HOPE Volleyball 2008

Before I start talking about HOPE Volleyball 2008, I want to put some rumours to rest.

Yes, Mike broke his middle toe at HOPE Volleyball.

No, I wasn’t directly involved in the breaking of his toe. However, this is the third time that I had been in the vicinity of Mike’s injuring himself and now his parents are getting some insurance policy for their son whenever he exits the house with me (which may not be a great idea and they should think about just getting a 24-7 plan considering their son lives with me.) So I don’t know if the fates have myself and Mike’s injury level, but either way, I’m sorry to say, but I always have a good chuckle when Mike injures himself nowadays.

HOPE Volleyball has been decreed my favourite day of the year. It’s better than my birthday, it’s better than Christmas. I really couldn’t find anything that compares. Where else can you get a beautiful day, beautiful women in bikinis, volleyball, rock bands, beer gardens, free stuff given out to you at the beach, and a good event to raise money for charity?

HOPE Volleyball is a charity volleyball event that is held each year at Mooney’s Bay. Our team, Just Giver was in fine form when we arrived for our game with minutes to spare and proceeded to kick some ass then, and all day long. Vero and I showed up at Carrie’s an hour before our first game victory to park our car and walk over to the beach. The year before, we had left so late that we missed our first game. Luckily, we had our head on our shoulders this time around and managed to leave at a decent hour.

The sun was HOT and it was only 8:30 in the morning. I don’t know what the temperature went up to in the day but I’m pretty sure it was around 30 without the humidity. This was the first HOPE Vball weekend for Vero, Mike and Anne-Marie. The veterans on our team were Casey and Melissa, myself and Carrie. It was a good mix and I was wondering if I would be in fine volleyball form.

This was also the first year we weren’t playing on the beach, but in the grass. I didn’t mind the difference although I was definitely more hesitant to dive for the ball at various times. My first serve was horrible but the next time I got up to serve, I must have pleased the volleyball Gods and had a slew of good serves on hand. We ended up winning the first game which boosted us in high spirits.

We had 1.5 hours to kill before the next game and the beer tents aren’t open that early in the morning so we started to walk around, grab some free stuff (CD Samplers, frisbees, hats) and entered in a few contests. You never know, I may very well be the winner of a Pontiac Solstice in the near future!

We then returned to our spot under the tree near Court #62, relaxed and waited for the next game to start. From what I recall, the rest of the games of the day were lost, but we were close in all of them. No wait, we won another one in the afternoon. So we won two, lost three, and the three we lost were close games. That counts as a win in my books. We were all on fire that day in terms of volleyball skills. I was surprised at how well we gelled together.

Once the second game was done, we headed to the beer gardens and started the day off right. It was starting to get a little warm so it was only time to have something to quench the thirst. When we arrived the lineup at the beer tent was HUGE, but then Casey realized that there were two ends to the beer tent so we went to the other end and managed to find NO LINEUP in front of the beer ticket booth. Beauty! We grabbed our beer tickets for the day, bought a few and went up on the hill to relax and watch the opening band. HOPE Volleyball is always a good time to see some local talent in the early part of the day before the big bands come out later. Carrie was disappointed to hear that her fave band LOUDLOVE could not make it. Rumours of a car accident were whispered whereas the more obvious reason came out as well…they were already playing a gig last night and were too hungover to play today! We don’t know the truth, but we know how these things work out.

After a few more beer, we headed back for Game #3, lost it but realized that there was more beer to be drank and headed back to the beer tent. Casey and I tossed the frisbee around for a bit and he was quite excited as the year before, the police on site had asked us to stop throwing it around in the beer garden. This seems quite absurd considering the beer garden is HUGE and there is plenty of space to throw it around. I, unfortunately, am not good with my aim and proceeded to have it land near a group of guys a few times. This is not an ideal situation when there are a bunch of girls I could be aiming for my partner. Woops.

Vero and the other girls showed up later and we also managed to get some food in us in the form of cold burgers and hot dogs. Yum! I can’t complain too much. It’s nice of the organizers to include lunch in with the price of our ticket. The day was escaping us already in the heat as we didn’t even realize that our next game was coming up fast! We rushed back to the court, proceeded to kick some ass, and then I took a five minute break in the shade to recharge my batteries.

Before this, Mike had finally showed up to the event. He had originally needed to go into work for 20 minutes in the morning to oversee some computer install in case something went wrong. Unfortunately, something went wrong and he spent four hours there fixing it and managed to show up around noon. I was excited to see him as I had told him all about HOPE over these years and he was quite excited to see what all the fuss was about.

The bands were coming out in full force by the time we returned to the beer garden and I was rocking out to some Thornley (who is Ian Thornely, mastermind of Big Wreck). I’ve seen them here before…in fact I believe it was the same year Philipp and I stumbled into a mosh pit accidentally and proceeded to get shoved down into the pavement. It wasn’t as bad as a scene as before and Vero, Casey, Mike and I headed up to the front where I do believe my ear started to bleed from the decibels hitting us.

The day descended into madness at that point. I proceeded to burn my pinky toe on someone’s cigarette butt in the grass. Argh. Morons. This reminded me of when Troy had some searing pain under his arm at SARStock and found out it was some guy’s cigarette under his arm! There was quite an army of us up on top of the hill and we just sat there having a good time chatting, drinking our beers and watching 54-40 (a band who everyone knows their songs, but never know who sings them). My only disappointment in the day was that there was some free beer action going on in the parking lot that I missed out on TWICE during the day. Ah well, you win some, you lose some.

The police finally asked us all to leave around 6PM (concerts were done, festival was closing up shop) and on my way out, there was someone giving away a box of apples at the end of the day. I ended up picking it up (probably 100 apples in this thing!) and bringing it back to Carrie’s. The walk back to Carrie’s was a long one and Mike doesn’t know if he broke his toe along the walk by falling out of his flip-flops or if it was while wrestling Vero. Either way, he realized that something was wrong when his toe started turning purple.

I had had enough for the day and when we got to Carrie’s I immediately collapsed on her bed for a snooze. I don’t know how much time passed before Vero came in to wake me up and I had a drink of water upstairs with Holly and Alex and then I realized Vero was pretty hungry (it was 9PM by this time!) so we headed to her place and I picked up some Louis’ Pizza (in which they signed her name in tomato sauce on the pizza! Is that normal?!) and we scarfed it down and hit the sack. I felt like I had ran a marathon and in reality it was 10:08 when my head hit the pillow.

All in all, this was probably one of the better years for HOPE Volleyball…moreso because of the weather. Vero and Mike seemed to have a good time seeing that it was their first time out. I really enjoyed the day and hopefully nothing will interfere with my plans to dominate the volleyball courts again next year.