Au revoir et bonne nuit.

I’m here in my apartment, bags packed and ready to fly home tomorrow (tues oct 26th). The rest of the season here is pretty slow and, without any tournaments in October, I figure my time will be better spent training back in california and doing a bit of work for an old econ professor back in santa cruz. I got signed to play for a club in Beziers during May so I will be back in France in the spring. I was super excited to get the club team offer at the end of September. Colin and I got to be friends with this guy Pierre in the south after seeing him at a couple consecutive tournaments and he told me his club team is looking for a new player to fill a spot. He said I’d probably play in the middle of the 5-singles player lineup, behind him and his brother. All the clubs I had previously spoken with were only regional level teams so I was excited to find out that the club, TC Serignan, is at the National 4 level, meaning we’ll get to travel throughout france to play our 4 away matches. Colin and I never went to Beziers but I checked it out and it’s on the coast on the Mediterranean in the south and a decent sized city- definitely smaller than Paris or Montpellier though. I’ll live for the month at Pierre’s house which will be nice and free thank god. The level of the team sounds pretty good to- Pierre is a -4, his brother 0, and a couple 1/6 and 2/6 players. Matches are only on the weekend so I’m looking forward to some week trips to Cote d’azur and nearby spain with the other players on the team.

The match format is 5 singles and 2 doubles. The season consists of only 5 matches. Each club gets put into a 5 team pool within its division and each team plays all the others, making up the 5 matches. If your club wins its pool then it moves up a division for the next season. National 1 clubs are composed of players like Songa and Monfils and National 2 is made of players ranked like high atp so I feel good about finding a place on a National 4 team. Plus south france is awesome!

So my plan is to come back early spring, play some tournaments here in Paris, hopefully couching it with the friends I’ve made, and then to head down south just before May when the 1 month club season starts.

This unpredictable and roller coaster trip has come a long way and it feels a bit strange to be getting ready to board a plane for home. It’s funny to think about how Colin and I had no idea what lay ahead when we stayed up to 4am planning out our tournaments one night in Rouen. We went through some awesome contrasts- camping in pouring rain in Normandie- sleeping on the beach in the south, to living in a crowded Paris apartment with 5 other guys my age. So what do I have to show for myself- my total prize money earnings since arriving at the end of july is 635 Euros, (equaling around 850 dollars or so), some improved French skills, some improved art knowledge after a few visits to the louvre, and a lot of shared bottles of wine with colin in the south. See everyone soon back in the Golden State!

Signing out, Marc.

I had to give my housemates some blog space before i left so here you go- a quick view of us doing something with an Iphone Cat. this was at our friend clements apartment before we went out close by. Probably the coolest place to go out is a nightclub that is on an old docked boat in the Seine river which runs through the city..up on deck people hang out and down under is a dance floor. It's a pretty small boat though so it's not a big place but still really fun.

Paris pics

It's been a long time since Pontois and a lot has happened; I'll run through some highlights and share a few stories. Also, here are some random pictures and video I've taken along the way.

In some of the best tennis I've played while in France, I won the TC Houilles tournament, a 860€ tournament capped at the 0 ranking spot. The prize money for the winner was 200euros. I beat two 1/6 players who were decent players en route to the victory. I've gotten some strange match times and in the quarterfinals I played a 1/6 on an indoor hard court at 9pm. I played really well to start out and took the first set 6-1. After a major line call dispute in the second set, my opponent went nuts and made the rest of the match miserable; he hooked me on like 3 balls that weren't even close to the line and was talking shit each change over. We were literally the only two people in the building and tensions were definitely high to say the least. He won the 2nd set 6-4. In the third I really found my strokes again and, stepping up my serve and volley game, took the final set 6-3. In the final I played great and managed to win 6-3, 6-3 against a 1/6 named Mathieu Moriot. It's been great stepping up my backcourt game and being able to control points from the back more and more.

I played a tournament in Versailles, about 30 min train ride outside of the city and where the famous WW2 treaty was signed at the massive Chateau de Versailles. I won my match in the morning at a really nice clay court club and then decided to use my 5 hour break before my next match to do some sightseeing and check out the Chateau. Some random guy at the club drove me to the palace and I spent about two hours walking around the famous gardens and checking out its ancient statues. I eat lunch at the Chateau using some salami i had with me and a baguette i bought in town before making it back to the club in time for my next match. I played well and made a really key stride with improving my forehand but lost to a 1/6. Versailles is a really fancy place and the club, the Tennis Club du Grand Versailles, was an amazing clay club with 7 indoor clay and 7 outdoor clay courts. Definitely not a bad place to spend the day.

