Olympic events #6 and 7 – beach volleyball

Today is Wednesday and yesterday was our final day at beach volleyball. I have mixed feelings about the end of this era. Attending the Olympic events has been so much fun but it has also been exhausting. The dog is neglected. The house is neglected. My liver is overworked. My one and only USA t-shirt smells like body odor and stale beer. And it has all been worth it.

The only regret I have is setting the camera settings to store small images. I didn’t realize the consequences when I selected this setting but now I do. My photos are all tiny.

We attended both the day and evening sessions and our seats during the day session were excellent. We were seated a couple of rows up from the court on the Downing Street side. We were behind the camera on the boom and a stone’s throw from the “Guardians of the Sand”, also known as the Rakers. The only downside to the session was that my favorite emcee was not working.

It was nice to see the beach volleyball dance crew wearing different outfits and performing new dances to new songs because I had memorized their dances from the previous sessions and with enough alcohol, would have performed them on the court if invited.

Our seats during the evening session were still good but not as good as the day session seats. It was like flying in first class for the first half of your journey and then being downgraded to coach for the second half.

If you ever have the opportunity to attend Olympic beach volleyball, do not hesitate. And if you have the option of a day or evening session, choose the day session. The crowd is much more energetic than the evening crowd though still crazy.

It also started drizzling immediately after the day session and continued to drizzle for the remainder of the day. I can deal with drizzle. I cannot deal with downpours. We combated the drizzle with raincoats, intoxication, and a polka dot umbrella.

UPDATE | Oct-10, 2014: The polka dot umbrella was lost in a tragic drunk accident at Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany.

Overall, we had a good run with beach volleyball.

All of our tickets were purchased on London2012.com as re-released tickets and most of them were purchased shortly after midnight for sessions later that same day. Over the course of a week, I attended five sessions for a total of 14 matches.