Down Memory Lane: Beach Volleyball

The sand, the sun, the surf, the cool breeze, the net, the partially deflated volleyball, 6 people with limbs in working condition and I'm in love. There have been defining moments of elation in this rather unexciting life and beach volleyball has clearly been one of them.

For a while, I used to think that it was the girls in swimsuits who lined the shore that created the ambience and tickled my brain cells with suggestions that my next bump shot would have them all swarming around me. Turns out, it wasn't, in fact it had nothing to do with the ambience. It did have something to do with the sand, though. The fact that sand absorbs much of the shock during a fall allows real players (like me, of course ;)) to extend ourselves and go for plays we otherwise would never have even considered after judging trajectory. Those rare moments of shear brilliance (Kodak moments, if I may) were enough to pump up the "thrill" hormones to levels rarely precedented.

Two games stand out, more than others. A friendly game against a group of latin men. They jokingly waged their women on the game. I have a feeling our appearances were deceptive, they should've waged something they could actually keep their word with. Something about our race that keeps us in the competition: what we lack in aggression, we make up by quickly adapting strategy. We won, hands down, they left, with their women, of course, we figured one loss was more than they could bear.

The next was against a group of Pakistani men. They were smarter than our previous opponents, they didn't wage their women. The game had some elements of an India Pakistan World Cup match. No tobacco companies were there to sponsor our little battle, nor was it being broadcast over the air-waves, yet there is too much history across the borders over the past 50+ years that we had to defend. The outcome should be obvious by now. Let me put it this way, inspite of losing more games than I've won, I don't quite remember much of any of them.

If I had my priorities straight I would never have left the beach volleyball courts. Alas, I have dreams of shutting myself in tall buildings with thick glass walls in the center of congested commercial districts. Memory lane consists of stuff I would've done in another life, where desires and thoughts are simple and real.