Sunday, July 24, 2022 (Court Day #522)

This morning was the annual “Wharf to Wharf” race and I had my first performance with Santa Cruz Pipes & Drums in 15 years.

Me tuning up under the watchful eye of Jay, the Pipe Major of the band.
The pipe band waiting to perform once the race to begins.

As far as my bagpiping performance goes, I did ok. It wasn’t a stellar performance, but it wasn’t as a disaster either. Considering I only had a week to prepare, I did pretty darn well.

After we were done performing and breaking down, about 9:45 a.m., I drove home and changed. I had previously arranged for Rick A. to open the courts for me and, just in case I got held up, I told the group of site coordinators that I may not be able to close. Eric S. offered to close for me.

At Home

Before I left my house for the courts, I brought in the newspaper and opened up so it wouldn’t be quite a rules when I got home. Imagine my surprise when I opened up the newspaper and there was a copy of Parade magazine and the entire cover was announcing an article about pickleball. Talk about exposure! This is a newspaper insert with a national circulation!

Looky-looky!

I arrived at Derby Park at 10:15 a.m., and as you can imagine things were in full swing. However, today was not quite as busy as it normally is on a Sunday. That’s not to say it was slow, it was far from that.

There was a bit of wait between games. I started out a little sloppy, but played a little bit better. I had a game with Allan against Charles and Rick and I was responsible for us losing the game. It was a close game but nonetheless I made a number of errors that I was not happy about.

Night Play Conflict?

Pipe band practice is on Thursday nights these days—15 years ago, it was on Wednesdays—which conflicts with Skypark play on Thursday night, I will have to see how this all goes. Maybe I will continue to play with the band.

Articles

So, that Parade Magazine? It was a mass of pickleball from cover to cover and included three articles!

What is pickleball:
https://parade.com/living/what-is-pickleball

Trendy equipment to buy:
https://parade.com/living/pickleball-equipment

And this one about celebrities who play:
https://parade.com/culture/celebrities-who-love-pickleball

Neat to see with such a high profile!

Monday, July 25, 2022 (No play)

Jordan Briones shows a good drill in this video. (Jordan’s videos are often twice as long as they could be, but I play them at 1.25x or 1.5x speed.)


Number of days on a court: 522
Number of total hours: 2,402.5

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