Travel Misfortunes & Match Points: Our AVP League Hamptons Tale

Hi! This weekend’s trip was filled with so many laughs… some in complete disbelief by our travel misfortunes and most from us in complete disbelief from my good ole mother being her. Let’s start with Friday, our travel day. Taryn and I picked up my parents from their house before heading to the airport, and on the way my mom in reference to our travel stated, “y’all are with us, so nothing is going to happen. It only happens to y’all.” I wish I could go back and have her take it back because I think she most definitely put a jinx on us… buckle up here people… could be a long one.

A couple minutes after my mom made that lovely comment, my dad from the back seat exhaled, “CRAP! I don’t have my phone.” Luckily, Taryn and I got to them a little earlier than we had planned so heading back to get it only put us a couple minutes behind. On our second attempt towards the airport, we were talking about our return flight and my mom brought up flying out of LGA instead of JFK (where we were flying into). Taryn and I looked at each other confused. [Me: What do you mean LGA? We have a hotel room by JFK Sunday morning since that’s where we fly out of. You said you were on the same return flight as us. Mom: I thought I was. Would they have changed me?] I immediately texted with Delta to change them to the correct flight! Crisis averted. Since my parents were flying with us, we decided it would be easiest to park at the airport. As we made our way to the short term parking lot, we noticed a cone and a sign reading temporarily full so our next option was long term parking. Approaching this lot with the same cone and sign was not on the bingo car for this trip. Taryn rolled down the window and asked the worker what our plan C was. He told us to go to the economy lot at the former airport terminal which was a 12 min drive away. This location was a 7-story parking garage and had no cone and no temporarily full sign, so we headed up the spiral ramp. As we made our way up, we found cones on floors 1-4… no spots. Finally, floor 5 had no cone so we turned in but not a single spot was available… this is a joke, right? Floor 6 was the same… slight concern about missing the flight started to creep in. Our last resort was floor 7 which was the roof. Thankfully as we pulled up, we saw a couple spots free. We quickly unloaded luggage and made our way to the elevator. It took a while, but the doors opened and we hopped in with one other girl. Floor 1 was selected but after a whole minute Taryn asked if we were moving… we were most definitely not moving and there was no door open button to hit. Again, a panic set in, are we stuck in this elevator?! The doors started beeping and opened and I got out of there so fast I didn’t even look back (every man for themselves ha). Apparently, my mom quickly followed suit, but as my dad was trying to get out, the doors started closing and Taryn and the other girl had to legit pull the doors apart to let him and themselves out. Suitcases in hand all of us trekked down the 7 flights of stairs in the blazing Louisiana heated stairwell. The shuttle bus driver was in the restroom and on returning was in no rush to get us to the airport. Wheels finally started moving and we were able to sit back and relax so we started chatting about the weekend. We brought up the weather in New York and how this event was finally going to be back outside and that was a big news flash to my mom. She halted the conversation saying, “wait, this event is an outdoor event??!” My dad chimed in as well, “Audrey, you said it was inside!”  We all just started laughing!

After our exciting morning, you would think that the afternoon would have been smooth… you thought wrong. I headed to the rental car place while the three of them stopped for food and the restroom. I was not thrilled to walk through the Budget door and see a plethora of people standing in line with less than thrilled faces. I quickly texted Taryn “we are going to be here awhile.” We waited for about an hour and a half in line before getting to the counter and little did we know that once you got to the counter you then had to wait for them to go find the car and alert you it was ready. After another 15-20 minutes of waiting, the worker started calling out names and asking if we wanted the cars cleaned or as is. Everyone was answering to just take the car as is. We were all so fed up with the process… it was the type of crap show where you just start bonding with everyone around you in shared disbelief at how unorganized it all was. About 10 of us with all our luggage followed this worker into the uneven gravel Budget lot. I told our crew I felt like we were going on the show storage wars to place bids on what car we would get. We had no idea what we were about to roll up into since they were not cleaned. The worker could not find any of the cars and clearly looked flustered. She even called out a car only to have one of the guys say, “ma’am there is currently a person in that car.” She responded, “oh yeah, that’s not our car.” The guy could not have said it any better in response, “where are the cameras? I think we are on a show because this is hilarious.” The Budget worker 3 times called out JESSICA to which no one responded. I just want everyone to picture 10 people rolling their luggage over an uneven surface following this woman aimlessly roaming around a parking lot… we could not stop laughing. I finally went and asked her to tell us what car we were looking for so we could assist in finding it. Our Toyota Rav4 was found in the vacuum area, and it was finally time to start our journey to the Hamptons.

