This Ish is Bananas

First off, a couple things I saw while in Budapest the other day:

While leisurely strolling the boulevards of the capital, I witnessed a handcuffed man on a leash.
Dude was being walked by who I assume were the local cops, hands cuffed in front. Attached to said cuffs was a thin leather leash. This method instantly removes the "this guy is so tough we need to cuff his hands safely behind his back, while maintaining a firm grip on his shoulder or he could throwdown" aspect of the equation...
This. Is. Absolutely. Brilliant.
At this point I was half-expecting homie to lift his leg to relieve himself on the nearest goulash stand.
Because really, what is more humiliating than being paraded down the street attached to the leash that's normally reserved for Sheriff Gabor's chihuahua during off-hours?

I say, Budapest Fuzz: 1, Everybody Else: 0.

Secondly, wild beasts are once again runnin' free in the Hungarian streets:


Granted, those aren't wild. But that's not important right now.
We had an appointment to get to at the U.S. consulate so Ian, his American teammate and I debated for a hot minute whether passing the carriage would make the horses feel bad... At that point though, we'd been following the coach (carriage? handsome cab? What is the proper terminology here?) for a cool half-kilometer, and its pace was seriously starting to cramp our style. Not to mention the 11 cars jammed up behind us.
I tip my proverbial hat to those horses for their efforts though. Their trotting was probably a reasonably "grueling pace" (Oregon Trail, HOLLA) by old-timey standards, but we had an appointment to get to. So we left Black Beauty & Firefoot in our dust.
I have to respect/be confused by a place where horses-drawn vehicles get to roll in the bus lane. What is this society coming to? Evidently, something like the turn of 19th century.

Finally, this has nothing to do with the above, but Hungarians are made of raw steel (as opposed to unraw steel like say, the Germans). Or at least the women are. It probably has something to do with being born behind the Iron Curtain or something to do with smelting iron... I don't really know what that means but I've always wanted to say smelting.
I digress.
I make this observation because in my game this past weekend, the middle & captain of the other team was a spring chicken of no less than 46 years old. Forty. Six.
That is straight up 3 years shy of double my age. Just let that marinate in your dome for a few seconds and imagine playing ball for something like 3 decades.
1976 called, they want their knee pads back.
Naturally, as I began to do this math my mind was blown to small pieces. Mostly because I suck at math. But upon consulting my abacus, I realized, yes, this woman could in fact easily have sired me herself.

And yet, this story gets better. Because her own flesh and blood was already on the court. In the form of the team's setter aka her daughter.
There is so much to say there I don't even have anything to say. What? Who? HOW?

I would just like to shoutout my own coach who betters this, by having participated last year in the Budapest schools' Jr. Olympics as a setter (surrounded by her 16-year old teammates) at the ripe young age of 49. Hot dayum.