Saturday, May 16--Who knew it'd be so tough?

I can hardly move my arms enough to type this.

It seems that there is a shortage of women from Jim’s office willing to play in the Captain’s Cup sporting events, so I got drafted to play co-ed water polo today. Not just water polo, but inner tube water polo. You sit in an inner tube and try to throw a ball into a net. Figured it couldn’t be too hard, so I suited up and headed to the pool.

Well, it might not be a difficult game if you have a full team. As it was, we were one woman short of having enough players, so five of us tried to do the work of six. There is a definite learning curve, and we lost the first game badly. We immediately had to play another team, but managed to pull out a victory this time. Being only three teams in a double elimination tournament, we ended up having to play each team again, for a total of four back-to-back games. At the end, even the most fit among us was exhausted. You wouldn’t think it’d be so tiring, sitting in an inner tube the whole time, but the only way to propel yourself around the pool is by paddling backwards with your arms. And if a lot of points are being scored, that means retreating to your side then sprinting back to the middle for the face-off a whole lot of times. I found shoulder muscles I didn’t know I had, and every one of them was screaming by the time the last whistle blew on our second defeat.

After posing for photos with the second place trophy and our sporty water polo headgear, I headed to the locker room for the hottest shower I could stand. It didn’t help my throbbing shoulders near enough, and I left the gym with my wet hair in a ponytail because I couldn’t hold the blow dryer up. At least I didn’t have to carry the trophy.