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| Pictured above, the Rally in the Valley banner in the main tournament hall. This was taken during the singles event. | Picture from the tournament. |
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| There was a ton of vendors at this tournament. Pictured here is Predator Cues vendor. | Run Out sportswear vendor. |
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| Pictured here Matt testing out the new OB1 spiral shaft. | Another picture of the TAP Singles tournament at the RIV tournament. |
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| More pictures of the singles tournament. | More vendors. |
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| Ice on the roof of our first rental car... Looks the weather takes a turn for the worse later in the day. | A car in the hotel parking lot.. Ice starts to build up!! |
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| Right down the road from the tournament is the 2nd largest mall in the US. Pictured above is view of the Bloomingdales dept store, part of the mall. | A BIG pile of snow on the parking lot at the mall. Something tells us that these folks up there know how to handle this type of stuff. If only we knew.. :) |
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| The Nordstrom dept store at the mall. | The sign outside the Convention Center in Valley Forge, PA. If you have not been to this tournament, you should plan on attending next March!! It was a lot of fun.. |
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| Mark outside the Convention Center at the RITV Tournament. And the Ice starts to become heavy!! | Pictured is a banner outside the door in the convention center at the RITV tournament for the Super Billiards Expo. The TAP tournament is part of this expo. Allen Hopkins, pool player/ESPN color commentator on ESPN Billiards hosts this event. |
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| Picture leading down from the upper expo down to the RITV tournament. | The Dream Team event begins at the RITV tournament.. |
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| TAP players from all over the US and Canada compete in the $10000 first place Dream Team event at the RITV Tournament!! | More from the packed house!! |
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| A view from the other section in the convention center of the tournament. Over 140+ teams compete for the mega payouts of 1st $10000, 2nd $5500, 3rd $2750, 4th $2750, 5th thru 8th $1375, 9th thru 16th $675, 17th thru 32nd $325, and 33rd thru 64th $175.. In addition they had a second chance tournament with a top price of $2400 for the teams that lose early and want to continue playing!! | The Ice arrives and 15 minutes before we are scheduled to fly home on Friday, we hear the airport say that ALL departures have been canceled for the day!! GREAT!!! :( |
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| And the ice starts to pile up... | And more ice. |
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| Our journey from the airport takes us to the Hertz Rental Car next to the airport where we attempt to find a car to travel south to Washington DC. Mark was able to rebook our flight for Sat at 8:15am in Washington, otherwise we would have been stuck until Sun or Monday at the earliest for a flight out of Philly. And the wait begins... | Tons of cars at Hertz, but oh boy did we not know how long of a wait we had in store.. |
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| The long line at Hertz and a lot of upset tired customers waiting to get a car.. It only gets worse!! | And more waiting.. Someone has BO... Ewwww... |
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| Still lots of cars to be had, but we wait, and wait and wait some more.. Note the ice is starting to pile up. It gets worse.. | And wait some more.. |
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| Finally after 3 1/2 hours later we get our car. We go out in blinding pouring down sleet and find no car or the wrong car. WTF!!! | After going back to the Hertz office to get the correct car, we end up leaving the airport destination Washington DC. Note Philly was covered by then with over 2 to 4 inches of ice and snow on the ground by the time we left the airport. |
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| More pictures of the ice.. | And more ice. |
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| And if you think we are through with the story here, it only gets worse. Pictured here is the passenger side front windshield and the jacked up wiper blade that would not work properly on the rental car!! We still have 80 miles to go... Ughhhh... | We did finally make it to Washington DC about midnight Friday evening. With only about 4 hours sleep we arrive at the Washington DC airport to get an awesome view of the Nations Capital as the sun rises Saturday morning. |
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| Another great shot of the Capital. This was a surprise and another great highlight of our trip to the RITV tournament!! | And the Washington Monument! |
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| Back of one of tshirts we purchased at the tournament.. | And another shirt Matt purchased.. |
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| A copy of the Rally in the Valley event program!! | We fly out of Washington DC. We had a great time at the tournament and we promised Loyd the founder of TAP and President that we would be back next year with teams!! Matt will have a Dream Team next year and is looking for volunteers. Lets go kick some Yankee but!! They were talking it up, up there and we need to show them the South has the best players!! |