With traffic it was going to take us about 3 hours to get to our hotel so instead of sitting in traffic we pit stopped at a dinner place by the marina with some live music, good company and a beautiful view. We caught them up on our adventure of a day before it was time for Taryn and me to depart and finish the hour drive that was left… the adventure wasn’t over.

About 30 minutes left into our drive, we had red and blue lights flashing behind us. “Taryn, I was not speeding. I have no clue why he pulled us over.” The officer came over to Taryn ‘s side of the vehicle and stated we were driving without our lights on. We were both in disbelief as we clearly had some sort of headlight on. I exclaimed that I had lights on. He responded saying just our running board lights were on… we have no clue what that means. Thankfully, he realized we were just two girls in a rental car that are very used to automatic lights and let us off without a ticket. This rise in heart rate fueled the rest of the drive. We parked at our player resort for the weekend or so we thought. An email was sent out the day prior stating that the resort closed at 6pm so an envelope with our names would-be waiting for us on arrival in the mailbox. Welp, when we got to the mailbox at 10:30pm the mailbox did have one envelope, but someone else’s name was on it. We contacted AVP staff and fortunately for us the AVP owner had a rental beach house property a short 12 min drive away. It ultimately worked out better because we discovered the incredible view the next morning, but it was certainly icing on the cake for our adventure of a travel day.

Saturday, we woke up very early as the “shades” in our room did not block any light. The use of a pillow as an eye mask got me another 30 minutes of sleep but ultimately 7 was my wakeup call. While Taryn was still sleeping, I started the research for a breakfast spot. Montauk was a cute little town, so the options were limited. We decided on a restaurant called Bird on the Roof but before making the 10-minute walk over, we realized that we had just slept in a 13 million dollar home right on the beach so we had to go take a short stroll out to the beach. The weather was great, the view was incredible, and breakfast and coffee were tasty. We were off to a great start. We hit Left Hand Coffee for a coffee to take and drink as we sat in the loft of the house watching the surfers and soaking in the view. We decided to start getting ready for our walk in a little early and thankfully we did because we received a text from one of the AVP workers asking if we needed anything for our clinic. We had agreed to do a clinic with some kids before our Sunday match but apparently there was some miscommunication, and it was actually scheduled for Saturday, so we frantically grabbed everything and hit the road for our 30 minute drive. It was a very chill clinic with the AVP owner’s kids, their friends and some family, and it also worked out better doing it Saturday so we could have more chill time Sunday. It also sort of got us warm for our match against the Dallas Dream’s Harward/Deberg. Maybe the clinic did not get us warm enough though because we dropped the first set. We were giving away points left and right. Missed serves. Transition swings out of the court. Our gameplan going into set 2 was just get the ball in the court and it worked. Set 3 we were back to our set 1 ways. Missed serve after missed serve. In a short game to 15, making the other team have to make plays is crucial. You cannot give away points easily like that. Our backs were up against the wall being down late, but we never quit. Just have to focus on getting one dig at a time. We made the plays and fortunately for us and unfortunately for Hailey and Kylie set 3 ended the same way we beat them in San Diego… a trickle ace. Very fitting ending for not only our team name as the Austin Aces but also for the fact that I had missed 53945803 serves in the match. Undefeated streak stayed alive!

The rest of the day consisted of cheering on our guys, heading to a Mexican dinner with fam and friends, watching LSU baseball game win game 1 from our beds and then passing out.

