The Day I Ruined Volleyball

The heat outside was unbearable. As I lay motionless in a starfish position on the bed in a small air conditioned room in the early afternoon, I vowed to face the uncomfortable temperatures and walk the dogs just after the highly predictable afternoon rains came and cooled the ambient air down a bit.

I was in Bali for a debriefing period after a month-long cycling trip around Tasmania. It was early January 2020, and a flight to Bali was a more affordable alternative to flying all the way back to Canada’s pacific northwest while the airfare prices were still sky high due Christmas seasonal pricing. I decided to wait out the price hikes and in the meantime, I decided to get some dental work done in Bali, which can be very affordable and of high calibre, if you do your research before booking.

With a little luck, some travel flexibility, and some internet wizardry using trustedhousesitters.com, I also managed to find a housesit in Canggu, a community located about 15kms outside the “big smoke” of Bali’s capital city of Denpasar. Canggu, like many coastal communities in Bali, boasts vast expanses of land teeming with rice fields, whose plentiful irrigation streams meander their way through the deep green and lush landscape, past barefooted farmers that toil in the fields, whose stamina never ceases to amaze, as they work long hours in temperatures that I find incompatible with life. The streams finally spill into the ocean in braided channels via sandy beaches that are either swarming with touristy beach goers, friendly local seaside enthusiasts, the odd wiry beer sipping expat bachelor, or lone house sitting dog walkers.

Depending on the road you find yourself on, Canggu can feel downright rural with minimal traffic aside from the odd scooter buzzing by, carrying a couple of farmers and usually some kind of impossible load of equipment perched in an awkward position that defies the laws of physics. In stark contrast, less than two kilometers away is a road that acts as a main transportation artery for what seems to be every human being in Bali, who have, for some reason, decided to commute to meet at this one specific intersection in Canggu at exactly the same time. Needless to say, the artery is clogged. The prognosis is impossibly terminal. Yet, miraculously, the heart of Canggu just keeps on beating and traffic keeps circulating, albeit at a snail’s pace. Despite the swarming chaos and tangled mess of vehicles navigating through a lawless world of traffic, people get to where they want to go, in a generally peaceful manner. It seems only westerners are a threat to the system - sunburnt pasty white bros riding rental dirtbikes dart aggressively through traffic, yelling, swearing and honking at the slowness, while their linen clad lady friends take selfies at inopportune occasions. I began to wonder day after day if it was something other than coincidence or miracle that I managed to come out of my daily bike and scooter rides completely unscathed and alive. There is some divine order to the chaos. The best way to navigate changing lanes or crossing the road was not by looking, not by thinking - just simply by doing. Somehow others adjusted and adapted while you let “Jesus take the wheel”, hurtling through traffic towards the tasty salvation of a vegan, gluten-free, totally organic, free-trade, cruelty free, instagram-worthy, ethically churned ice cream boutique in an attempt to cool your core body temperature from the inside out.

Some creative scooter transportation techniques. This is mild compared to what I saw on the back roads!

If you haven’t figured it out already, hot places are not my specialty. Evolution preconfigured my settings for cold climates. I thrive in the +10 to -20 range, and seem to be at my happiest and healthiest in more isolated environments with quality of life ratings that rank at or slightly higher than survival mode. Where function is fashion, and my muscular, androgynous figure is best complimented with my signature look of “Hobo Chic”, which always incorporates a “spandex du jour”, a Woolen Stanfield, and a torn puffy vest in some configuration. Here, in a world of bronzed gods and goddesses, clad in light cottons, bikinis and sundresses that loosely cover very flexible, slender, and slight frames, the contrast could not be more stark. By sheer necessity, I too donned the same apparel, except instead of looking like a bronzed goddess, I looked more like a sunburned albino ape, whose tight rounded shoulders tested the strength of the sundress stitching, which hung awkwardly from my frame. White skin that had not seen the light of day but for brief cold water dips and outdoor showers in many years, revealed heat rashes, and invited new bug bites that inevitably turned to welts. My legs, battered and bruised from bike trip mishaps, were hairy and punctuated with old scars from sporting days past. I walked around as though I had invisible lats, with legs spread apart so that no body part could rub onto another, and spent a lot of time wishing for a vent of air to spring up from the streets like a cold geyser so that I could straddle it for total body relief. I found myself identifying most with the scruffy street dogs that navigated the busy streets in search of scraps and shade, on their own time, in their own world - not physically designed to be where they were, but making do.

