Left Tampa at 85 degrees and landed at newark. It was just under 45 here. It was total blast on the afternoon of tuesday. We went out to the beach at clearwater for some fun team games, only one of which had a meaningful name – Tug of War which surprisingly our team won.
We started off with a game where we split our team into two and stand against each split, throwing at each other small balloons filled with water. As soon as you throw you go back and stand behind the last one. So as the gap keeps growing its becomes tough to catch the balloon let alone not to crack the water out of it. We werent too fascinated by the first game besides we were just getting to know who else is in our team. We screwed up right the first throw, the water was all over the face. We flunked. [Try to catch a small balloon filled with water, 9 out 10 times you can’t]
[Clearwater Beach, Florida. Thanks to www.gotoflorida.net]
Next, everyone in our team form a circle holding each other’s hands and have to pass around a large plastic ring without letting each ago. Without letting the hands you have roll yourself into the ring from one person to next all the way around until the right comes back to the first person. Uh! We had no choice but to lose. One of my fellow mates was a lady who must have been over 250 pounds with a mid body surface area just a bit larger than the ring. So instead of embarassing her, the guy before her candidly let the hands go so we dropped the ring and gracefully gave up.
This was followed by another game with? What else? Water. Oh Come on, we were on the coast of mexico, what else to expect? However it go lot interesting this time around. We were given plastic cups with thin flexi straps attached to it and we had to hold the cup over our head with the string strapped around our face. Nope, you cant hold the cup with your hands at any cost! You run all the way to the beach, fill the cup full, strap it back into your head, hold your hands down, run back. I should say we stop running and better start walking, or rather crawling as if you have your heels over your head. And then walk all across over to your partner who has a bucket on ground, fill it with your cup of water. We had to drop the water by turning our head s down and not with hands. No kidding, this is serious game. We managed to fill the bucket half way, thanks to some wonderful work from my team mates. we won second spot on that one. [you asking me what i was doing? Jeez, with my head up at little over 6 feet from ground, how can you expect me to tilt a cup of water from there, all the way down, and the water got to fall exactly into the bucket? in full?…no way…I contributed few drops ! ]
With a scorching southern sun over our head and all the running arounds, we were drenched with sweat and sand. Tug of war followed as the last action packed game. With four of our team being women over 40+, there was not enough muscle to pull us off. At least thats what I thought, with some other teams with four or more guys, some of whom looked like real football players. But…But…not sure where we derived our strength from…but we pulled off one by one and beat every other team to WIN it. Yes, especially the final was a REAL tug of war, that lasted big too longer. They almost got us down on the other side, but we werent giving up. With me supposedly the strongest among the six being at the last[dont you know that strategy for tug of war?], I was screaming “GYEAARARARRARRRAAAAA!!!!” at the top of my lungs pulling the rope as if i was falling off a cliff. Perhaps, we just held it one second longer. They gave up and so we were all throw down on to the hot sand. I knew we won. That was much more satisfying than the other games. The guys watching from outside said it was pretty intense and patted me for my vocal support!(and of course for physical support too, remember in tug of war, the weakest link is the most important, so if you win, you should thank the weakest guy more than the strongest! )
We came back to the hotel, I took a quick shower back in my room { i was awfully dirty since I was also a target for some of the left over waterballons! } and came down to the swimming pool for a good relaxing swim. After an hour or so, we all started the water sports. I wrecked the waverunners with total enthusiam. I have already been on one of these before, so this time I was just having a total blast with full throttle. I never tried to let the gas go at all. With more and more of our folks joining the ocean on more waverunners, there were more waves, more speed and more wakes to be jumped over! It was true a thriller, with life jackets on, you have no reason to worry of falling over as long as you safely away from other riders. Speed was the food for those two hours and I was feeding voraciously catching every wave at its peak!
[If you didnt know what a waverunner is…Thanks to www.floridastateparks.org]
After that stint, I saw a kayak lying over the coast doing nothing. Though I didnt sign up for it initially, I was allowed to take it for a ride. Since I had done this one as well once in austin, I got going without much difficulty. Only now, kayaking is lot more streneous than holding the gas on the waverunners. With so many sports activities dispersing waves around, it got much harder to kayak than on a stagnant water. I managed to hang around for half hour before I realized Iam putting myself up for too much trouble. Back on the shore, I spent another hour or so on the pool relaxing.
We followed that with a great dinner at cuban restaurant next door. The next day went with another few presentations and then we were off to the airport on our way back. Tampa was still shining beaches and the occasional dolphins that showed up were still inviting, if only I had won a lottery. For I dont want to think how much it would have cost me if I had to pay for all the fun we had. I think I glanced over a board next to the water front that read – “Rent a waverunner for just $125 an hour!”
Lot of things had happened around the world while I was off, especially the one that surprised me when Harini told me over the phone that “Veerappan shot dead in encounter”! I havent had time yet to read all the conspiracy theories, yet to swim out of my backlog of emails.
