I spent the weekend away from home. There isn’t a whole lot in this world that I find worth it enough to leave the two men in my life for a weekend, but my passion for the sport of volleyball is one of them. This is my second year coaching for a travel team in our area. I have what would be considered the “A” team of the 13-year-olds (there is actually only one girl that’s 13. . . the rest are 12 and 11). These girls pay good money (well, their parents do) to play in the club, and we travel all a bunch of different tournaments. This past weekend, we ventured to Lancaster, PA for a MLK Tournament. I left my little man with my parents, and my husband at home with the task of packing up the contents of our house into two metal containers in our driveway (such a sad event!). The trip down there was rather uneventful–something that I learned through the weekend that I should definitely appreciate. Heather and I watched a movie and we chatting casually with the parents that we road down with. There were two giggly twelve-year-olds in the back, but with the movie loud enough, we were all set. Sleep didn’t come easily that night. . . the room above us seemed to never be quiet. Finally after three hours of stomping noises, I called the front desk. It didn’t help–I still didn’t sleep. We arrived at the gym at 10 am, an hour before our scheduled first match of pool play. Our court was behind. We sat and sat. We finally got on the court after three hours. We warmed up and were about to start when an official came running over only to tell us that we had to stop and let the three teams in the pool before us do a “tie-breaker” because they had a three way tie. It was all messed up and I think they did it wrong, but you can’t really argue. More sitting. Then more warming up and finally, we get to play. Can you imaging what the energy level was like after all that sitting? Our girls were like nervous jittery little girls. We lost both of those matches in pool play. Change in location for our next pool. A little more waiting. Our 2:30 match started at 5:30. Found a lineup that seemed to do the trick. . . then they got their jitters out. Came in second place for our second pool. End of day 1. Thank the Lord that Heather and I have better chaperones than last year. . . we got to eat dinner in the room with them and then go our own way right after. Last year that was nearly unheard of. The parents recognize that we are there to coach, not to babysit. The second day was a little more on time. We played great. . . our 14-1’s team supported us and cheered while they waited for their matches to begin. We won two VERY close matches and it was a whole lot of fun watching the girls play. They were “on the edge of your seat” kind of matches. End of pool play. Change of location for playoffs. Decided to play a “starting lineup” for our playoffs. . . up until that point, we had been playing ALL of the girls. During our playoff match, we went into three games. . . not everyone played. One girl didn’t play at all (just for that match. . . she had been playing during most of the other matches, but she hadn’t been playing very well, and wasn’t in our “starting lineup” for playoffs). After our match (which we lost), the parent of that girl was very very unhappy with me. He let me know it. Not a fun conversation. Certainly makes me dislike him–and it’s only the beginning of the season. He should’ve handled it differently. Yelling at the coach doesn’t help. Anyways, after it was all said and done, we were finished at 6. Heather and I had a choice to make. . . go back with the people who brought us (not the original plan) or go back with another player’s mom (the original plan). After some deliberating, all decided that it would be best to go with our original plan. . . that mom had no other adult in the car, and it was going to be a LATE night. The first family left (at 6), we had to go back to our first location to pick up the sister of the family we were riding home with. Got there at about 6:45. Waited for them to be ready to go after playing. Had to get something to eat. Everyone sat in the car in the parking lot of the fast food place and ate. Made no sense. Starting to get annoyed. Driver got a coffee. We had a family that was following us the entire way, since we had a GPS and they didn’t. There were no men. . . just us ladies and the kids. Stopped for gas and to do a pre-trip potty break. GOT ON THE ROAD AT 8:30! By this point, I was annoyed beyond belief, and so was Heather. To make matters worse, I had to ride in the front. I hate that, when I don’t really know the person I’m riding with. We hit bad weather and we were slowed down a bit. Also, the GPS was SO loud that I almost screamed everytime it said anything. She also had it set so that every time she went above the speed limit, it made the most annoying “boing” sound I’ve ever heard. Everytime it went off, she’d slow down, only to speed up again in just a little bit, causing it to boing again. Finally after about an hour, she said if I could figure out a way to turn that part off, that I could. I tried to watch a movie, but my DVD player died after about 15 minutes (no lie) and the GPS was charging in the charging thingy, so I couldn’t even plug it in. Sleeping wasn’t really an option. It was pure torture. I thought nothing else could go wrong. Then, at about 1:30 am, we got a phone call from the car behind us. . . the mom that was riding in the passenger seat called. I answered the phone. She wanted to make sure we’d wait for them as they dropped off the riding family to their car on one of the 390 exits. I told her to hold on a sec, that I’d give the phone to our driver. Less than a minute later, our driver screamed, then screamed the name of the lady driving behind us. She pulled off the road so fast that we almost slid for a bit on the shoulder through the slush. She threw open her door and started sprinting down the thruway. I had no idea what was going on. When Heather and I peeked out our door and looked down the lane, we could see their car was off the road. Some time later when we learned what happened, we found out that as the passenger was talking to us on the phone, the driver fell asleep. Their car banged into the guard rail a bunch of times (thank goodness it was there, or they would’ve fallen down a slope). The back window broke, and one of the girl’s volleyball stuff was all over the two lanes of the highway. A tire was in the strip between the North and Southbound lanes, it had flown off and gone the other way. I didn’t see the actual damage, so I don’t know what else was wrong. But we sat there, on the side of the road, and waited for emergency crews to respond. Luckily no one was seriously injured, or there would’ve been a problem–it took so long for people to show up. When all four people in the car were safe inside the ambulance getting checked on, the emergency people told us that we should get on our way. The husband of the passenger in the other car had come to pick them all up. So we left. I thought we were just about done with all the craziness, until our driver said she had had so much coffee and pepsi to drink that she could not wait any more to go to the bathroom. We had sat there on the side of the road for so long, that she just couldn’t hold it anymore. Whoops. Time to stop at a rest stop and get that taken care of. We were a bit too late for her. FINALLY, we were on our way to our cars, parked at a park n’ ride in Henrietta. I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally got into my freezing car. I couldn’t believe what had just transpired the past few hours. I got home at 3:45 am. The family that we could’ve ridden with got home four hours before us. I think we made the wrong decision! What do you think?

That was a novel. Thanks for reading 🙂