tall people. They're so easy to spot from anywhere, that if I ever get lost I'll just walk towards the height. So when we located our driver, he took us to a fleet of shuttles and we all piled into the Caesar's Palace-bound shuttle. Appropriately it was the huge Celine Dion car. And then I joked to everyone within earshot (probably more times than was funny), "I feel like we're Celine Dion roadies right now." It must have looked funny to see a van of professional volleyball players and staff piling out of a Celine Dion van at the entrance to the hotel -- which by the way is RIDICULOUS! I have tons of pictures to share from that.

The best part? My room's view of the American version of Paris and the Eiffel Tower. It's a fitting transition for someone who plans on living in France in less than a month!

My night was crazy and fun all at the same time. I'll leave you with that and no further details about it :)

Supposedly Matt Fuerbringer's sponsor is going to be picking up the tab for happy hour FREE drinks at the circle bar on site after his last match tonight. That means free drinks from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. I'm so there. Only of course after the Intern Olympics, which should be both ridiculous and hysterical at the same time!

Pictures to come later, once I load them all on my computer...

Topsy-turvy

It seems everything has changed since I once began making initial life plans for myself!

And it all started with college [insert flashback noise and images here]...

Since visiting the campus my junior year of high school so many years ago, I've always known that I wanted to someday live in Los Angeles. Despite my extensive activities, honors, high gpa and test scores -- I was denied entry into that school.

At the time, I thought Santa Barbara was the shorter end of the deal and I was settling. Oh how wrong I was! The past four years have been incredible and I'm really glad I got to experience them. (Keep this theme in mind for the rest of this post).

Even though I have encountered some setbacks to my original life plan, I'm still moving along rather smoothly. While I again was denied my heart's desire for a job in major league baseball, I still was able to land a job in professional beach volleyball that I've grown to love as the months go on.

Even though I most likely will not be going on to France -- something was initially mixed up and confused about, but later grew to want that and only that -- I've been tentatively offered a chance to stay with my current company and perhaps land a full-time, salaried position!

Which means, I finally get to circle back to where I originally wanted to be, by moving to Los Angeles in the next month and a half (or so).

Life has a funny way of dropping you in places you want to be and it seems like it has a different agenda and schedule planned out for me than I had for myself. Oh yeah, and, Manhattan Beach, here I come for the final Southern California AVP Tour stop in 2007.

Thoughts in a timezone

Instead of blogging on here this weekend, I'm actually blogging at The AVP website.

Every weekend we run a blog on the site that tracks all 32 beach volleyball teams in hourly installments. It gets pretty intense, but it's fun and obviously extremely fast-paced.

This weekend's location?

Seaside Heights, New Jersey. It's... interesting. I guess being from California kind of spoils me. However, Seaside doesn't get the same fog as we do in California. I take that back, it doesn't get any fog at all. Instead we've had a few, albeit rather brief thunderstorms and showers roll through.

The site is great because we're actually on the beach this time, but the one drawback is HIV.

If that sounds dramatic -- because this is me we're talking about here -- it's not. One of the players on tour was mid-match when he landed after going up for a block, right on a used syringe. The doctors gave him a tetanus shot for precautionary measure, but who knows what was in that cartridge. Apparently this happened at the same site last year to another player. The doctors warned him to check for any unusual symptoms in the next few weeks while they test him for HIV and hepatitis A, B and C. And to think, I was walking around barefoot part of the time on Friday before it happened...

The girls who shoot photography for MLB.com (one of which is from here) joked that they don't call this "Sleaze-side" for nothing. I buy that. Then the jokes continued like, "Come on, this is where the Sopranos are from," et cetera, et cetera.

Which reminds me. My plane landed in New York's JFK airport around 10:00 Thursday night, so I had to meet up with a few other staff members and we hitched a ride to Seaside together. In typical East Coast summer fashion, of course it was one of the hardest-hitting rain storms of the year. Our driver "slowed down" to 63 mph to make the ride safe for us all, especially since it was pounding down so hard we couldn't see the windshield for any more than a split second after the windshield wipers cleared up visible patches.

Immediately before we crossed the border into Jersey (or maybe it was right after the Brooklyn Bridge, I don't really know geography, slash directions because I am a female, right?) a road sign notified drivers:

"You are now leaving (insert New York city name). Fuggadaboudit!"

Wow, really? I didn't think things like this actually existed in real life. And people wonder why we make so much fun of the Garden State in movies, radio, and pretty much every-day life.

My one final (also creepy) note about this state is also of the automotive variety. When the rain letdown to allow for a bit of visibility I noticed another sign, but hanging from an overpass. It was one of those black screen notification signs with orange lights to customize the traffic report of the day. Anyways, that night the sign warned: SLOW DOWN, YOUR FAMILY WILL WAIT FOR YOU (yes, all in caps). And no, it wasn't because of the rain, since we saw the signs again last night in dry weather.

That made my mind wander. How does whoever programed that sign know that every driver on the road has a family. And why are they assuming we're heading towards said family? Is it because the only reason one would sanely think about entering New Jersey would be to visit family we've since left? Enter my weird, twisted thoughts right after. What if the person driving lost all of their family in a freak accident of some sort? Would this sign, then, plummet that person into years and years of therapy?

Long story short, it was a weird sign. I don't like it. At least we're headed back to NYC for the next two days after tomorrow's finals matches.