Beach volleyball, beach volleyball, surfing

Today I broke a personal record, how many beaches visited in one day; three. I was up so early this morning so I could be at Ponto Beach at 7:30 to play some beach volleyball with the old gang. I played three games with Dan and I have to admit that I played so bad… It might have been because of the wind, or something else, I don’t know. It was very fun even if we lost all the games. At 9:30 am there were so many people there and the waiting time was ridiculously long, so I decided to head down to beach number two, Mission Beach. I met up with Wes and Cathleen from February. I didn’t understand how that worked, at Ponto it is so easy with the list, next on the list play on the next court available unless you are waiting for the challenge court or doesn’t wanna play on that one. But this was just chaos. So I started talking to this other guy, Ko, and he introduced me to a group of players a little bit away from all the chaos and I played with them for the rest of the day (until 2pm). It was so much fun, everyone was friendly, funny and let me in right away. We were a bunch of people so we did side-out, but I liked that. It is easier to focus on every side-out when you don’t have to worry about scores. And we got to play a lot all the time instead of one intense game, then a long wait and another game and so on. It was great and I had so much fun! In the end we played two games, one 4 on 4 (which was the first time I ever enjoyed that type of game), and then one doubles. That game was really fun and even and I have to say that I played really well today. My sets were perfect, even my bump sets were better and more consistent than they have been in a very long time. Fun fun! I even managed a jump serve as the winning point in the 4 on 4 game. I could also jump and hit pretty hard, and also place balls. There was one sick ball where I was so close to the net on the right side, and the ball went straight parallel with the net and landed almost on the line on the angle shot. I think I was more surprised than everyone else.

Today was just a really really good beach volleyball day for me and I am so exhausted and tired in my whole body now. I love this feeling. I don’t really like that my foot soles are sore from jumping and running around in hot sand for a long time.

I am going down there tomorrow again before going back home in the evening with David.

At 3pm I arrived in La Jolla and found a parking spot right away, and very close to the beach too. Lucky! My Swedish friends left right when I came though, but David came and we went surfing right away. Unfortunately I couldn’t be in the water more than about 30 minutes because my eyes were burning like nothing before. I’m guessing that it was sunscreen and saltwater. But that usually goes away after like two waves, but today it just kept burning and burning. It was even worse when I looked out in the water facing the sun. It was so bad I had to go up… My eyes are still sore and it kinda looked like I had cried my eyes out when I got back to the house around 6pm. A shower helped a lot, but I still feel like my eyes sting a bit. What happened?

I took care of the kids tonight while the hostparents went out to the movies. I feel like that is the least I can do for them for letting me come down here, stay with them, AND use the car. They are so nice, and I wanna give back. And also I like spending time with the kids again. Tonight we baked “havreflarn” a Swedish oatmeal cookie, we watched Cupcake Wars, and played basketball in the backyard. I then put the kids to bed and was ready myself to go to bed. But there are always stuff to do on the computer, so here I am, almost midnight and not asleep yet. Well well, I can sleep another time.

Beach #1, Ponto Beach.