I'm stiff. I'm sore. I'm tired.

Over the weekend my softball team and I went to Portland for a tournament-- the Cascasde cup. We ended up playing 4 games on Saturday, and 6 games on Sunday. Even though I was constantly putting on SP30 sunblock I got a dark tan.

The short story... we placed second!

We arrived Friday night. I didn't stay out late because our first game was at 8am. We went to a couple of bars, Scandles and the Three Sisters, and then back to our hotel. Chatted for a while, and then went to bed. A couple of the guys pointed out that I sometimes, I am not very optimistic. I'm not negative, but I'm more of a realist than they prefer.

Got up at 6am the next morning. The fields was about 30 minutes outside of Portland, so we needed lots of time.

The tournament was 2 games round robin, followed by double elimination.

The first game was against Portlands #1 team, so we were a bit nervous. But... we won. A couple hours later, we played against the Huffin' Puffin from San Francisco. We lost. They are a very strong tream.

We played the next 2 games on astro turf. It was Hell. The Astroturf field was at least 20 degress warmer than the regular fields. The Astoturf was much more springy and flat than ground, so the ball bounced high and rolled for ever. You can't slide on Astoturf.

I'm not sure of where the next team was from. I think it was Vancouver. We won that game.

Then, we played the Huffin' Puffin again. We lost again. The Puffin was a very consistant team. They didn't have home run hitters, but they did have solid defense. Offensivly, none of them were very weak.

Since this game was part of the double elimination, one more lose, and we would be out of the tournament. Because of our mediocre first day, we earned a Sunday starting time of 8am. We were all tired, so we went bed early.

I don't remember the names of most of the teams we played on Sunday.

We won our 8am game, rested an hour, and then entered softball hell. We played 5 games back to back. The first three were on the Astroturf. It may have worked to our advanage, Since we played two previous games on the Astroturf, we knew how to handle it better. We won them.

The middle game ended weirdly. It was the bottom of the last inning. We were at bat. The score was tied. The bases were loaded. The piture ended up walking the batter. It was a very undramatic ending to a very tight game.

The next game was on real ground. We played against the Grumpy Puppies from Portland. Another close game, but we won. That gave us second place.

The Championship game was against the... Huffin' Puffin's! The Puffin's were very well rested. Because of their strong Saturday, they had only played one other game on Sunday. Well, we lost to the Puffin's again. We really broke down from exhaustion. It was hard running, it was hard catching, it was hard hitting. Plays that otherwise would have been easy took so much effort.

They ended up base hitting us to death. No monster home runs, just sold, simple hitting.

It was still fun. I didn't expect to take second place at all. After we lost 2 games on Saturday, I thought we would lose early on Sunday, and then just bumb around Portland for the day.

I drove back to seattle with one of my team mates, took a shower, ate a bit, and then hit the sack.