Sandy: my first real hurricane!

Today Sandy roared ashore along basically the entire Northern half of the Eastern seaboard.  It's actual landfall point was in southern New Jersey, but this historically massive storm system brought with it tropical storm force winds that spanned some 500-800 mi (depending on direction and information source it seems) from the center.

The result: my first ever official Hurricane Day!

A friend of mine enticed me to join her and two of her friends to ride out to the shore to check out Sandy's winds.  After throwing on what amounted to my skiing outfit -- helmet included -- we pulled off down in Southie, hopped out, and proceeded to jump around in the wind and whipping rain.  Though "only" 50 mph, it really is quite a sensation to have a constant 40-50 mph wind --with occasionally higher gusts -- slamming your body.  Away from any potential debris missiles, we leapt for joy in amazement of the awesome power of the wind, raising our arms up to allow our pants and jackets to flutter and flap loudly.

We then hopped back into the car and drove over near the ICA.  There, perhaps with the wind-funneling assistance of a large building, we parked at a street where the sustained winds were up around 60-70 mph, a level at which you can hear nothing but the blasting wind in your ears, and it is nearly impossible to propel yourself forward at anything faster than a slow walk.  It was pretty awesome.

And now, after spending most of the past 6 hours looking at photos/stories/tweets about Sandy, I really, really need to go to bed.

Club tennis tournament

Whoa, its been way too long since I've written here!

I am currently as sore as I've been in a while, possibly more sore than I was following the Boston Half Marathon last fall.

Yesterday and Today, our nascent MIT Club Tennis team participated in the Northeast Regional College Club Tennis tournament at the Harvard tennis courts.  There were 16 teams participating from around the region, most of which have been playing for at least a year or so.  We didn't find out until after we arrived, but it turns out that this tournament is the biggest of the year in the region, as the top 4 teams move on to Nationals. The format was four 4-team divisions, and within each division the teams play one another round-robin style.  Each match between two teams consists of 1 men's doubles, 1 women's doubles, 1 men's singles, 1 women's singles, and finally 1 mixed doubles, each of which plays a single set with various rules modified to move things along faster.

We also wouldn't find out until much later, but we were placed in the toughest division of all.  Besides WPI, we were matched with Harvard and Dartmouth, the latter many felt was the most talented team and the former having won the tournament last year. Indeed, both ultimately made the final four and thus are headed to nationals.  In the end, we lost to them both (and to WPI), though in mixed doubles I and my teammate went to a tiebreak with Dartmouth, where we technically won had my partner called "out" with a little more volume and confidence on match point; instead we lost that point and the subsequent two points to lose the set unfortunately.

Finishing in the bottom two teams within our division put us in the "Silver" (consolation) bracket for today, where we first lost a close match to Maine, then defeated Clark rather easily before falling in another close match to WPI.  We thus finished 14th overall.  Though not an amazing showing, this was our first ever tournament, and I think we all certainly improved in our match play as the matches went on.

Nonetheless, standing up and sitting down requires a lot of effort.  Even a bath (!) didn't help too much.  Time to hop into bed...