Dear Fort Lauderdale parking authority, vball recap, appraiser asshat

Friday afternoon I read the headline I didn’t want to see, “Alley could remain closed all weekend due to fire”  The closing of Alligator Alley meant I had to use route 41, the Tamiami Trail across the state.    Going this route would add over an hour to the close to two hour drive I normally endure.  I set the alarm for 4:15 am and was out the door by 5.  Hell who needs sleep anymore?

I stopped at McD’s and snagged a large coffee to help keep me awake on the long drive.  I listened to a combination of Warcraft podcasts and NFL draft talk on Sirius.  Luckily that early in the morning traffic was light.  I arrived at the beach about 8:15 or so.  When I pulled into the parking lot I was surprised to see there was no longer a guard shack where you paid your $8 to park (used to be $6) .  Nope you can just drive right in.  “Cool!” I thought to myself, they must have made it free parking!  My hopes were dashed when I saw the parking ticket machines where you have to feed it money to get a ticket to throw on your dash.  When I walked up to the machine to pay, my mild annoyance flamed up to all out anger when I saw they were charging $1.75 an hour!  Those mother f’rs….  I wound up spending $15 to park there for the day, what a total crock of shit.  Fort Lauderdale parking authority, you are a bunch of greedy assholes.  I mean wtf, they basically saved the cost of paying someone to work the guard booth AND doubled the rates at the same time.  What thievery…. I need to write them a letter.  I will start a Twitter uprising.

So anyway I parked.  Ironically Randall with his nice and tidy half hour trip arrived there a couple minutes after me, the guy that drove the PA equivalent of a trip to Rehoboth Beach.  It wasn’t all that surprising, it happens often.  This event was some sort of national tour sponsored by Corona.  On top of the outrageous, concert like parking fee we were just robbed for, the tourney fee was high as well, $35 a head.  That means between the two of us, Randall and I dropped $100 for the privilege of playing in lowly BB, that’s a bit nuts.

The registration process was a bit disorganized.  When Randall signed us in they said they he still owed them money.  He had paid online with a CC.  He was trying to find his email confirmation on his phone but was unable to do so.  Luckily he knew the woman that was running registration so she took his word for it.  We got our t-shirts and went back to take our stuff to the net.

The weather at the beach was not good.  To be specific, it was windy as hell.  Nothing ruins a game of volleyball for me faster than excessive wind.  For someone of my limited volleyball ability, trying to adjust to a ball being pushed randomly by gusty winds just has never worked out well.  Compound that with the inches of caked on, thick, rust on my game from not touching a ball in 7 months and you have a recipe for trouble.  The BB pool only had 5 teams on one net.  Unbeknownst to us, all divisions A and higher had a first place prize of a trip to California.  As a result more teams played A to have a shot at the golden ticket.  On top of that our net was in the absolute worst spot you could have on a windy day, at the far corner closest to the water with absolutely no structures in sight to block a portion of the wind.

As Randall and I warmed up it became obvious just how annoying the conditions were going to be.  The wind was blowing almost directly across the court sideways so if you were on one side the ball would get knocked right down by the wind and if you were facing the other way it would sail for miles.  We were “lucky” enough to be the first team to play so we could be the guinea pigs for playing in the gusty conditions.

Our first match was against  two taller guys.  They both had good skills.  The one guy evidently used to play at a pretty high level years ago but hadn’t played in a long time.  The wind sucked most of the skill out of the contest.  There were no nice passes followed by stellar sets finished with thunderous hits.  Instead it was just a mad scramble to pass serves that were dancing like mad and then try to not totally whiff on hit attempts.  It was more like picnic ball than tournament play. Both our team and our opponents struggled a lot with the conditions.  The game was back and forth the entire way but we wound up losing a close one at the finish.  Not a great way to start.

Our second game was against what is historically my least favorite team to play, even worse than a co-ed team playing in men’s, the dreaded “young phenom with sandbagging partner” team.  Over the years I have run into this combo a number of times.  It is never a good thing.

On one hand you don’t want to look like bullies by picking on the kid.  However if you exclusively go after the adult, skilled player who typically plays at a level much higher than you do, you can easily lose the game as all the youngster has to be able to do is bump up the sets for the skilled player to hit.  That equation can easily equal a loss. Over my 15 years of tournament volleyball I have been lucky enough to never have had an embarrassing loss to such a team.

This time the young phenom was only 12 years old, a lanky hispanic looking kid.  His partner, who was not his father was probably in his mid 30’s. You could tell he was a skilled all around player that played either high level A or AA ball regularly.  We had seen them play their first game and I could tell it was going to be annoying.  Not only was the 12 year old very good for his age, his partner/mentor was just a dickhead.  He liked to argue calls, question the score and most annoying of all, chastise his little 12 year old partner with harsh criticism anytime he made a mistake.

