We ended the weekend with some loses and came up short of making the AVP Championships. However, we are alive! We had quite the reality check when we were making our way back to Baton Rouge and we were sad about a game until our rental car blew a tire and we were stranded on the Texas highway. Long story short, there is much more to life.
We started the weekend with an easy one-hour flight to Dallas, Texas for the last weekend of the AVP. We landed and got into our rental car and headed straight to brunch and the venue. At the venue we made some videos with our social media manager, Molly, for the Santa in the Sand event that we have coming up on DECEMBER 14! Mark those calendars!
Molly had a plethora of videos for us to film and we needed multiple takes for each one of the announcements: date, auction items, sponsorship opportunities. Needless to say, we wouldn’t make great actresses but the Santa in the Sand event is going to be even bigger and better. Once we completed all the videos, we ran to the hotel to change and went over to the Madsand Beach Volleyball courts for clinic #1 of the weekend. We had a very fun adult clinic at Madsand. To top off the night we met up with my mom, my future mother-in-law, and Adam, our manager, for some Mexican cuisine. We were recommended a restaurant called La Cocina, it was the loudest restaurant I’ve ever been at. We were literally screaming at each other to simply hear a story. We do not recommend but we were in great company.
Saturday morning, we had a teddy bear latte art caffeinated beverage and went right back to Madsand for the second and final clinic of the AVP League. This one was for the juniors, we were just getting started and it started to drizzle. As we are standing in the rain trying to coach kids I was blown away as to how many of them made comments about watching us on TV and cheering for us. Parents and kids would come up and ask for advice and ask about our journey and it’s so crazy to think how far this has come in just a few short years. We had a great time meeting the girls and there was even a family of eight (7 girls and 1 boy) and 5 of the girls were participating at the clinic, how cool!
After the clinic we stopped for a quick lunch where Kristen and I had a splitzie lunch so we could each try two different menu items. I luckily had some chiropractic treatment from my mom before the first game. Dallas AVP was yet again at a hockey arena and we were up against the LA Launch. We finally pulled out a win in 3 sets and were cheering intently for our boys. The entire weekend all of the teams were under a great deal of stress in the calculations of what each team had to do in order to pull off a placement in the AVP League Championship. The stakes were high and everyone was fighting not only for their duo but for their city.
After a long night with 3 matches, we went back to the hotel for some sleep because the farmers market was on the schedule for the next morning. Dallas had a ton of famers markets but we chose a small one close to the hotel and Kristen’s friend who happened to have just bought a house in the area. It was nice to have a slow morning to walk around and chit chat. I chose to support local and went for the beef tallow lotion that’s been all over social media, new spices, and a bag of fresh cherry plums. Then we went to the arena to watch the first two games, we had hopes that they would split to help our chances of success but that didn’t go our way, our game didn’t go our way, our men’s game didn’t go our way, and then our travel didn’t go our way.
We were scheduled to leave at 9 pm on Sunday night to get right back to Baton Rouge, but the weather caused a lot of delays. A lot as in we were now scheduled to leave DFW at 1:53am. We decided to rent a car and make the 6.5-hour drive back as we thought that the crew would time out after a >5 hour delay. We hopped in our Hertz rental car and headed East back to Louisiana. We were both singing and talking to stay awake and then about 150 miles in I noticed a light on the dashboard. I had just asked Kristen if that was on the entire time and the next second, we were swerving out of control and Kristen pulled the car over safely. The tire was absolutely shredded to pieces.
We were stranded in Longview, Texas in pitch black with our flashing red lights on our little rental car. We didn’t even know what to do. We called AAA and Hertz, and American Express travel. It was about 1 am on Monday morning and we were still over 4 hours from Baton Rouge. We texted our team and luckily Adam and Molly were still up. They encouraged us to call the police just for extra protection as were in a very dark area on a Texas highway at 1 am. The semis would drive past us going 80 MPH and our entire car would shake. We were waiting there for 30-45 minutes and then a police officer showed up to check on us. He came around the passenger side away from the traffic and scared the sh*t out of me. I was already shaking and we were both on edge and full of emotion. We asked him to stay as the AAA man was on his way to help us.
At 2:09 AAA finally showed up and towed us to the nearest hotel and Kristen got us a room while I climbed up into the car on the tow truck to get all of our belongings. We got into the hotel room and I ran to bed and passed out. We woke up at 8 am on the dot to get a hold of the Hertz help desk and I went to shower quickly while Kristen was chatting with them. As soon as I step out, I hear that the lady is unable to help us and she advised us to get a tow truck and to get the tire changed, and then drive it back to Baton Rouge or DFW. Meanwhile, our amazing friend Adam Hensgens drove through the night to come and save us and we were just going to ride back to Baton Rouge with him.
I did get on the phone to speak with Hertz customer service representative and explain to them our situation. We had almost died because of this tire explosion, the AAA man of 39 years and the police officer had never seen that happen to a tire and said we shouldn’t have to do anything Hertz will take care of it. With their information and some discussion, Hertz helped us out and towed the car themselves and we left the keys, as that car was not going anywhere with 3 wheels, and we hit the road to Baton Rouge with Adam. We didn’t get back until around 2 pm but we are alive. It’s crazy how fast a loss of a game, missing out on the AVP Championships, and potentially ending our season doesn’t matter anymore when we felt unsafe and realized what could have happened to us that night on the road.
Basically, losing sucks and we aren’t happy with the finish. However, we are alive and that gave us all the perspective we needed at the time.
Comments