Some off court news: Paris has been great. I've had lots of nights out on the town with my housemates and have gotten to know my way around pretty well. I took my camera with me one night when we all went out and took some pictures. We didn't end up getting home until about 7am that morning but had a great time. Probably one of the most fun places at night in the city is Pont Neuf. It’s a bridge crossing the Seine right in front of the Louvre that becomes a party and hang out spot on a warm night. Its got drum circles, drinking, and is filled with mostly students. I’ve gone a couple times with my housemates and have had a blast.

While walking around the city one day after playing a match earlier in the day in Velizy, I met an old guy in his 70's who has lived in Paris his whole life. We started talking and he asked if I'd want to meet up one day to practice english and we could work on some french. I agreed not really knowing what to expect. A couple days later I get off the metro at Saint-Michel expecting to meet him on foot; he pulls up in an audi sportscar and the first thing he says to me is "want to drive in paris?" So I've been hanging out with this guy maybe once a week, learning more french and cruising around paris a bit with him.

I leave on Wednesday for Bath (just outside London) to stay and train for a week with the British guys I met at the TC Pontois tournament. Thanks to the high speed trains between the cities it's only about a two hour train ride to London. Rich, Pete, and Richard all play for the University of Bath tennis team and invited me to join their team's practices in October while the French tennis season takes a one-month break. The French Tennis Federation reviews all the results and moves your ranking accordingly. The federation gave Colin and I an assimilated ranking of 2/6 when we first got here in July but I'm hoping, based on my results, that I will be moving up to a 1/6. I'll find out soon. Looking forward to getting a taste of the tennis scene around London and will report back soon!

Until next time, peace.

Paris

Here are some pictures of Tennis Club de Pontois, a cool clay court club where my latest tournament has been. Hey everyone, Marc reporting in. So Colin is back in California and I'm living in a small apartment in the 14thème of Paris to play tournaments in and around the city. It's sad that our camping adventure through Normandie and the Langdouc region has come to an end, but I'm excited about Paris and it's defenitely nice to be settled in one place. My apartment is shared with 4 other students, all going to school in Paris. The apartment is really small and the building was built in the 1800's so it has a weird funky feel to it. The location is great though; it's in the Latin Quarter and right on a key metro line that lets me get to the tournaments. Colin stayed here for a few night before flying home and we had a great first night out in the city with my new housemates.

I just finished my first tournament at the Tennis Club du Pontois, about an hour comute out of the city from my apartment. Colin's last week in France was pretty hectic and included a couple nights out in Montpellier with our tennis friend Demaz, sleeping on the beach, getting woken up by German Shepard police dogs, and surviving a night on the street in Montpellier after Colin's attemt at booking a hostel at a McDonald's cafe failed. So it was nice to turn my attention back to tennis and getting ready for the Pontois Open. The tournament was played on both indoor and outdoor red clay (the terra battu). After a couple days of solid practice with some english guys who were also playing the tournament I felt ready to go. In my first match I ended up playing Pete, one of my new British friends. The match was gritty; Pete hit a high topspin forehand and had a really good chip backhand and would give up very very few errors. This, combined with the slow indoor clay, made for a tough opponent and I realized I could be in for the long haul. After three hours of sliding side to side and getting covered with dusty indoor clay, I finally won 5-7, 6-4, 6-3. On to the quarterfinals and 50€ richer! A hard earned 50€ at that.

In the quarterfinals I lost 4 and 1 to a good french guy ranked 0. His rafa style was just too much for me on the terra battu. Give me a bit more practice on the dirt and maybe i'll take him next time. I was happy to be taking home prize money from my first terra battu tourny though!!

The next night the three english guys from the tournament (including the one I beat) called me up to go out with them in Paris. I met them at their friend's apartment. These guys were crazy!!! The guy I had beaten the other day was just getting hammered and they told me about a tradition they have on their tennis team (university of bathe). If someone losses a set 6-0 that person has to take a shot of one of the other players' piss later that night when they are all partying. And they actually do it! They launched into a series of remember when stories of all the times they've taken shots of each others' piss. I was really glad I hadn't gotten bagled in my first set loss to Pete.