Sunday the weather was yucky. Sprinkles of rain and a lot of wind made our walk around Montauk a little less enjoyable than we would have liked but it was still nice to get out and explore. We hit a little home store that we could have walked around for an entire day and seen something different every loop around the store. We had to walk away with some cute coffee mugs and a picture frame. Before heading back to the house we had to stop for some treats… banana bread from Joni’s Kitchen which I highly recommend and also a raspberry crumb cake from the Montauk Bake Shoppe. There were so many tasty looking treats in there! We had about 2 hours to soak up the beach front view, pack up our suitcases and load up the rental car.

It was a match of undefeated teams but first our men’s teams had to duke it out against Team Brooklyn. Our guys playing before us really makes warming up challenging because we want to show support for them, so you’ll see us during the breaks and timeouts trying to get as much movement in as possible. After an unfortunate loss for the men and a less than ideal warmup, it was go time but more so go time for Brooklyn’s Lexy and Julia. We were getting touches but similar to the Kylie and Hailey game we just kept shooting ourselves, especially me, in the feet. Missed serves, digs springing off my platform too much, or me hitting the ball in the net or out. We settled into the next two sets and found ourselves still undefeated! We survived the crazy wind and took down the “home” team. We also were gifted Levain cookies from the very nice girl working their booth at the event. Think this was the happiest Taryn was all weekend!

Dinner this go round was on the way to the airport at Cowfish. Very pretty spot again by boats and water. I obviously could not leave the Island without getting a lobster roll and it did not disappoint! We sadly had to say goodbye to our friends and make the final hour and a half drive to the hotel.

My dad and I dropped off my mom and Taryn to start showering while we went and dropped off the car. Of course, nothing about the return was smooth. We pulled up to the Budget return area to find a large van and a cone blocking the exit but there was no sign saying anything. My dad jumped out to ask the security guy where to go and then got back into the car informing me that the guy did not speak English well so all he got from the convo was to go around the block to “Ibis or Abis”. He just kept telling my dad apparently to go around. Really wish we had more info to go off of, but we listened and went around looking for hopefully a sign… no signs were found. Plan B was go back to the guy and this time I try and talk to him. When chatting with him, I understood what my dad was hearing. Thankfully, a woman came around and clarified he was talking about Avis. Ahhh that makes way more sense! So, we informed the line of cars that were mad at me for blocking, what they thought was the entrance, that we had to go to Avis.  Pulling into Avis was another adventure. The lot was mass chaos. Cars EVERYWHERE! Workers having no idea where to put cars or the line of rental cars that kept lining up. It was an absolute crap show. We finally were able to pull up, they scanned the car and then I immediately got an Uber to get us the heck of that place.

We arrived back at the hotel to Taryn and my mom ready for bed and everything out of the way for my dad and I to shower. I started organizing my suitcase and explaining the scenario we were just in when my mom asked for help getting her boarding pass for the next day. I tasked Taryn to help since I was still trying to organize. When Taryn said we had a problem I was like oh boy what now?! The Delta app on my mom’s phone said check in was in 8 hours which meant they were booked on the Tuesday 8:10am flight. Taryn called Delta and thankfully we got a very helpful representative who helped us solve the problem. This has to be the last crisis averted right??

5:45am came very early!! My parents were already up and dressed. I was a zombie trying to brush my teeth and get ready and then our last crisis of the trip happened… as my mom opened the door to head downstairs to our Uber the fire alarm in the hotel starts going off. My parents head out and Taryn is still in PJs just starting the getting ready process. I start urging her to get ready fast as I am just trying to grab everything. We were so frantic and then over the intercom we hear them say, “stay where you are. Do not evcaute as we are monitoring the cause of the alarm.” I did not trust that and we also had an Uber to catch so I just kept urging Taryn to hurry (which she was already doing) but I was slightly panicked. I weirdly chose the second floor right by the stairs when picking our room the day prior so it just so happened that we were able to walk right out our door, down the one flight of stairs and straight into our Uber.

This entire trip is up there for one of the worst / most memorable trips. It will certainly be one that we talk about and laugh at for many many weeks, months and maybe even years!

We will also be talking about all of this on Pristine Caffeine with Taryine & Kristine so be on the lookout because I think this will be an entertaining one.