CALL ME SNAKE

Just returned from a week in (sometimes) sunny (sometimes rainy) Mexico. Critics have informed me that for a so-called volleyball blog, there is precious little volleyball on these pages and a good deal more about handball and even sudoku for that matter. So this time, I am going to stick with volleyball. Just the facts, ma’am, as they say.

But getting back to the beach (aren’t we all trying to do that?), I’m always on the lookout for a good volleyball ame. I don’t enjoy hitting it around with a bunch of drunks who don’t know what they were doing. After a couple of days there I saw some folks–a man and a woman, actually–at the neighboring hotel who really knew what they were doing. I worked my way into the game and played several games on their team. We won them all, though I had little to do with it. Both of them were amazingly good. But as for how good, I had no idea until talking with them afterwards. It turns out both played on professional teams in Europe. The man was a member of Mexico’s national team and would soon be playing in the Olympics. The woman was just about to start playing in the professional beach volleyball circuit. They were nice people and didn’t make a guy 30 years their senior–and rusty from not having played volleball for many months–feel too bad.