Clay Courts Are Slow

A couple of weeks ago Erica and I took a trip to Hilton Head for the first time. I was pretty excited since I hadn’t ever been there. My aunt has always told me how cool of a place it is and that there were so many things we could do.

We were able to rent bikes and just ride to a lot of places. I had no idea how cool/fun that part would be. They had such cool trails, and you really could just ride forever it seemed. The bikes were normal “beach bikes” where the brakes were part of the pedals, not on the handle bars. Growing up, that is the kind of bike I started with, but I don’t think Erica had ever had a bike like that. She had to figure out the braking system before we went anywhere.

I remember the bike I had like that. It was red with super cool silver and black decals. Probably one of the coolest bikes ever… until I left it behind my mom’s car and she backed over it. Then, it was still a cool looking bike, just a lot harder to pedal because it bent the pedals into a weird jumble of awkwardness.

Other than riding bikes forever, we also got to play some tennis. I love playing tennis, but I hadn’t ever played on a clay court. I’m thinking, oh man, clay courts… you can slide, its like orangey red looking… this is going to be fun.

Well, first off, it’s green. From a distance it looks almost identical to a normal court. Second, you were supposed to only wear actual tennis shoes because it could hurt your ankles and also the tread could make the courts unplayable. So, we were just looking at other people’s shoes and making sure our shoes with tread were ok. We kept being paranoid and thinking that the lady at the reservation desk was constantly looking at our shoes.

Last, playing on a clay court really slows the game. I was really shocked at how it made the ball harder to hit. I’m used to being a certain distance from the ball when it bounces because of how fast it’s coming toward me. Well, no matter how quick the ball came, it seemed to almost stop when it hit the clay. I was fumbling trying to stretch to get the ball. Don’t get me wrong though, I still enjoyed playing on the clay, I think I just prefer a normal court.

One of the other really cool things we were able to do was take a boat ride and see some dolphins! I can’t remember how long we were actually out on the boat, but we got to see some cool houses and follow some dolphins around. I got some pretty cool pictures of two, a mother and it’s baby. The weather for the boat ride was awesome!

Actually, overall the weather for the whole trip was awesome! I would definitely go back to Hilton Head, especially when it’s a little warmer. There aren’t many chances that we get to take a relaxing vacation, but this was definitely one of them. I hope we can do it again soon!