Chapter 48: I’m a Trooper
It’s been a pretty hectic couple weeks since the last post.
So last Friday was my birthday, and I became another year older. I think I’m 25 now. I stopped counting years ago, when age seemed to not matter as much anymore. In fact, several times now I’ve replied incorrectly when asked my age. I’m just living my life in the present, not really planning for the future, as in I don’t have any guidelines that say I want to be doing X and having Y money saved up by the time I’m Z kind of deal. I feel fairly content with my life as it is, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Without the desire to want more, one can never live up to their full potential.
Last week started to get quite hectic at work, where we were getting ready to launch a new service offering. It’s been quite awhile since I had been that busy. I almost felt bad when I left Friday evening to head up to Whistler for the weekend instead of working extra shifts. But alas, Elaine and I had planned to go there again for this second of two summer volleyball weekends. Started driving up quite late, at about 8:30pm. It didn’t help that there was an accident on the Lions Gate bridge, which stalled us for almost an hour. But after that, we made good time, and it helped that I was driving Elaine’s RX8 this time instead of my Yaris. With the 238HP, passing was a whole lot easier to accomplish. However, there were still a few times while passing uphill where I wished I was able to unleash more power under the foot. Got it up to about 150kmph at one point, and maintained 140kmph for a lengthy stretch where there were two lanes and not a car in sight. Took about 80 minutes from the north end of Lions Gate bridge to Tantalus Lodge.
I drank my first ever shot that night, and it was tequila. I’ve never been a drinker, with the most I’ve ever consumed at a time being a cooler. It’s not that I can’t drink… it’s that I just don’t. The tequila shot didn’t seem to affect me at all.
On Saturday, I was supposed to play in the co-rec 6’s tournament, but they cancelled it because of lack of participants. So I actually just pretty much vegged out all day in the hotel room, watching coverage of the PGA Championship and some good ol’ Spike TV action shows like "Disorderly Conduct: Video on Patrol" and "When Good Pets Go Bad" 1 and 2. I love watching these types of shows. I remember years ago, they had this series "America’s Wildest Police Videos". They should air those again. Watching car chases never gets old.
That night, I drank a few light alcoholic beverages, so I never got to even feel buzzed. Some day, I’ll drink enough to get drunk, but hopefully not so much that I’ll end up puking. Ended up sleeping after 4am in some cramped sleeping quarters, and had to get up soon after 8am to play in the Men’s 2’s tournament.
I was partnered up with Gary, and we were going to play in the lower B division, but they didn’t have enough teams signed up, so they put all the A’s and B’s together… which led to a very diversified range of skill levels playing each other. Our round robin pool was very tough, and both our opposing teams easily should have been in the tier A. Against the first team, we put up a respectable fight, and even took a set off them for a moral victory. The second game, we played Nick and Ivan, and we didn’t have a prayer to beat them. We didn’t have any of the tools needed to stop their attack. They put away balls at will, whether it’s a sharp cross court hit or a perfect placement shot to the back corner… we didn’t have any answers. For the playoffs, we ended up playing Ron and Mike, and we won that one in two sets. Next, we played a team that was similar to us, where it was one shorter guy and one taller guy. It was a very tight match, and we lost 22-20, 21-19. We played pretty close to the best of our ability this game and just came up a little short. I was very unreliable for hitting in the round robin, but picked it up significantly for the playoff, finally being able to roll the ball properly for placement shots. Guess I just don’t have enough experience playing grass or beach to have great ball control. I thought my setting was particularly good on this day though. Not sure why, but both my calves started cramping as early as the second game. Maybe playing 2’s is just that demanding, and maybe the intense heat had something to do with it too, but I had to fight it off the rest of the day.
Left for home at about 4pm and made a pit stop at Taco Bell as always. After getting back to Elaine’s place, ate our pseudo Mexican food, watched some TV, then I hit the hay fairly early, as I expected to work some long hours this week.
Little did I know the reality of the situation. So I came home yesterday after a 9-5 shift. Not your standard 9-5 shift, mind you… since it started at 9:30am Monday and ended 5:00pm Tuesday. Yes, that’s right… I worked a 31.5 hour shift. In that time, I had three short power naps that didn’t even last a half hour each, but it was enough to get me by.
The drive home was quite labourous, and if it took five minutes longer, I might have had to pull to the side of the road to take a quick nap. I vowed to never fall asleep behind the wheel again, after an incident back in high school. I think it was the summer of grade 11, where we, as a group, would routinely stay up pretty much all night just hanging out, since pretty much none of us had jobs and didn’t have any responsibilities or cares in the world. Those were some of the best times of my life. Whatever the case, after not having slept the previous night and being up for probably around 36 hours, I was driving home that night and after making the turn from Kingsway onto King Edward westbound, and seeing the red light on Knight as I crested over the small hill, I fell asleep at the wheel, and my Toyota Corolla station-wagon, known as the PMS-mobile, slowly rolled down the hill and hit a minivan broadside in the intersection. Fortunately, I must have had my foot covering the brake pedal before I lapsed into unconsciousness, so the car was travelling quite slowly upon impact.
Of course, the accident could have been much, much worse… so from that experience, I vowed that I would never drive if I’m too tired again.
After finally getting home, I climbed into bed straight away and I must have fell asleep within 15 seconds of pulling the covers over me.
Hopefully the madness is over now, and I can get back to a more routine working schedule…