Speaking of dogs, my main responsibility while housesitting in Canggu was to care for two pitbulls named Maya and Panda. As aforementioned, dogs are not an uncommon sight in Bali, but generally they seem to be more of the feral variety, rather than pets. This became fairly evident during the first few days of our time together, when I took the dogs for walks along the road past a temple, through the rice fields and past the local dump. Interesting side note: I later found out that what I thought was a dump, was actually just a road building operation - it is common practice to lay down garbage and burn it as a way of laying down a solid base upon which to build a road in the fields. It made me question the health and fate of the downstream rice fields, I must say. As I strolled past working farmers, I was in awe of their work ethic and dedication, and it appeared as though my wonder was reciprocated. People would often stop what they were doing to stare as I walked past with two powerful and muscular dogs pulling in their never ending quest toward an unknown destination. Their reactions ranged from dumbfounded stares with mouth agape, to enthusiastic waves. Once, a group of young farmers invited me under an awning in a makeshift shack to have tea and to take pictures with me and the dog. By the end of my two week stay in Canggu, I felt that I had almost reached celebrity status with the farmers in the rice fields around the house. “Return of the Mack” was my mind-generated soundtrack as I walked through the fields met with awestruck gazes, or as I watched someone turn their head 270 degrees like Linda Blair in the Exorcist while they slowed to a crawl on their moped to watch us strut our stuff.

Panda and Maya getting a morning walk in the rice fields around Seseh Temple.

In the mornings I would walk Panda and Maya simultaneously through the fields. In the afternoon, I walked each dog individually to spend quality time with each. Panda especially needed attention, as he was an excitable dog, and although he was small in stature (he stood just at knee height to me), he was extremely strong. He had a particular hate-on for anything on two wheels, so walking alongside any kind of roadway with consistent bicycle and scooter traffic was a resistance training session for both of us. One day, a feeble looking old man walked by us while pushing his bicycle on his way to the fields. Panda suddenly jumped up from the ground and nipped his elbow, causing him to lose his footing and almost fall over. He weighed probably 100 pounds soaking wet, and had I not caught him mid fall, I feel like his bones would have simultaneously shattered like a china set on a marble floor. All I could do was apologize profusely. Embarrassingly low in Balinese language skills due to my very last minute decision to visit the area, the only word I could muster was “suksuma”, which means “Thank you”, which I repeated over and over again. He rattled off about 5 full paragraphs of dialogue, while he rubbed his elbow and I did my best to be apologetic about the whole shamozzle.

Panda in a section of a field that I thought was a garbage dump, which turned out to be a road building effort.

Maya, on the other hand, was calm, cool and collected. I could attach her by harness to the side of my bicycle and she ran alongside me. Even when local feral dogs lunged at her left and right as we passed through a part of Seseh road on the way to the beach, a section I called “the dog gauntlet”, she would heel next to the bicycle and let me keep the other dogs at bay as I shouted warning yells and growled. She was the epitome of a well-behaved, well-trained dog, and certainly challenged the common prejudices assigned to the average pitbull of aggressive, unpredictable behaviour. Her one quirk, however, was an unrelenting obsession with balls and toys. If there was any object around that even slightly resembled a ball, she would become fixated on it. I was instructed by her owner to always keep two or three balls on hand when we went to the beach, as she would only let go of the ball she had in her mouth, if there was another one to throw for her. That was also key to getting her back on her leash. Her owner assured me that she had great recall on the beach and was no threat to have off leash, which was absolutely true under normal circumstances. The first few days, where the end of the road forked left and right, I took the right hand fork and continued on to a fairly secluded, low traffic beach, that was frequented mostly by local kids and a few instagram influencers doing sunset vanity shoots along the water’s edge. While I threw the ball for Maya, I quietly took in the weirdness that is part of creating content for social media. It was not unusual to see a girl repeatedly running and skipping in a 10 meter section of shoreline while smiling and laughing only to stop on a dime, break character, and run to the camera to make sure she got the angle right. The scene felt otherworldly to me, especially in contrast to the local youth who seemed to just be enjoying themselves in the water, without needing to validate their happiness by sharing it with the virtual world, and also in contrast to the women who religiously performed their nightly ceremonies and rituals and whose unwavering focus was aimed at their gods and deities, and their personal quest for spiritual enlightenment. At some point during such a scene, a coconut had washed up on the beach, which Maya pursued with great enthusiasm. She got dangerously close to the surf in her chase, to the point where I envisioned her getting swept out to sea, and then imagining trying to explain to her owner how she ended up drowning on my watch. No ball that I carried could shake Maya from her absolute obsession with the random washed up coconut. It took a good 20 minutes to get close enough to her to get her back on her leash and head for home. This is the part of the story that would qualify as “foreshadowing.”