I've been a major metro rat the past 5 days, going to and from Pontois, and felt like I was only navagating the city underground. On one of my days off I escaped the metro and walked a ton around the city with Clemants, a french student who has been living in the apt with her boyfriend. First we went to the Jardin de Luxembourg which is pretty close to our apartment and has some cool public tennis courts wedged between the park's gardens and its palace. Then she showed me the fashion district and we walked down the main fashon street, Avenue Montaigne which is laced with all the famous fashion brands. Walking down the fancy street marked with quadrouple Euro prices made me look back on the days with Colin and when someone would suggest to us, "Oh you guys should go do such & such, it only costs..." And Colin would interupt, "Nope, if it costs money WE'RE NOT DOING IT." We stopped by the Champs Elysèes and then, after walking for like 4 hours, decided to take the metro home (haha).

Living in a sweet spot in Paris is awesome but part of me misses the huck-finn moments with Colin. Perusing my memory for our cheapest moments, I've come up with a few:

-stealing silverware from every grocery store we entered.

-colin refusing to pay 15 euros for the hostel in Gruissan, opting to sleep on the beach and getting drenched by early morning beach irrigation.

Next tourny: TC Du Grand Versailles. 4,730€ terra battu!!!

Goodbye to France for Colin

Peqce out France

The Eiffel Tower tonight

The Louvre - its free on the first sunday of the month so we didntpay qnything

Art critics

Varts apartment is on the 2nd floor of this building

close up view of our cooking utensils for the past 6 weeks

Vartas lofted Parissian bed

Train ride after escaping Montepellier

Courts in Carnon, with a view of the locals

We just spent two great days in Paris, and all my bags are packed and ready to go in the morning.

We spent a hellish night in Montpellier on Friday night. What we thought would be a triumphant conclusion to the journey in the South took a detour for the worst really fast. When we got into Montpellier it was around 6 on Friday, and we went to a mcdonalds to use internet and book a hostel. We found one really fast, but ended up staying in the plush leathercouchs in mcdonalds for four more hours!! We found the discotechue that we were going to party at, which bus took us there, and directions to the hostel, and Marc was planning his tournaments in Paris, so atleqst we were being productive.

By the time we got out of there, it was dark. As we began roaming to find our hostel we each started to get a bad feeling, and when we arrived outside of Hotel de Franc the whole road was shut down for the construction of a tramway. Turns out the hostel never got our online booking because their internet connection was shut off for construction purposes. Suchhhh a bummer. We spent the next two hours looking for another roo, but they were all full or way out of our cheap budget. We decided to take the 7 amtrain to Paris qnd sleep^in the train station until then, so we had about six hours to kill.

Turns out the train station only stays open until 2. So we got awoken qnd kicked out by two French security guards and a terrifying German Shepard. We reloacted to the corner of the train station, which was a horrible place to sleep bc drunk people were roa,ing everywhere. We were sqfe, becquse a few other groups just like us were out and the security guys were always on the scene, but it was still pretty unnverving. Colin didnt sleep the whole time. Varta ended up getting woken up by the killer attack dog German SHepard two more times, once to let us know we could go back in the building qnd another time to tell him it was "interdit" to sleep in the station.

We got into Paris saturday around noon and moved into Marcs new flat in Paris. He lives in a sweet park of town just south of the Seine and in a heavy student area. The guy who owns the flat is retired and has 5 students living in a small parisian apartment. It perfectfor Vart though.

Saturday we walked around for awhile, and then went out to a few bars with Marcs new roommates. We woke up this morning pretty hungover but managed to have a great day, going to the Louvre, the Montmarte area, and theEiffel Tower. We even attended a legit French Catholic mast in Sacre Couer, which is a huge church on the top of the city. We had just finsihed a bottle of wine, and got very absorbed in the experience.

Colin flies back to the states in the morning. I had a blast, and so happy I made the trip despite so little planning and money. Varta is gunna play the xwhole month of september qnd has 5 tournaments lined up starting on wednesday. The is Colin signing off, see you all soon

Carnon & Montpellier Pics

Carnon beaches - alle a le plague - our playground, backyard, and most importantly, bedroom

yesterday we went into Montpellier

This is one of the most famous buildings in the area

Taking a nap in the grand park at the top of the city

All Slug Final in Perpignan

All slug final & Carnon

The finals of Perpignan was exclusively an all-Slug final. After we both won in the semi’s we were SO stoked, and got treated to a nice dinner with three of the women at the club. We tried our best to learn some French with them, and we taught them some very important English words like “dude”, and “whats up dawg”.

