Sunday I was invited to a picnic by Carol (one of the women on the team I sub on with Kent) it was at a park right by my apt, pretty cool park, it had a softball field, tennis courts, bball hoop, and a SAND volleyball court -- now I just have find some folks to play. This was yet another event were I only knew 1 (or 2) of about 50+ folks, but the food was good, and I got a bit of vball in, and managed to shoot some baskets. Did make a new friend, Dylan -- a large golden/lab mixed -- the owner was kinda friendly too, she knew of my cousins in Oakland (I think her dad knows my uncle) but she wasn't very sports minded.
In the small world dept, it turned out that Carol's husband was from Hawaii, so while we were talking it turns out he went to McKinley High, and was next door neighbors to one of my old girlfriends in college (Lynn U) strange world.
Sat was a good day, while Angel tried to help her team to qualify for 3 different relays (she was scheduled to run 3, 400M legs, but only ran 2) I took a basically Seattle 4's team into a JACL reverse coed tourny. This was a social/recreational toury that ran pool play only -- with pool levels supposidly equivilent to the skill, naturally we played in the A pool.
Miki, was dominating (as always) and there was lots of "where did you find your women?" questions. Daryl was his normal, nail-passing, grass-eating, wild-man hammer, self, and was probably the only guy there hitting a leading set. (of course we were probably the only team setting leading sets ;). Candice (from SF) was a pleasent surprise, Daryl and I had only seen her playing back-row for a Men's BB team in Houston, but we knew she had skills & speed, she also was a very good hitter, moved the ball around real well, and made other teams pay for cheating off of her. Oh and did I mention she proabably put as many balls up as Daryl? This enabled us to run Miki on the right side and let her also block the strong side hitter, as well as the pipe male. For a team were I was the only person to actually have met everyone (and only played with 2 of the other 3) it was surprisingly easy to play with everyone, no pressure, everyone adjusted well, we didn't degenerate, and we ran an esoteric offense compared to the other teams. I'm pretty sure it was because we all came with skillsez (and yes, we were catching up on our vocabulary during the breaks) Needless to say we spanked quite a few teams, went undefeated, and won t-shirts. Now if we could only get everyone in the same place again for another tourny.
That evening Daryl, Miki, Jack, Ken, Angel and I went out to dinner to all catch up. Jack was still in an immobilizer from the ACL surgery but was in decent spirits, and they all got to finally meet Angel and talk about wedding stuff.
Sunday was spent watching Angel & her team (US West, the defending champions) compete at the Corporate Nationals in Los Gatos. There were a lot of very fast folks there, not the least of which was Angel, she ran 2, 400M relay legs, one with a pair of world class sprinters that took a gold medal, but missed the "world record" relay mark by 2 seconds. This was despite Angel's middle leg of 66 seconds (she normally was running 68-70) which helped increase the original lead. They may have the record after the time is adjusted to account for the track being yards instead of meters (i.e. they ran longer than the expected total distance). The amazing part was that the lead leg was run by Evonne, who (now in her late 30's) was one of the members of the record holding team when it was last set TEN years ago. Amazing, US West was in the lead for their division when we all left to take Ken and Angel to the airport.
It was a very fun weekend, but pretty tiring, at least it wasn't overly hot.
That evening it was back to the bowling ball kitty's pad to watch the fireworks, pizza & (root) beer all around as well as yummy (and very festive) cookies provided by Melissa. I also met Matt's cousin Angie who lives in Seattle, she appears to be very cool, I suspect that it must run in the family. Everyone was tired and crashed out early -- Daryl's snoring was the clue to go home.
