Sunday, April 8, 2018 (Court Day #142)

About a week ago, Friday night, March 30, my wife Kristen, mother-in-law Bonnie, and I climbed on a red-eye for the east coast to visit my daughter Charlotte. My wife was on spring break from teaching first-graders and Bonnie was looking for company and hadn’t seen Charlotte since my father-in-law passed away recently.

Monday night, after we’d spent a goodly amount of time walking and standing, I climbed into bed only to find my right knee was sore. This time, it was a mysterious injury with no blame on pickleball!

On Wednesday, I registered Eric and myself for the tournament in Pleasanton, the 4th Annual Jane Carey Memorial Pickleball Tournament on July 14.  Being that I was in Boston visiting my daughter, I thought I’d get a jump on others by registering at 4 or 5 a.m. California time, but at some point they had changed the registration opening time from midnight to 8 a.m. Pacific, meaning I’d have to wait! After some texts with Eric and an email to the Pleasanton people after it didn’t work the first time, I ended up registering our team while sitting on the T (the Boston underground) with my wife and mother-in-law!

On the long flight home, we had WiFi so I watched some pickleball videos. One was going back and watching the 3.0 bronze medal match for last year’s 2017 U.S. Open. I first linked to it in July last year in this blog entry:
https://pickleballjourney.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/back-is-back-to-derby/

Here is that video again:

Watching it 8-9 months later, with those being the top 3rd and 4th teams in 3.0 in a major tournament, there is no question that I am at least a 3.5 tournament player. Eric and I would unquestionably clobber both of those teams. I hope that Paso Robles is able to move us to 3.5 from our originally registered 3.0 skill level.

If there’s still room, there’s a tournament in Concord. The question is who do I play with? Eric has a conflict. I might play with John P. Rolando is one I could ask. Maybe even Rob the new face. I checked the tournament listing and there was a guy named Chris from the South Bay who needed a 3.5 partner. Chris is the same age as me. After debating, I dropped him a note seeing if he was interested. He wrote back the next day (Thursday) and said he’d already found a local partner but he’d let me know if things changed.

Sunday Morning

It’s been a crummy last few days. Three of my staff at work have given notice, one on each of the last three days. One is a manager and will be dearly missed—she said she needed to find a job with medical benefits since they were starting a family, another is trying to figure out his life (he’s young), and a third got it in her head that after she was recently caught not clocking out immediately after her shift was done that she was being unfairly scrutinized. (No, but even if  it were true, she would have earned that.) On top of that, I learned on Friday that I need to get a root canal and have a separate molar extracted—yes, yanked out due to an issue around the roots. And I managed to shatter the passenger-side mirror on my car. And my right knee is still hurting after six days. Oh, and we interviewed a graduate student yesterday morning and offered her a parttime postion which she accepted then turned down a few hours later in favor of an on-call job with more flexible hours. Yep. A lovely few days. It can only get better. Right?

At Derby

Siri informed me, “Brr. It’s 50 degrees outside.” Me? I was thinking, “Perfect pickleball weather!” I got to the court rather late, at 8:55. Wayne and Dave Allenbaugh were already there doing my job of setting up. I hooked up the charged battery to the blower and got to work clearing off then court surfaces.

A new guy named Allen showed up. I had him sign the waiver. When I asked if he’d played before, he said he’d played a couple of times before at Brommer. I played against him and mike with Paule as my partner. She played the whole game left-handed. She did quite well, aside from weaker shots, she played as well as at least half the players there—impressive, really. Then Allen and I played a game against Mike and Paule. After hitting a winner low down the middle, to my left Allen asked me, “Did you hit that with your left hand?” “Yes, I did.” Allen only stayed for 3-4 games.

I played a few miscellaneous games. One had Kent and Dave Allenbaugh against me and someone, I forget. Anyway, before the game, Kent told me, “Eric and you are in 3.5 for Paso Robles. I thought you were in 3.0.” I told him we’d asked to move up. I was happy to hear that the tournament director managed to squeeze us into the 3.5 bracket.

Dave Allenbaugh and I played a game against Mike and Tom S. It was a close one that we lost 14-12. There was a funny moment late in that one. Across from me at the net, Mike popped up a ball. I swung and missed the volley. (Yes, a rarity!) Blowing it with the game so close, Dave, to my right, doubled over in laughter. What he missed was me immediately repositioning then returning that same shot after the bounce! It went back to Mike who hit it across to Dave’s right. I raced around Dave—still doubled over—and hit a low angled winner between Tom and Mike. Dave missed the entire exchange. “Dave! I just hit a winner!” Dave, straightening up, was completely confused. “But I saw you miss!” I tapped him on the shoulder with my paddle, “Trust your partner!” Mike said, “I’m calling a hinderance!” (Technically, it’d be a ‘distraction’ since it wasn’t due to an outside influence.) We ended up replaying the point, but still I was impressed with myself! Never give up on a point!