Varta took home the bacon in a hard-faught match that definitely was one of the highlights of our trip. We both had good wins to get to the finals, and both played well. The difference in the match came down to a few plays, and who executed better on the court and Marc’s serve proved too hard to break. We got treated great at the tournament, and after the match we got 400 euros, our biggest payday of the trip! We had some wine and beer at the tournament banquet after, it was BOMB.

Turned out that our next and last tournament in Southern France started the very next morning. It was in Carnon, which is a beach city right outside of Montpellier. We got a ride to the airport from our Legionare friend Andre in his big green tank (Land Rover) and took a train to Montpellier. When we got off the train, we stumbled onto two different buses that eventually took us out onto a long peninsula that separates the mainland from the beach towns that Carnon is a part of. Before starting the travel day, we kind of starting to worry that our travel luck may have run out because we didn’t even have the address for the tennis club, but the bus dropped us off at the main bus stop at the Tourism office and to our disbelief, the courts were RIGHT next to the bus stop.

The Carnon club has 6 courts and 3 different surfaces: one really fast hard court, 3 quick courts, and 3 Gasol courts which is carpet with sand all over it. Basically its synthetic red clay. The club is in the middle of a major renovation and is filled with buzz-saws, hammers, drills, concrete pourers, big trucks, and weathered construction men from 7 in the morning until 7 in the evening. The club said we could stay there, up in the locker rooms on the second floor. The only catch is that at around 7 in the morning the cleaning ladies have to come up, but they told us we would probably we awake from the construction anyways. Turns out they were very correct, because every morning we have been violently awoken to huge banging noises. We have the routine down pretty good now though, at around 7 we pack up our sleeping pads and pillow and sonder out onto the beach, which is about 50 yards from the club, and sleep for a few hours in the beach as the sun comes up. Its actually pretty nice.

Colin scrapped out another victory in the first round against a 2/6 player. It officially meant that Colin has a winning record for the trip whooo-hoooo which was his main goal as far as the tennis goes. Groundstrokes were still all over the place, so he spent about half of the match at the net and serve and volleying.

Varta had a rough outing against a guy who used to be around top 15 in all of France back in his hay-day. The guy played very unorthodox and it was pretty hard to catch a rhythm.

The next day Colin played another 2/6 on an extremely windy day, so windy that you could practically hit it as hard as you could on one side and it would go in, and exactly the opposite on the other side. Turns out his opponent just finished school in Michigan. Colin lost pretty bad in straight sets, and officially ended his French tennis career chipping and charging and serve-and-volleying for the second part of the second set haha.

We are officially done with tennis for this leg of the trip. Colin goes home on Monday and Varta just put the finishing touches on renting a room in Paris to play tournaments for the month of September. We have just been bumming around the beaches and went out to a bar last night in Montpellier.

We told all the guys around the Carnon club that we wanna go out to the nightclubs, so they are gunna go out with us tonight! The main guy running the club, named Damaz, is super cool and took us out last night to a club called “the rum room.” Tonight were going out with Damaz, the main tennis pro here named JB, and then the top tennis player in this area who is around 120 ATP. Should be pretty fun.

TC Perpignan

They make us coffee, and give us this delicious pastry for breakfast

The ulta-modern clubhouse - our living room

Im not sure what Varta was doing behind the bar

Hitting on the "quick" surface this morning

The club closes from 1-4 pm because its too hot to play. We joke that the club goes into "sleep mode" but we have just been staying on the back patio chillin cuz perpignan is kinda wierd

One of our foul lunch creations

Varta hitting on the only true hard court here - "green set" they call it

Today both Varta and CMG are in the semi-finals of the Perpignan tournament. We both won our quarterfinal matches late last night in some furiously wicked winds. Chairs were flying around the courts, and the balls flew threw the air more like frisbee's.

