Day 5
Ryan Woodward - University of Hawaii

This morning we ate breakfast in the hotel at about 8am since we had to catch the number 6 bus into town to get to the gym we were playing at.  After breakfast the guys met in the hotel lobby at around 9:15 then we slowly made our way down the hill to the bus stop.  Then with perfect timing the bus was all ready there waiting for us.  The bus only takes Slovenian Tolars and no Euros so some of the guys had to borrow some of the money in order to take the short bus ride into town since some of the guys only had Euros.  This was by far the nicest gym we have played in on tour.  It was more of an arena with stadium seating all the way up one side of the building, and to our surprise the showers in the locker room finally had hot water.  All week the showers have been ice cold in the locker rooms.  The Maribor team was the best we played so far this week and they were huge, so big that some of them only had to half jump and they would get their entire heads over the net.  It was a good game and we played 5 sets with them.

After we played most of the guys made their way back to the hotel on the number 6 bus to shower and take a nap to rest up for the evening’s events.  There were a few guys who wanted to walk around the town and see what Maribor had to offer so Chris Mortimer, Justin Sayler, Ricky Hoag, Adam Simac, and I had to walk a little farther down the street to catch the next bus into town.  After getting off of the bus we walked a little down a side street a passed a lot of little boutique styles stores that were all ready closed on a Saturday afternoon and it was only about 1pm.  We ate lunch at a…McDonald’s.  I came all this way from Hawaii to eat a Big Mac combo in Maribor, Sloveinia.  The McDonald’s even had a Mexican value meal and a Greek value meal.  After the lunch we walked a little more through the town and entered a H&M store.  We were looking for “Euro” outfits that we could wear out that night.  I found a nice olive green euro bathing suit that I tried on and found to be surprisingly comfortable.  It was supportive yet sexy in a very “euro-sheik” kind of way.  After the store we made our way to the Euro Park mall which was just on the other side of the river.  The mall looked like any other mall by American standards with a food court and the cell phone venders and tons of ice cream places.  I still haven’t figured out what the European fascination is with ice cream.  After some window shopping for “Euro sunglasses” we left the mall in search of the bus stop to head home. 

Once we made it back to the hotel we showered and rested a little before preparing for the evening’s festivities.  Some of the guys went down the luge (really a little plastic cart attached to a metal pole that twists and turns down the side of the mountain with a brake handle that you push forward to go down and pull back to stop) located at the back of the hotel but after hearing about the carnage I decided not to go down.  As it rained a little in the afternoon the metal track/pole the cart rides on got a little slick and the brakes stopped working for this man as his cart came screaming down the track and crashed into the parked carts ahead of him he flew off still fastened into the cart.  That was enough for me and I decided to get ready for dinner.  We ate at the pizza place down the hill from the hotel right next to the bus stop.  I had the pepperoni pizza because the night before when we ate there I ordered the mushroom pizza but it came with an egg in the middle.  It was all right but a little different, wasn’t expecting that..  After dinner we walked back up to the hotel where the beer pong tables had been set up and played a few games to “pre-game” before heading out into town. 

At about 10pm we went down to the bus stop to catch the last bus of the night into town.  The bus ride into town was great as everyone who entered the bus after us got a great cheering welcome all the way to our stop.  We walked about a mile or so to this club where upon entering was dead empty.  I guess it was a little too early.  We then went to another place down the street and found that there was no entrance but Chris told us that these places have secret entrances so we followed an innocent couple around to the back of the building through an alley and side street and found the entrance located in the back.  It was kind of empty in there though it didn’t take the guys long to scout some talent for the evening.  Before you knew it the place was packed and more people kept coming in.  After a while some of the guys heard of another place called Xtreme which was supposed to be going off.  So some of us hopped in cabs and as we headed around the corner of this place you could all ready feel the bass shaking the taxi.  The place was in the middle of a strip mall between two clothing stores.  The place was packed and it took another twenty minutes to get a drink.  After our one drink we decided to go back to Trust, which was the first place, as this place was way too crowded and hot.  We headed back to the first place only to find it even more packed than before.  We found out that most of the guys all separated and ended up going to another place down by the river but some guys never left the place.

 So we ended up dancing till about 4 am then finally some of us had to call it quits and headed home.  I think that some of the guys never made it back till about 530am.  Breakfast was at 8 the bus left at 830…I think you can figure out what happened…though I will say this that everyone made it back home safely and everyone made it to the bus in the morning though not everyone looked very happy about it.  Oh well…next stop Vienna where eight of the guys will be leaving to various tryouts all over Europe and the rest of the team will continue on to Prague.

Editors Note:  The following players were sent to tryouts from Vienna-

Brandon Mueller- Omniworld, Netherlands
Micah Venturini- Omniworld, Netherlands
Cordt Withm- Hamburg, Germany
Dante Diponio- Paris, France
Zach Underwood- Klagenfurt, Austria
Justin Salyer- Klagenfurt, Austria
Adam Simac- Klagenfurt, Austria
Aleksandar Ondelj- Frankfurt, Germany