Some numbers

1: Number of stereos stolen from my car and windows broken while my car was parked in the athletic parking lot.

2: Minutes spent doing homework on the trip -- not even kidding.

3: Slices of pizza eaten by Kyle even after a 7:30 pm steak dinner followed by a double serving of chocolate ice cream.

4: Bathrooms assaulted on the way home from Topeka to Pueblo -- we had eaten some Chipotle.

5: Consecutive hours of TV we watched last Thursday while it was snowing.

6: Number of foreign players that Northwest Missouri State has in their top 6. (I know it looks like five, but six of them are from other countries...one of them is Japanese.)

7: Times I pondered quitting the sport of tennis after a demoralizing defeat at 12:30 AM.

8: Reasons I found to keep playing.

9: People I can think of off-hand who should have suffered a torn ACL instead of Josh; I won't name names at this time.

10(2): Hours spent getting to and home from Topeka.

The trip was not a complete disaster -- no one died. That said, I want to forget about most of it right now. I hate to say it, but it's one of those things that I'm sure we will laugh about later in life, but holy hell, what a depressing five days in the American midwest.

We had a match yesterday. I won both of my matches, Ricardo won his singles match and he teamed with Beau to win at 1 dubs. We didn't pull out any other team wins though, so we lost 5-4. We played Montana State-Billings and they were an interesting bunch. The match almost got called on account of darkness, so it's a good thing it's almost daylight savings time.

In the world of professional tennis, things are just getting interesting. It's time for one of my favorite tournaments: Indian Wells. I love that place. Federer, obviously, is the favorite, but there is a lot of good tennis being played right now. The women's side has been plagued by withdrawls, so hopefully the men can avoid that crap.

Busy, busy day

So we got to the site last night at about 7:30. We waited around until we could warm up, and then we found out we couldn't. So we did line ups, introduced the teams (we were playing Truman State), and the doubles teams hit the court. I sat around and watched, ate a ham and cheese sandwich I bought from a gas station, and generally fought off the fogginess that had been plaguing me throughout the day.

I got onto the court at about 10:30 or so, maybe a little bit later, and holy hell. Lack of focus, lack of concentration, all around malaize, shittiness, whatever you want to call it...I played horrible. It was abysmal. I don't even want to think about it anymore so you'll just have to wonder. To make matters worse, Josh tore his ACL last night. He originally hurt it when he went snowboarding this weekend, but he finished the job last night. It was a really upsetting moment for everyone. Having the #3 player on the team go down indefinitely is just not what we needed to happen.

We got back to the hotel after 12:30 AM. I went straight into my room and flopped onto my bed and stayed there, unshowered, wet, cold, shoes on and everything until the morning. I slept off and on throughout the night and then slept some more on the van this morning on the way down to Emporia -- yeah, not much time to decompress. By the way, Days Inn, your continental breakfast can suck it. Get some real food.

We got to Emporia about 10 and it was frigid. The bank thermometer said 41 degrees, but the wind was blowing at a steady 30 mph and gusting up to 40. You do the math and figure out a windchill and leave it for me in the comments section. Actually, don't do that. It will just make me retroactively hypothermic.

So we warm up (lol), do lineups, and then get out for dubs. My partner had a meltdown during the match and started throwing things, complaining about everything, talking shit to the opponents...it was a bad moment. Singles was better, but in those conditions, everything is so difficult anyhow, it doesn't matter that much. It becomes an endurance contest of shittiness instead of a tennis skill competition. I lost 6-3 6-2 or something; it wasn't THAT bad...definitely better than what happened the night before.

We grubbed on some Planet Sub after that, and then went back to the hotel for an hour. It was just enough time to tease us with leisure and then we had to go play Washburn.

I am not linking to any of these schools simply for the reason that you can look them up if you want to. I am too tired and have a lot of stuff to get out tonight.

So anyhow, we go to play Washburn. We actually got to warm up this time, and I felt like I was hitting the ball pretty clean. It was a nice change from the sick conditions earlier. Dubs was...interesting. The guys we played just hit the PISS out of the ball. One of them was a short guy with a huge game and the other guy was a huge lefty with a huge lefty game. It was troubling. We lost like 8-1. Then after a while, I guess about 7:15 I got on court for my singles match. I was playing a short kid named Paulo. He was pretty solid, nice groundstrokes, some power from both sides, nice little spin serve, fast, just solid all around. I hit the ball really well in that match though, which was a REALLY nice change from my depressing adventure last night.

