A fun weekend for sure. Saturday we got all of our weekend duties done to clear the plate for Sunday since we would be gone all day at the AVP tournament. I spent the better part of 4 hours, washing, waxing, and rotating the tires on my truck. Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it is to rotate tires if all you have is one floor jack and a few jackstands? It took forever. After all that cleaning, scrubbing and polishing, I thought we would take my nicely cleaned vehicle to Walmart to pick up a couple things we needed. The sky was cloudy but didn’t look like rain. Of course, we wound up driving through areas that DID have rain meaning the truck got covered in dirty water spray. ARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH. I shoulda just taken the car. Damn it!
We got up early Sunday, even earlier than normal since the clocks jumped ahead this weekend. We made it to Lauderdale in about an hour and 45. Not bad. The event was great. No admission fee. Tons of stands, loud music, great volleyball, nice warm weather and good food. The only cash we laid out all day was 6 bucks to park and maybe 20 bucks for food & drink. Got some nice free handouts as well. If you are a volleyball enthusiast and have a chance to go to an AVP event I HIGHLY recommend it. It really is a blast, they do a great job with it.
Karch was there, as a matter of fact we got there just in time to see his match. Unfortunately, he lost in a close 3 set match but took 5th place overall. A very respectable showing for someone in their EARLY 40’s! He got served to EVERY SINGLE TIME. He had very few hard hits but sided out relatively well anyway using smart placement shots. He was incredible on defense. His hustle and digging ability is really amazing. He’s the best.
The AVP is making a real big effort to make the sport fan friendly and had tons of chances for everyone to meet the players. Ali and I got to get our pictures taken with Karch & his partner. (pic on the above link) That was the second time I got my pic with Karch, the first time was 5 or 6 years ago on Fort Myers beach after another AVP event.
Another change was the men & women compete at the same time! They used to run 2 totally seperate tours, now they are combined. It was cool to see the women compete. Their skills were fantastic as well. I had on SPF 25 sunblock and still wound up getting a nice little burn. For the women’s finals, we managed to get right down courtside. The event is going to be televised on FOX SportsNet. We may have gotten some camera face time however I am sure it would be hard to distinguish us from the thousands there with hats and sunglasses. 🙂 We returned home tired, but it was well worth it.