Last night was Board Game Night at the Big Z Ranch. Jan and I had Juls, Ewan, Montsey, Baileys, Cointreau, and Absinthe over our house for a friendly game of Risk. The intended two hour game slowly turned into a grueling five hour debacle, after which Juls was the only one left standing – in every possible sense. By the time I kicked everyone out, set the clocks ahead one hour, had one last read through of the online Lost forums, and got to bed it was 6am. But that didn’t stop me from waking up before noon and heading down to Castelldefels for my first day of beach volleyball of the year.

I vacantly stumbled onto a metro and met up with the French contingent of my indoor volleyball team: Remi, Xavi, and Stephane. Remi drove us down the coast to Castelldefels where the very first beach volleyball tournament of the year was taking place. None of us had signed up in time for the tournament so we all just decided to head down there anyway, set up a net, and get a few games in to inaugurate the beach season. Five hours later of almost nonstop playing, Remi and I had played the whole time while Xavi played most of the time (between his complaining of how out of shape he is) and Stephane and his steaming hangover only played a few games; he spent most of the day asleep on his towel. There was no waking the boy up! I even poured water on his back… nothing.

When we weren’t playing against each other, we managed to clean the clocks of a few guys from competing indoor teams. Apart from the stupid sunburns, forgetting our sunglasses at home, and aching muscles, I’d say the day was an overwhelming success. Bring on the summer!