Playing with the Big Boys

Mike and I lost a game 11-3 to Kevin and David Black. Kevin and David are partners in 4.0 at Paso Robles and wanted to get time together in preparation.

Kevin and David were signed up in red on the court board. I asked if I could join them. They said yes. I added my name in blue under theirs. David said, “if you are playing in red, sign up in red. Don’t mix colors, it’ll just confuse people.” He wiped off my name an rewrote it in red. We waiting for a fourth and grabbed Oleg when he came off of a court.

Upset! Oleg and I beat Kevin and David Black 11-6. That was a surprise!

They were up for a rematch. This time, the balls bounced the other way and Oleg and I lost 11-3. Even games, 1-1.

So we played a third game. Oleg and I were down 9-8. We were in mid-point when suddenly, I was bent over in pain. Ouch! I had wrenched a muscle in my back, by my right kidney. It was very painful, like a severe charley horse. That really hurt! Soon after, I was on my back on the ground with David Black lifting my right leg stretching out my back. Unfortunately, I was most definitely done for the day.

I sat on the bench for a few minutes hoping against hope that it would go away after a few minutes but then I called over to Alan, “Are you ok closing?” He said he would take over as site coordinator. I yelled over, “Thanks! I’m going to head home and ice my back.” I checked the time, 11:53. Ugh, what a drag.

Paso Robles

Later, I checked the tournament page for the player list. Sure enough, we were showing in 3.5.

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I let Eric know. Good. This will be a challenging tournament. We may not win, but we also won’t simply wipe out the 3.0 players on the way to a sandbagged gold medal.

Ice and ibuprofen 

Sunday night, I was at an extended family dinner at my brother’s house. I sat on the couch for about 10-15 minutes. When I got up to leave, I literally had to reach out and steady myself on the wall,  my back hurt so badly. My brother’s girlfriend Paula said that since it’s a muscle issue, I should be applying heat and not cold, so I went home and heated up a rice bag and applied it to my back and tried not to move too much!

Wednesday, April 11, 2018 (No Playing)

When Monday morning came, I’d probably woken up 20 times during the night. Each time I moved, my back caused intense pain. I’d gone to bed taking two Aleve. To start the day, I took three ibuprofen. Even putting on my socks was an ordeal. By the end of the day, my back was feeling improved. Not healed, but enough better to notice less pain.

Tuesday was similar. Though I’d only woken up maybe half the number of times. I had hope that maybe I’d be able to put on my socks somewhat normally, but that was not to be the case. It was a challenge. I put my foot up on a dining room chair like the day before and slipped a sock over my toes using only one hand. It took a few attempts, but I managed to get my socks on. There were moments during the day where I thought pickleball might be almost possible. But then my back would remind me otherwise by making me wince in pain.

How long would this take? Would it be good to go by the tournament in 2 1/2 weeks? Would I be able to get practice with Eric in before we are to play? Will I get rusty playing only one day in what may be 2-3 weeks?

Sunday, April 15, 2018 (No Playing)

It’s been one week since I injured my back. I wrote to Eric last night to let him know how my healing was progressing in light of our tournament in two weeks.

E,

My back is getting better. If the tournament was tomorrow, I feel like I could manage to play. That said, I still have a little way to go yet before I’m comfortable going all out. I’m going to wait until Wednesday next week before I will even consider testing the waters.

The good news is my back doesn’t wake me up at night anymore and I can now put on my socks with only mild pain instead of agonizing discomfort.

Anyway, things are looking up. Slower than I’d like, but making solid progress.

Andrew

Eric wrote back this morning that he’s played every day in the past week and feels that he’s starting to get accepted into the circle of advanced players.

Sitting is typically uncomfortable in that my back feels tight. Trying to touch my toes stretches out the muscle in question, so I’ve been trying to do that or squat and reach out to touch the floor as far away as possible. Turning certain ways hurts, like tipping my head forward and down to the right as if to look what’s on the floor behind me.

I think I may end up waiting for another week and a half before playing. I don’t think I’ll be ready by Wednesday, plus I have a big ad deadline that day and we’ll be short-staffed. Then I’ll be out of town on Friday and Sunday. With staff at work in a bit of upheaval—I had 4 of our 8 full-time staff give notice in the span of a week for a variety of reasons—I don’t know if I’ll be playing pickleball as much. Keeping the family business running is key, so I may go from my typical 40 hour workweeks to 50-60 hour workweeks.

Speaking of work, I recognized a pickleball player who had come into our store to buy some foamboard and have it cut to size. “Jukka!” He looked at me blankly. “How do you know my name?” I walked closer and smiled, “Pickleball.” “OH!” He smiled in recognition. It’s hard to recognize people out of context. He’d ever seen me with no cap on and in pants!

Aside from my back, my right knee still hurts a bit at times and if I extend my leg and point my toes out then I get significant pain my right ankle, the one I rolled a couple of months ago. It seems my right side gets the brunt of the problems. It’d be nice if everything was just back to normal.

Number of days on a court: 142
Number of total hours: 405.5

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