Our game with them was very close most of the way but this time we ran the last few points to win 21-17.  During the match I found myself disliking the adult on the team more and more. He argued a few of our points and had this annoying habit of raising his hand and calling “TIME!” right before we would serve.  I saw no reason for time to be called except he was just trying to f with me.  Like a batter stepping out of the batter box right before a pitcher throws.  Randall said he heard him griping about us trying to “quick serve” them before they were ready which is ludicrous.  Well anyway I was glad to keep my streak of beating young phenoms intact. It turned out we were the ONLY team to beat these two in pool play.  They were 3-1 on the net.

Our next match was against two college kids.  One of them was chubby, dumpy and already losing his hair.  The other was a tall, skinny, fair skinned, red headed kid with absolutely zero muscle tone.  He would be best described as “skinny fat”.  They both played indoor ball almost exclusively.  This was their first beach tournament.  To say they struggled would be an understatement.  They failed to reach double digits in points in any of their games. At one point I ran close to a dozen points in a row doing nothing but underhand serves.  Towards the end of pool play they were just trying to lose as quickly as possible to get the F out of there.

So Randall and I were now 2-1 with a game to go in pool play.  The team we were playing was also 2-1.  They had just lost to the young phenom team and had a bit of a chip on their shoulder.  Randall and I knew if we won it would better our position a bit but if we lost we were still in the playoffs.  I don’t think either of us looked at the game as crucial.  It showed up on the court as we basically sucked losing by an embarrassing score of 21-12.  The other team did a good job of hitting aggressive serves that we just didn’t pass well for the most part. 

So we trudged off the court after the game disappointed in our lackluster 2-2 record.  I just felt pretty negative about the entire day.  Driving for that long, paying that much money to play in a single net division with horrible wind conditions just sucked.  I thought it sucked so much that I did something I never have done before, drank alcohol before the playoffs.  I had pretty much written the day off.  In my mind the day was practically over.  I was sick of fighting the wind constantly.  I slammed the first Light Corona in a few minutes.  I got about 2/3 of the way through the second before I could no longer stand the disgusting taste.  I don’t know if it was because it was in a can but it tasted like shit.  It did the job though, slamming it fast helped take a bit of the edge off.

So we had reffed the first playoff game before playing ours.  Our game was against the phenom and sand bagger.  I was not very happy about it.  I knew we handled them once but knowing that they beat everyone else and my less than stellar attitude about the current situation I was afraid my undefeated youngster record could be in jeopardy.

Even though we were now into our 5th game of the day, the sandbagger and the youngster insisted on doing a ridiculously long warm up session.  Hitting, serving, hitting over and over.  More than once I asked if they were ready to get started.  Sandbagger would say yes but then they would just keep serving more.  Another annoying thing was Sandbagger’s insistence on using their ball.  For every other match that didn’t involve them the teams used my ball which was new and had just a little less air pressure in it to make the ball more controllable in the high winds.  Well Mr Asshole wanted to play with his ball that was so inflated it felt like you were playing with an indoor ball.  It also made the ball sail even worse in the conditions.  I told Randall I didn’t want to play with his f’in ball again.  I like having Randall be my attack dog on such subjects, he is good at it.  Unfortunately by the time our opponents got done warming up Randall forgot about my objection so we wound up playing with their shitty ball once again.

The game didn’t start out well.  Before long we were already down 5-2.  I sort of figured the end of my streak was coming.  My attitude was bad and like I said, I was just sick and tired of dealing with the wind. Then “it” happened.  On a play on their side of the net the kid hand set a ball.  He basically grabbed it, took it down to his chest and chucked it upward which is a carry.  I instantly said something and the ref instantly called it a carry as well.  Well Mr Sandbagger was not happy at all.  He started protesting “It was clean, it was clean!”  I said “he threw it…”    Things escalated quickly.

“It’s BB!!”  Sandbagger proclaimed, somehow insinuating that it is legal to carry a ball in BB.  He also was inferring that since his partner was 12, playing in a men’s division we should be more lenient, we should cut him a break, not take it so seriously.  I found it comedic that this was coming from the idiot that was arguing the score repeatedly, warming up like it was the Olympics and chastising his 12 year old partner in a manner that would make you think we were playing for big money. 

