Just a beauty weekend

This weekend was a peach! Amazing weather, incredible times and wonderful company. It was so glorious shopping and browsing on Queen St. West Saturday afternoon. Julia and I enjoyed the beauty temperature while watching people skate on the public outdoor rink downtown! Such a neat thing to do on a weekend, especially considering it was over 10 degrees in March! I then then I had an amazing turkey dinner with Julia's family! Turkey with all the trimmings for no other reason than to have it was such a great idea, I FEASTED!! As some of you may know, family is very important to me and I always looked forward to family dinners, breakfasts and gatherings. I had a lot of fun improving my relationship with her parents as they told stories of their own lives and of course, embarrassing ones of Julia's childhood. Good times all round!

Leading up to the weekend I had to make a few decisions about partnerships and trip itineraries. It is now official that I will be playing with Ray Sewell for the first 3 NORCECA beach volleyball tournaments (Grand Cayman's, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic) before returning to Toronto for Ray's impending knee surgery. He has a torn meniscus (seems like a popular beach volley injury) and will be going under the knife on April 12th. Upon our return to Canada, I will commence training with Chaim again as he will be two weeks out of his sling and hopefully back in passing/setting and potentially hitting action. We will do our best to prepare and if Chaim feels confident about his shoulder, we will look into flying to Brasilia, Brazil on April 18th to compete in the first FIVB tournament of 2010.

Right now I am six days away from sun, wind, tropical oceans and what I have been told is some of the nicest sand in the world! We were given a contact there by Chris Densmore and this fellow Canadian will be picking us up, hosting us and training with us on the lovely local beaches. Carl Brenton is his name and apparently there will be a fun king of the beach tournament on Sunday to prepare the refs and line judges for our level of play! I am so excited to start playing outdoors and start the 2010 season with a bang. We have been told the Cayman Islands are very supportive of Canadians so I can't wait to play for what will feel like a home crowd!

Well I am off to work on a new video I shot at the Canadian Sports Centre this past Thursday. I had a physical test called a "Functional Movement Screen" and I look forward to showing you what it consisted of and the purpose behind it.

You are as strong as your drive.

Martin