Varta's opponent was smoking a cigarette up until the moment they stepped on the court, and had the highest number of drop-shot attempts either of us have ever seen. Drop-shot return, drop-shot volley, drop-shot overhead, i mean, the guy loved the dropshot more than Ortiz after he came back from Spain. Varta won 6-3, 6-4.

Colin's opponent was a very strange guy, and was basically totally dependent on his forehand. Colin was up early in the first set and had two sets points at 5-4, up 40-15. At 40-15 a gust of wind came and took an easy overhead into a twirling ball of doom. The wind picked up so hard, it blew Colin's hat off. He ended up losing the first set, 7-5. He was pretty upset, and determined not to lose to his opponent, who was very pudgy and resembled Harry Potter's step-brother. Colin won easily in the second 6-0, and 6-3 in the third.

Today we play at 6 pm. Colin has a rematch with the Argentian guy who beat him at Port Vendres and Varta doesnt know his opponent. Let go Cruz!

Update

Port Vendres - the tournament was very small and we started in the quarterfinals. We each played players ranked 15, which is a few rankings below us. It had been about 5 days since our last match, and we werent able to get much practice time so it was a rough start. Both of us didnt play very consistent, but were able to pull out ugly 3 set victories. Varta won his first set, lost the second 0-6, and won the third 6-0. hahah, the guy was a horrible competitor, and acted like a baby and ended up getting into a yelling match with the ref. Colin's opponent had no backhand, but was running around everything and hitting good forehands. He

had beat a high ranked player the day before and still seemed to be treeing from the previous day. Colin lost the first but got up and early break in the second, and by the third set it was pretty over, with a 6-1 set. In the semi-finals, we both played

2/6 players who we thou

ght we had a good chance to beat. Turns out they were both REALLY solid, and we both got beat in straight sets. Those two guys ended up having a good three set match to end the tournament.

We ended up having to pull out of

our next tournament because th

e dates overlapped and we were trying to coordinate playing three matches in two days, with two two-hour train rides in the mi

ddle, which would have been no fun. So we

pulled out, the tournament director yelled at us in French, but whatever it worke

d out for the best because it turned out that we had the whole weekend off starting on last Thursday. We stuck around Port Vendres for a really nice dinner celebration at the end, where they had wine and all sorts of seafood. We planned a trip to Barcelona for the weekend, and woke up early to catch the train on Friday morning after a huge storm on thursday morning. Turns out following that storm there was a heat wave that is still lingering in Southern France/catalone area.

We snuck on the train into Barcelona early Friday morning, mainly because the line was so long to buy tickets. By the time we had to switch trains, the workers hadnt checked

our tickets yet so we got a free ride half the way! We got really

sketched when we got off though, because they were checking something to get into the train station so we snuck through the backdoor of a cafe in the train station and got in fine. We had to buy a ticket on the next train, but it was only 10 euros to get to barcelona! We stayed with one of our friends from UCSC, Nikki, who is now living in Barcelona and is teaching English at a school. We spent the day going to Placa Espana, Los Ramblas Street, and the beaches that are right in the heart of the city.

It was SO hot, we were literally sweating the whole weekend. After a few solid hours at the beach, we met up with Nikki and ended up going out to a really cool club in the Port Olympica area, names Shoko, which had a huge dancefloor and direct access to the beach to cool off. We got a free drink just for paying the cover charge, and when marc went back to the bar to order 2 vodka-tonics his jaw almost dropped when they charged him 20 euros! It was a really really fun night, and we didnt end up getting back until about 4:30 am. It had been over 3 weeks since we had slept in a real bed, and so by the time we got back and passed out we didnt wake up until around 5 pm!! hahah it was good though, because i think it was way over 100 in Barcelona and so when we left to sightsee around 5:30 it was finall

y cooling down. We went out to Park Guell in the outskirts of the city, where there is lots of unique architecture and then met back up with Nikki to watch the waterfountain show at Placa Espana. We

ended the night with our first real legit restaurant experience, with some Paella and wine.

