Sunday, October 27, 2019 (Court Day #318)

74th day playing lefty. (Tennis elbow.)

So PG&E turned off the power to thousands of homes last night at about 8:20 p.m. in anticipation of the wind storm that’s manifesting itself this morning. My wife asked incredulously, “Are you playing pickleball in this?” “Yeah,” I shrugged, “I have to be there.” I’d be tempted to stay home, honestly. Overcast, slightly chilly, gusty. It’s not like trees are going to blow over, but only God knows where the balls are going to sail! I’d don a sweatshirt for my trip to the courts for the first time in a very long time. I almost never wear them, even when playing in Scotts Valley on Thursday nights.  

Derby  

I got to Derby Park about a quarter to 9 and got about to setting up, getting out net bags and blowing off the courts. Wayne was the first arriver. Half an hour into play, you couldn’t tell that I’d blown off the courts, there were leaves and twigs strewn underfoot and shifting frequently.  

It was a light crowd. We maxed out at 27 people. (Six courts of four, plus three waiting.) We never even used the court reservation white board, there simply weren’t enough players—unheard of these days with pickleball getting more and more popular. The day turned out to be far nicer than I’d expected. The sun peeked out. While it was windy, it wasn’t horrific. And it warmed up enough to quickly remove jackets and sweatshirts.  

As typical, my play got better as the morning progressed. I played decently. For good or bad, I made 3-4 shots with my right hand for balls that otherwise would have gone out.  

The last couple of games was Binh and George against my former tournament partner Eric S. (who I hadn’t seen for weeks) and me. They were fun games.  

We were done at 1:12. After locking up, as I walked away from the courts with Binh, he shared that he’d passed on winning shots and kept the ball in play instead. I was disappointed. Binh is a great guy, though I’d rather lose 11-1 in an honest game than win (which Eric and I did) in a game where we were essentially handed certain points. Binh did a good job not being obvious about giving away points, I didn’t even note any. Usually—or so I think—I can tell . . . high balls that aren’t slammed, balls that could have been angled off the court, etc. Ah, well.    

Monday, October 28, 2019 (No Play)

Well, UPS came and went today at work without bringing me a paddle. Bummer.

Then there was a padded manilla envelope on our front counter delivered by USPS. YES! My new ProKennex paddle!

I told my staff it was like Christmas! I set it in my office hoping not to forget it later. I didn’t forget!

Hmmm. The edge tape for the top corners of the paddle were missing.  I went about installing the Gamma gel grip tape. When I peeled the shrinkwrap off of the handle—ah!—the missing edge tape! It was there after all.

New paddle ready to go. I really hope it makes a difference with my tennis elbow.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019 (No Play)

I’ve been working on getting this new website up and running properly. As I mentioned last time, I’ve ditched Jetpack for WordPress and am now getting MailPoet installed and configured so people can subscribe again. There are headaches and stumbling blocks with most systems. Right now, I’m waiting for my MailPoet account to be manually approved by them. Hopefully, tomorrow.

I’m getting closer to 1,000 hours playing. Almost to 900.

I’m starting to wonder if this tennis elbow problem will be with me for years to come. It’s pretty miserable. I hate it.

Thursday, October 31, 2019 (No Play)

Yesterday, I had to be at an event early in the morning for work and couldn’t play at Derby. Tonight, I won’t play either since it’s Halloween and we’ll be visiting some friends.

I’m hoping to play tomorrow morning at Brommer Park. They just finished recoating the playing surface and restriping, so it should be awesome! As Dave Allenbaugh said, the County of Santa Cruz is showing strong support for pickleball—which the City of Santa Cruz hasn’t even given us any dedicated courts yet . . . unlike the county and the City of Scotts Valley.

WordPress is such a headache. I’m continuing to get server CPU spikes that disables my site. I have no idea what’s I need to do to fix the problem.

Number of days on a court: 318
Number of total hours: 890.5

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