On our first 3 or 4 jaunts to the beach, I always turned right off Seseh Rd. and headed to the more secluded beach. Other than the coconut incident, our beach sessions were uneventful, yet pleasant. On a beautiful Sunday evening, as we headed through the dog gauntlet down Seseh Rd., I decided to turn left and continue on to Seseh Beach instead. The beach here is a busier scene, with a mix of locals, some low key beach resorts and tourists, and some volleyball courts enclosed in netting about 500 meters down the beach. Sunday nights were a particularly active time at Seseh beach, especially with locals, who came gathered in groups of friends and family, had picnics, played musical instruments, and kicked the soccer ball around. It was a happy and wholesome environment. I was fixing to come down to Seseh to drink a coconut, take in the sights and sounds, and then move on to the quieter beach later on to toss the ball around with Maya. I have a bad habit of bringing a lot of hobbies and stuff with me to relaxing places, in the form of books, to do lists, and various paper related activities like crossword puzzles. None of which I ever really use, but I enjoy the idea of having them with me in case the spirit moves me.

As the beach was busier than usual, I decided to carry my bike down the stairs with me, which had my saddle bags of activities attached to it, and the dog attached to the bike. I made quite the brouhaha as I parted the seas through people perched on the stairs that led down to the beach, and I garnered particular interest due to my canine companion. People seemed genuinely amused by my presence. Bicycles are already a bit of an oddity locally, so when you add a dog and a clumsy handler to the mix, it’s a full on event. I ordered my coconut, pulled up a beach recliner and unclipped Maya from her bicycle bungee.

As the coconut arrived, I let Maya go before I attached her to her leash wrapped around the recliner. She had been quite good in the past about laying close to me, and as I paid for the coconut she laid next to the seat, unfussed. I casually grabbed for her leash that was tangled in my bag of things. As I wrestled with the leash being wrapped around various objects, I noticed Maya’s ears perk up and before I could react, she dashed off towards the water to a group of toddlers who were playing soccer. Uh oh. Begin nightmare pitbull scenario. Although generally a gentle dog, she had no chill when it came to pursuing her one and only passion, so as I watched her dashing in a straight line towards the object of her obsession, I envisioned her barreling through the group of kids and knocking them over like bowling pins.

Having already been on the radar of the droves of local people hanging out on the concrete steps near my resting place, I distinctly remember feeling a moment of quiet fall upon the crowd as the dog dashed towards the kids. In an instant, Maya had the soccer ball in her mouth, kids stood in shock while I fumbled clumsily towards the dog, being made a fool of as she sidestepped me every time I got near her with the ball in her mouth. I had my “emergency tennis balls” on hand and attempted to throw them to coax her to drop the soccer ball out of her mouth. This elicited laughter and attention from the peanut gallery on the stairs above. When that didn’t work, I attempted to get her to come near me by patting my lap and speaking gently. Another failed attempt at getting her attention. More laughter. Next, I chased her. I sprinted. I dove. I got close enough to her to tackle her, and she juked me in a flash. The audience roared and applauded. This was primetime entertainment. She sat in the water, holding the ball in her mouth with her back to me, and I crept up behind her as a wave crashed on the shore. She got up and moved just before being swallowed by the sea. I got soaked, and tripped as the water liquefied the sand around my feet and caused me to sink in past my ankles. Howls and knee slapping from my new fans. Slapstick comedy knows no borders. Finally I caught her. She stopped in her tracks, looking off to the distance and let me take the ball from her mouth. It was miraculously still inflated and functional.

