Like for most of us, vacations are hard to come by - at least good ones are. So, we took advantage of this tournament by extending our stay. The tournament was being held at the Edgewater Beach Resort, right on the beach, and we booked our stay at the Resort so we would be close to the beach and the tournament. We arrived on Thursday night and left on Monday morning.
We left Portal around 3 o'clock, after picking up Braden from school. From there we traveled through Pearson, GA to pick up my mom and change vehicles (my dad let us use his Escalade) and then went on toward Florida. We arrived around 9:30 pm -after the time change. Not much to do when we got there: checked in the resort, checked out the beach, unpacked our stuff and settled in.
Friday was a fun day. We spent most of the day on the beach - swimming, playing and building sand castles.
After the beach, Braden and I checked out one of the pools at the Resort while Jamie and mom went to the room.
Later that day, I was scheduled to compete (4th and 5th degree competition took place the night before). The tournament started around 6:30 pm and my group was assigned to ring number 3. Jamie and Braden got front row seats and my mom was able to watch from the nearby secretary's table. Forms competition was first. My scores were a 9.8, 9.8, 9.9 - good enough for 1st place. Weapons were next, but I didn't compete in weapons this time. Sparring was last. I made it to the final round, but lost by one point. . . so I got 2nd in sparring. Overall, I felt good about my performance and - like all things that challenge us - walked away knowing that there's still a few more things to work on!
Saturday was spent at the tournament. The morning started off with the Black Belt Judges Meeting at 7:30 am. Tiny Tiger competition started around 9:00 am. Opening ceremonies were around 10:00 am. From there, competition continued throughout the day, starting with the youngest competitors and working up through the age and rank divisions until everyone had competed. The tournament finally wrapped up around 4:30 pm that day . . . a very long, hot day. [We had five competitors from our school in Statesboro competing in the tournament. Their results will be posted in the next edition of iVision, our weekly e-newsletter.] Later that night we went out for dinner and then headed back to the room.
On Sunday, we went back to the beach. By then signs of Hurricane Gustav were evident - higher winds, bigger waves, looming clouds and the threat of rain. The two red warning flags were out so we couldn't swim in the ocean, but we still had fun at the lagoon pool. After swimming for awhile, we went out for lunch and then went to ride go carts. Now that was fun! The boys rode in the 2-seater and mom rode in the single seater -- mom says she won -- Braden says that the boys won -- I think the boys won. Anyway, after that we went shopping for some Hermit Crabs to replace one that we lost (for more on that story check out Jamie's blog). We ended up buying 3 crabs and a shark-tooth necklace for Braden. When we got back to the room, we contemplated leaving early because of the approaching hurricane, but after studying The Weather Channel every chance we got, we decided to stay. So later we went back out to the pool and had some more fun, got take-out from the restaurant by the pool, and ate dinner in the room.
Deciding to stay turned out to be good. The hurricane missed Florida and the "outer bands" didn't have much effect on the weather where we were. The weather on Monday was actually better than the weather on Sunday. So we got up, packed up our things, checked out, stopped at the local Waffle House for breakfast (closer to lunch on "our time"), and headed home.
It was a good trip. We had fun on the beach, competed in a tournament, rode go carts, ate some great food, bought some Hermit Crabs, and was missed by a hurricane. Not bad for a Labor Day weekend in Floriday. It's something we'll look forward to next Labor Day - minus the hurricane of course!
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