Friday, June 14, 2017. (Court Day 35)

Being that construction of new courts is underway at Brommer, game times usually held there have been moved to Derby. So, Mondays and Fridays are temporarily additional days of pickleball nearer my house! I would be leaving town around 1:30 p.m. for Southern California, so I had just enough time to squeeze in some much missed play.

The SCPC is posting updates on their website, including photos.


Mounds can be seen indicating where the posts will go at Brommer.



Post holes up close and personal. It’s happening!


I arrived right after 9 a.m. at the Derby courts. It was already warm, the hottest start to a day yet. Given that I had to get on the road ASAP after playing and I had to scramble to work out some last-minute roster issues for the first softball game taking place that night—a team manager’s work is never done!—I’m typing this up two days later on Sunday night! There not a lot memorable, though I was on the winning side of another bagel game (11-0) where I had the first 0-0-2 serve and got to 8 or 9 points before they finally broke my serve! (I was playing with Rich who I’d met at Brommer recently.) This wasn’t against weak players either! I was also part of another winning partnership where we won 11-1. Those felt good. On the downside, I hit Robin in the shin with a slam and later she got smacked in the chest too—that might have been me again, but to be honest, I can’t even remember now.

It was a mixed morning of good and not as good, but overall, it was decent. I did try to backspin a deep hit to the baseline again—with the same result of it flying up and too deep. I gotta stop doing that!

I left about 12:20. It was hot, solidly in the 80s.

Action Camera

Literallly minute before I headed to Anaheim last week, I saw that the replacement Akaso camera package had been delivered to my work. I threw it under my desk for me to retrieve after I got back from Vancouver. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but at least it has the correct number of batteries this time! We’ll see if the remote control function operates like it’s supposed to this time around. I’ll use it soon. It’s definitely time to analyze my play again.

Softball

While passing through Pasadena, I got a text about 10 p.m. from my assistant manager saying our summer softball team had won its first game! (It would have been sweeter had I been there and playing, but still I’m happy to have the team be 1-0. (Don’t worry, my iPhone was temporarily mounted to the dashboard and I had Siri reading me the message!) One of my concerns is the impact of playing both sports. Pickleball takes its toll on various body parts (right glute, right knee, right ankle, hips, lower back) and softball also does (right shoulder from throwing, quads from sprinting, sometimes right thumb from batting). Funny is pickleball—the “old person’s sport” wreaks more havoc on my bday than does softball. Softball is more of muscular pain, pickleball is more joints. We’ll see how I hold up. I have to admit, the right gluten bothers me when driving long periods of time. Coming down from Vancouver last week was painful enough that I had to turn driving back over to my dad.

I turn 50 next month. Maybe age is indeed catching up with me. A sad state of affairs.

Ontario, CA

Travel. I figured I’d have no time to play pickleball in SoCal, but that didn’t stop me from optimistically bringing my paddle and ball anyway! Alas, I was correct and no time surfaced, but I was prepared if something happened to change!



Class

I missed the first of Jerry Louis’ three classes but I’ll catch the second on Tuesday morning. I’m looking forward to it.

Weather

After being in rainy Portland/Vancouver and then the stifling greater Los Angeles Area, followed by a reststop on I-5 in the Central California valley where it was 105 degrees according to my car (and it felt it), I’m very happy to be playing pickleball regularly in Santa Cruz. When it rains, it rains then goes away. None of this overcast off and on rain stuff of the Northwest. And 90 in LA is not atypical. Santa Cruz gets 90 about three days out of the whole summer and drops back into the 70s and 80s for the rest. Honestly, I have to wonder how pickleball ever survived in the Northwest! “Let’s play! Oh. Never mind. Raining again!”


Number of days on a court: 35
Number of total hours: 100.5 (Broke 100!)