We took the early train back to France in the morning on Sunday, back to Port Vendres to pack up and move to the next tournament in Gruissan. I dont know what our problem is but somehow we end up running to make literally every train we have taken on this trip. This time is included jumping a 12 foot gate that is a short-cut

to the train station from the tennis tournament and then throwing our 60 pound suitcases and ten

bags over. The club at Port Vendres was so nice to us, they gave us a key to the club before we went to Barcelona and let us store all our stuff there while they were closed for the weekend. Talk about trust. After a few layovers, we got into Norbonne (about 75 kilometers north of Port Vendres, and 20 kilometers inland from Gruissan) at about 9 only to realize all the buses to Gruissan were over. We bummed around the train station for 2

hours with a sign that said "Gruissan?" and finally resigned to walk to a local hostel. However, while lugging our stuff to the hostel a Land Rover pull

ed up and asked us if we needed a ride to the tennis club! They just saw our tennis bags and i guess they assumed we were playing, so we got SOOO lucky because it turns out Colin's match was at 9 in the morning the next day and theres no buses that get there that early. We had this nice couple in the Land Rover check our French phone voicemails, which were all in French, and it turns out Marc's match was on Sunday and we had already missed it, total bummer.

So we got dropped off in Gruissan around 11 pm with

nowhere to stay. We ended up spending the night under some big pine trees in the Botanical Gardens haha and I woke up and walked almost directly onto the court to play my first round. I won easily against a 15 player, 6-1, 6-1 and considering the hectic travel before I played very well. We decided that we were just going to camp on the beach, and leave our valuables in the club overnight, and since I didnt play until the next night on Tuesday we spent the rest of the day hanging out on the beach and roaming around Gruissan, which isa very touristy port town on the Meditteranean and also a protected Salt Lake.

That first night we slept on the main beach r

ight outside of the port, where they have nice groomed grass right above the sand. We slept right under the barrier that seperated the grass from the sand, and it turns out around 4 in the morning there are sprinklers that come on the water the grass (and any beach bum Americans sleeping) so we got SOAKED. It took us like a full minute to realize they were going off soon and that we needed to move.

I just tried pulling my sleeping bag over my head and to tough it out, but after getting just completely soaked i finally quit and moved.

My match on tuesday was against a highly ranked Argentinian player ranked -2/6, which is about 4 rankings ahead of me. I played very well, and we played on the "quick" surface which is a super slow hard court. This guy had a very big serve and very big forehand, but was prone to errors if i hit enough deep balls and kept him moving. Despite getting down an early break, i played well and got it back to 5-5. We had a very good level going for awhile, and he broke me to win the first 7-5. The second was similiar, with bot

h of us holdin

g serve relatively easily. I had a few break points at 3-3 but couldnt convert and he ended up breaking to win the second set 6-3. It was too bad, I just didnt take my opportunities when I had them but I played well.

We found a better spot to sleep the next night, under some palm trees on the other

side of the cement by the beach that is essentially the beach walk promonade. In the middle of the night, this dog found his way over to us, and Marc woke up to find this dog looking him right in the eyes. When the dog saw he was awake, it started growling and barking and made the pose to pounce and Varta yelled SOO loud! It startled

me awake, and i said WTF is that a wolverine! By the time i got up and turned to look Marc's way he had already fallen back asleep hah so we didnt laugh about it until the next day.

On Wednesday, the tournam

ent director from Gruissan offered to give us a ride to our next tournament, in Perpignan about one hour South. She didnt want to leave un

til about 5 pm so we got to spend t

he day snorkeling and hanging out at the beach. It wa

s possibly our smoothest transition. When we got dropped off at the club in perpignan, we were given the royal greeting. They let us camp on the Bocci court just outside the club, gave us a tour of the club, and gave us two beers! Then we hit, and it turns out that they had a big family dinner going on at the club so we got fed huge amounts of grilled chicken, cous-cous, baguettes, chorizo, rose wine, tomatoes, and a chocolate de

ssert. It was

honestly like living in a dream for Marc and I, who have been making ravioli and baguette sandwhiches for weeks. We ate so much that we almost got sick, haha we both stumbled back to the tent and rubbed o

ur stomaches for the next 30 minutes.

Today has been our day off. We hit in the morning and are getting ready for our matches tomorrow night. Our new friend Andre, a retired French 'legionare' took us around town today. He is an awesome dude, doesnt speak a wordof english, and showed us a full on bayonett and grenade that he had tucked i

n his driver-side pocket of his Land Rover in case someone tried to mess with us hah. We are in the quarters of this

tournament and are the highest ranked players. Things are looking up, this club is super nice and we are getting to practice alot.

That was really long, but its been awhile since our last post. Hope this made sense.

- Colin + Marc