Tuesday, August 1, 2017 (Off Day)
Santa Cruz County Courthouse
I’m sitting outside a courtroom as a witness in a criminal trial. The court aggregated five charges/incidents into one trial. I’ve been here for almost an hour. Sitting. It’ll be my first time on the stand in a trial, so I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t anxious. A young woman stole a handful of art pens from our family business. A few days later she was found in a stolen car with drugs. We’re losing money due it all the time involved but sometimes you need to make a stand for what’s right and hold people responsible for their bad actions in the hopes they straighten out their lives. It sure is a pain, however.
Ah. They ran out of time for the trial after taking too long to select a jury. Two hours of waiting for naught. Ah, well. Back tomorrow afternoon.
Wednesday, August 2, 2017 (Court Day #53)
Today, Terry Long lead a free class at Derby Park. I arrived right before 9, helped set up nets. As people arrived, we warmed up. Terry started the class around 9:30 after more people showed up.
Terry instructing the group.
Terry talked about groundstrokes and spin. He had us play a drill game he called Crouching Poacher, Hidden Baseline—coined after the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—where the serving team stays at the baseline as does the receiver but the receiver’s partner stays at the kitchen line and tracks in front of the ball even if it goes to what would normally be the receiver’s side of the court. The idea is for the forward person to poach a lot. The receiver would move to protect the court where the poacher can’t reach. If the poacher hit the ball mid-way between the kitchen line and the baseline, then the serving team would be “uncaged” and could then move up to their kitchen line. We did this to five points then rotated.
We also did a drill where we hit deep groundstroke with topspin. Forward, cross, forward, cross, repeat.
After this, class was ended about 10:45 or 11 and we broke up into playing regular games.
I played a game with Tom S. against Jerry Louis and neighbor Dave—both Jerry and Dave are stronger players than either Tom or me. Nonetheless, Tom and I battled it out and even lead at times. Eventually, we lost as expected 11-7—or maybe it was 11-8. Still, it was surprising that it was that close.
The next game was Alan and me against Dave and Tom. Dave and Tom made it difficult, but Alan and I won.
I had a good day, playing solidly in the games.
My morning ended at 11:50. I haven’t seen Maree and Mark for a week or so, they are good folks, no doubt they’ll be around again soon.
Court Case
After I got to work about 1 p.m., I got a message that the defendant plead guilty to all charges. The full trial was called off and none of us have to testify. That’ll save a bunch of time and headaches!
Out in the Pickleball World
Tournament pickelballers are aflutter this week after a bunch of top players didn’t get into the Nationals tournament. It was first come, first serve. Registration opened at 1 p.m. online and spots were gone pretty much immediately. There are two main problems. 1) Slots are not merit-based. So a self-rated 5.0 player can register having never won any events anywhere. 2) They offer a ranged of graded events below 5.0, meaning there are less games available for the top players. Someone compared it to Wimbledon, that is, they only allow top tennis players there. For pickleball to be taken more seriously, a similar approach needs to be taken with high-profile pickleball events. As a lower-graded player myself, I think that’s the way it should be. Drop the lower-graded events. Make Nationals only 5.0 players. Make sure the top players are registered—make it an invitational if they have to. Pickleball is experiencing growing pains. It’ll get better in the coming years, but in the meantime, there will be problems!
Brommer Event
Brommer Park is having a ribbon cutting on Friday for the new courts. Politicians will be there making speeches, etc. Staffing at work is a little thin, but since it’s at lunch time I might be able to make it out long enough to see people and show support.
Movie
My former neighbor Dave stopped by his ex-wife’s house next-door and while around knocked on the door to introduce his growing puppy Brewster to our corgi Oliver. My son Nicholas and I were off to see the movie Dunkirk and were rushing. Oliver doesn’t like German Shepherds—he was nipped by one once—or puppies and spent most of the brief visit growling! Dave kindly expressed concern that he might be teasing me too much. Nah. He did offer some advice: “Develop on your third shot drop now. Don’t wait and work on later.” I do tend to lapse back on a third short drive as a crutch since my opponents generally aren’t super strong. I should go out of my way to force work on the third shot drop. Oh, and Dunkirk. Very good movie.
Number of days on a court: 53
Number of total hours: 153
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