I finally started serving a little bit better too, but I couldn't quite pull anything off at the end. I was drained (I haven't played four matches in a day in a WHILE...since last spring I think). We went to Golden Corral for some dinner, and then I watched a little bit of the Nuggets' game with Greg (their struggles are a WHOLE different subject). We braved the cold and snow flurries to get him some Taco Bell, watched more of the game, then I took a shower and hung out in the room for a while.

Now I am sitting here on the shitty roll-away bed writing about all of this. We flipped coins the first night here to determine the order for getting banished to the roll-away. I hope it doesn't fold up on me tonight.

But anyhow, I am tired, just popped some NyQuil, and have to get up in 8 hours so we can go play again. I'm not sure what the plan will be after the match, but I am just glad that I finally have some momentum. I am still learning how to play this game, and it sucks when the learning curve is sometimes steeper than I can see. I have trouble wrapping my head around this game sometimes. This time lastnight I was absolutely miserable, and this time tonight I'm kicking it around on the Internet and relatively content. I hope I can play with some confidence tomorrow and end this trip on a high note. That's the plan, I guess. End confessional.

The doldrums, or whatever

I went down to breakfast this morning and came back to watch some TV. Then I found out my coaches and a couple other people were going to watch a match between Metro State and Emporia State at a racquet club nearby here. I tagged along and I have mixed emotions. I am both inspired and depressed by what I saw. The tennis was really good although it made me want to go play tennis, it made me a little sad because I am not nearly as amazing as some of the players I saw.

In other news, we play at 8 tonight and I guess we are going to get a shitty warm up. Since the weather is so cold and windy, and since there are tons of teams in town and everyone is trying to play on a very limited number of indoor courts, we will only have 1 court and 10 minutes to warm up 12 people for the match tonight. Then when we get on court we're going to have a 5 minute warm up and then it's time to play. It's the same for our opponents, so they will have the same disadvantage, but it's not entirely fair. Just have to try to make the best of it.

In the meantime, we have nothing to do. Ricardo and I did a little homework, but that's about it. Just a lot of lounging. I wish we could save some of this lazy time for tomorrow; we will get back to the hotel tonight after midnight probably, and then we have to leave the hotel at 9 AM to play at Emporia at 11 and then we have another match at 5 PM tomorrow.

Love the midwest!!

Well after a 10-hour van ride (finally got a good seat), and stopping three times for gas and goodies and food, we finally got to Topeka. Apparently it started snowing in Colorado as soon as we left, so I knew what was coming. I watched a nice string of thunderstorms flashing all around us as we traversed Kansas, and then while we were sleeping it snowed. We have our first match tonight at 8 PM and were supposed to go practice at noon...unfortunately, since it's snowing, that probably won't be happening. We might go watch a different school's match at 11 just so we have something to do. But who knows. We might get blown away by a fresh tornado like part of Missouri did.

Interesting tidbit about the trip. Our van has a deadly spike coming through the back of one of the seats. Mitch cut his elbow on it a few times and then sliced his bag open yesterday. I told the school about it earlier in the week (since we took this van to the Academy) and they said they would fix it...obviously not.

I got lucky enough to get the kind of crappy room -- I am staying with two other guys and we are going to take turns sleeping on the roll-away bed. Hopefully it doesn't fold up on me while I'm sleeping tonight. It smells really weird in here too. Not sure why. I think it smells like feet, Kyle thinks it smells like a liter box, Mitch thinks it's a little bit fruity, like bad cologne, and Greg doesn't think it smells at all...

The worst part of the road trip is upon us now...we have nothing to do, nowhere to go, and we aren't playing until 8 PM tonight. It would be nice to get to practice in the low-altitude before we have to play tonight, but whatever happens I guess. I'm going to go watch Scrubs, maybe take a shower to kill some time, listen to the wind, play some PSP...something.

Final thought: The laptop is the ultimate comfort item on the road for me. It's perfect, because in theory, if you can acess the Internet, you can buy anything you forgot at home. I feel a little bit foolish sometimes because I have a lot of little tech toys I bring with me. There's the laptop, which is how I'm writing this, obviously; the PSP, the iPod, the digital camera, the cell phone. They're all little things though, and although I could easily live without them, Kansas becomes much better when you do have them.