San Jose, California

Well, my friends. It has been a hot minute since I have been on here. I have been traveling quite a bit and sometimes life just gets to be a bit much, to be quite honest. But I want to catch you up a bit on the last month of what has been happening with me and our family.

As a big rugby fan, and one that travelled to Las Vegas for 6 years with a son or two in tow for a weekend of almost 50 international matches per weekend….I kept hearing scuttlebutt about the premier rugby 7’s league this summer. They have four men’s teams and four women’s teams and some are long time players who are in their glory days….and some are amazing athletes from other sports who are trying out rugby and are newbies. I noticed their season is only a month long….July. They had three weekends across the country where they would play a men’s and women’s tournament: San Jose, CA; Austin, TX; and Washington, DC. It is only one long day….and I was thinking about the summer heat. San Jose sounded like the best place to be…especially since it is a 25-minute drive south of my youngest son, Tim. Bonus! I told Rich I wanted to fly out there and go to the tournament with Tim. Rich went with that and planned a whole vacation around it. I am going to go place by place, so this is only San Jose, which is a pretty town, at least what I saw of it. Tim met us on Saturday morning and gave Rich and Lily the car to tootle around in while he and I walked across the street to PayPal Park for the all-day tournament. Turns out Tim actually knew one of the gals playing. She came up and talked to us after the tournament was over. She was a who’s who in the women’s field hockey world on the national level and moved on to try a new sport of women’s rugby. She did really well! She even scored a game winning try! I was really happy to chat with her. She sung Tim’s praises in the gym at Stanford as a strength and conditioning coach. I was beaming with pride and Tim’s ears may have gotten a little pink. Anyhow, it was a gorgeous day and some good matches. Not a lot of fans…it hasn’t really caught on yet, but it was a good 7 hours of rugby with Tim, and that was priceless.