I gave the ball back to the kids, as the crowd erupted in cheers. I gave an embarrassed wave to my adoring fans. But, the show was not over. Maya, apparently, had only given up the ball because she had spotted a new target in the distance. The crowd once again erupted with laughter as I turned to realize that I had only just finished Act I. Maya was running full tilt towards the volleyball courts, where a few games were on the go, and some spectators watched from outside the net.

As I dashed through the soft sand towards the courts, I could see Maya running back and forth, trying to find a way in through the mesh. She disappeared out of sight, and as I arrived at the edge of the courts panting with my hands on my knees, I still held hope that she was unable to infiltrate the netted forcefield. These hopes were squashed as I saw Maya saunter around the far corner of the courts towards me, proudly carrying a deflated multicoloured volleyball squished in her powerful jaws. Moments later, 8 equally deflated teenaged boys and an older coach followed behind her.

Turns out, this was a team of competitive, school-aged volleyball players that played in a league every Sunday, and this was their only volleyball. As there are no school sports programs, one of the kids had saved up his own money to buy a professional grade game ball for their weekly league games. Again, I “apologized” profusely. “Suskuma! Suksuma!” - “Thank you! Thank you!”. I had not managed to retain the word for sorry that I had looked up after the incident with Panda and the old man in the field the day before (for the record, sorry is “maaf.”).

I pulled out my phone to use as a translator, to explain the comedy of errors that had led to this moment. I got one of the youth’s WhatsApp contacts (the messaging system of choice in Bali), and vowed to get them the exact same ball to replace the one that Maya was actively mangling as we exchanged details.

Finding a legit professional volleyball is easier said than done in Bali. One simply does not walk into a mall or a large sports store and buy a replacement. This is a land of chaos. There is no mall. There are no official sports stores. There are small open air shops, dozens of them, tucked away in nameless alleyways. Most are ungoogleable. Even the googleable ones sometimes do not exist. Of the ones that do qualify as sports stores, many sell knock off equipment that looks the part, but does not measure up quality-wise to the real deal. I was warned of this by the young athletes whose day I had just ruined.

I spent the entire next day riding through the congested streets of Denpasar on the back of mopeds captained by various Gojek Drivers in pursuit of the fabled sport shop. Gojek is a local taxi app - rides are remarkably cheap, but also require that you place your life in the hands of a complete stranger with whom you can barely communicate. From a list of probably 8 or 9 potential shops, 4 of them either never existed or closed down. Three did not sell volleyballs. One sold volleyballs, but not the kind I was looking for. Finally, the tenth shop I visited upon recommendation of a Gojek Driver with his fingers on the pulse of the local sporting scene, had the exact same blue white and yellow colouring that I was looking for and the professional golden stamp of approval dented into its surface. I triumphantly hopped on a moped with a renegade Gojek driver impersonator (also common practice in Bali) with the replacement ball tucked under my arm.

When I got home to the house, I excitedly texted a picture of the ball to “Mickey” one of the young Volleyball players. As I balanced the ball in my hands and snapped the photo, Maya came around the corner and spotted the ball and nearly snatched it from my hands. One last tense moment that would have been the slapstick icing on the cake if she had managed to get her mouth on the thing. Crisis averted. Having *finally* learned my lesson, I biked down to Seseh Beach solo, with the ball safely tucked away in my saddle bags. I cruised through the dog gauntlet, yelling profanities, growling and kicking as I passed through, just as I did every day. At the top of the cement steps to Seseh, I met a group of 8 very happy Balinese volleyball players. We exchanged hugs and smiles, they inspected the ball and deemed it worthy for their sporting purposes. As they walked off to the volleyball courts to play a quick round of pick up, I headed down to the recliner chairs to sip on a coconut, watch the sunset, satisfied that peace was once again restored on Seseh Beach.