Wednesday, January 24, 2018 (Court Day #116)
I arrived at Derby at 9:05, after running the dog first. It was cold—in the 40s—and overcast with a slight chilly breeze. I was in a T-shirt and shorts. I was cold but as I assured Greg, I would be warm by the time my first game was over . . . and I was. I didn’t think about the temperature until mid-morning when I noticed my partner’s breath billowing like a ghost while I was back to receive a serve.
Mike and Mark (far side) taking on Dave and Ted (near side) in the first game of the day. I don’t know the result, but I’d expect the M&M team to soldily take this game.
In our first game together of the day, Eric and I beat John P. and Greg 11-0.
In the next game, Eric and I played against Daniel and—I think—Dave. Greg was rooting us on from the next court—I suspect he didn’t want to be the only one to lose in a lopsided fashion! We won that game too. 11-1.
Melody arrived and wanted to play together since we’ll be partners in the Livermore tournament next month. Our first game was pretty rough. We lost by roughly a 2:1 margin. It takes a bit of adjustment playing with a leftie. We—mostly I—need to work on communication during games.
In our second game against Grita and Ted, I tweaked my ankle a bit. It hurt, but the pain didn’t last long. Melody and I lost, but it wasn’t by much and our play had improved. Melody said, “We lost, but we won’t be facing too many women like Grita!”
Game with Karen
John P. came over and told Eric and me that Karen had a game reserved for the four of us. She want to play against us. It would be fairly balanced. Eric and I are stronger players than John at this point and Karen is stronger than all of us. Eric and I won in the end, pretty sure it was 11-6.
Hard Games
Grita was signed up (in red). I asked if I could join her. She said yes. Eric added his name and we got Kevin to fill the court. I told Grita, “Eric and me against you and Kevin.” Grita smiled and asked, “Are you sure?” “I’m sure.” I wasn’t expecting to win, but it was possible and it be a good challenge for Eric and me regardless. It was a battle back and forth, but we ended up losing 11-6. At least they didn’t easily walk away with the win.
After the first game ended, I said, “REMATCH!” Kevin said he could do one more. Eric and I took a quick lead and extended it, 9-4, where it stayed for several service rotations. But they slowly crawled back 1 or 2 points per service rotation until it was 9-8. Then we scored a point and made it 10-8. Then soon, it was 10-10. Then 11-11. The I hit a shallow cross-court shot right to left: out. They went up 12-11. The Eric hit a shallow cross-court shot left to right: out. It was as close to an exact mirror of my bad shot as you could get. They won 13-11.
“You guys are playing really well.” said Kevin. I told Kevin he needs to come on Wednesdays more often, it’d be nice to get more very strong competition like Kevin.
We were all done and heading out at 12:23 p.m.
Radio
Terry and Karen Long will be on the radio tonight on KSCO 1080AM. I’m going to benefit dinner tonight, so I won’t be able to listen live, unfortunately. I’ve been in that studio before when my daughter Charlotte and her sailing crew Oliva were interviewed by the host, Neil Pearlberg, after the two of them won a high school NorCal regatta. He does a lot of sports-focused shows with his Tuesday show featuring surfing and skating and Wednesday being everything else. It used to be just local sports on Wednesdays, but he ran out of weekly topics/interviewees, so now it’s a mix of topics. Regardless, he often provides recordings of the show to the guests. I hope I can manage to get a copy and hear the show.
Number of days on a court: 116
Number of total hours: 330.5
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