Well since I already had a strong dislike for this person and a bit of alcohol in my system I wasn’t going to have any of his shit.  “Carries aren’t legal in BB”  Again sandbagger reminded me of the skill level we were playing and again I told him it didn’t matter.  Each sentence back and forth between was getting increasingly louder and more angry sounding.   “Well let’s go ask the tournament directors if hands are less strict in BB!” sandbagger offered.  “Yea let’s go do that!” I returned.    AGAIN he reminds me of our skill level , “It’s BB!”  I bark back, “yea then what are you doing here?” referring to he fact that he was obviously a much higher skilled player.  Sandbagger points to the kid and says “that is why” “why are you here?” referring to the fact that I am 6’3″ and playing in a low skill level.  Of course I didn’t have the time or desire to tell him I am 41, on two bad knees and don’t play volleyball more than a handful of times a year.  Instead I simply said “I guess the same reason you are…”

After that sentence Randall stepped over to me sensing this was about to get way out of hand.  I was genuinely pissed and ready to keep escalating.  Instead the hands call was honored and both myself and sandbagger grumbled comments at each other the rest of the game under our breath. 

Well the argument was exactly what I needed to snap me out of my funk.  All of a sudden I found myself concentrating better because I really wanted to beat the idiot on the other side.  The idiot obviously wanted the same as he turned up the heat on his little protege, loudly and harshly criticizing the kid whenever a point didn’t go their way.  I tried to make an ass out of the guy by making sure to praise the kid as we crossed sides.  I would shake my head repeatedly as the jerk would continue to bark at the youngster.  After being down 5-2 at the start we came back strong after the argument.  We pulled away and won rather easily.  That was my championship match.  I wanted to shut that little f’r up.  You know you are at the end of your vball career when beating a team with a 12 year old can make you feel good. 

So now we were in the finals against the team that spanked us in pool play.  My adrenalin and focus was still good as a carryover from the first match.  I was hustling, passing and setting much better than at anytime during pool play.  For the first half of the finals the game was pretty close.  The last half however was plagued by a string of unforced errors that let them coast to a pretty easy victory.  Like I said though, I didn’t really care at that point.

For second place we scored a decent hooded sweatshirt.  First place got Oakleys which at first I was jealous of.  However when I saw the glasses they weren’t all that nice, probably the lowest cost glasses Oakley makes.  Of course none of the prizes accounted for the amount of money we had to spend to participate.

I felt much better about our efforts at the end of the day than at the halfway point.  We had to battle through some terrible wind conditions and although our play was anything crisp or pretty, it was gutsy and tenacious towards the end.  I thanked Randall for the fun and headed home.

Luckily I got a text from Ali saying that she read the alley was open from noon to 7pm, meaning I could go home the fast way.  I stopped at McD’s to grab a burger.  When I came out there was a guy that was sitting on a wall that came over to me.  At first I thought he was a bum but when I looked closer he was clean and relatively groomed.  He asked me about how far away Pompano Beach was.  I told him I was from the west coast and was not sure.  He said he was looking to catch a bus there.  He said how he moved to Florida from Jersey expecting to find work.  He said he hasn’t been able to find any.  Anyway he said he had no money for bus fare and asked if I could help him out.  I asked him how much it was.  He said it was $3.50.  Ok no problem, I dig in my wallet and pull out 6 bucks.  He asked if I had an extra dollar or two for him to grab a burger.  “Yea I already have some extra here”  He thanked me and disappeared into the McDonalds.  I have a history of people singling me out in these type of situations, either I must appear kind or a sucker.

Getting to use the alley on the trip back saved me a ton of time.  I pulled into home around 7:15 or so.  I recanted the trials and tribulations of the day to Ali before retiring to bed early. Our Sunday was very relaxed.  I didn’t have a ton to do because Ali was nice enough to knock out most chores on Saturday which I was very thankful for. Physically I was a bit sore in both knees but nothing major at all.  My shoulder which has been very troublesome as well in recent years after tournaments was fine as well.  I didn’t swing hard at a ball all day long because of the wind. 

The next 3 days I am at home taking remote classroom training.  It’s pretty cool.

Oh yea, the appraiser sent back a long bullshit email defending his appraisal and saying he is standing by it.  I sent him back this short reply.

Needless to say I don’t agree that using a short sale or foreclosed home on a bare, unimproved lot as a comp is fair or accurate.

I noticed our appraisal listed our property as wooded. It is not, in fact the lot is wide open, fenced in and cleared.   I know you are very busy right now so maybe some of the details of the various homes gets blurred together.

 I would suggest you look at the listings that I forwarded to John from a realtor friend of ours.  Once again I would think it would merit a higher appraisal.  I will also have to be calling the property appraisers office and ask them how their appraisal could be $140,000 off.

How is $220,000 the “midpoint” between $190,000 and $290,000?

In my opinion the appraisal was very conservative.  I’m not quite sure what purpose it serves when both the credit union and my family will miss out on the the advantages of refinancing based solely on your low appraisal.  We have spotless credit and have been with SCFCU for years.  If your job is to keep more than qualified applicants from refinancing then I guess you have done it well.

Thanks.