Tuesday, September 20, 2022 (Court Day #550)
I left work and arrived at Skypark at 6:30 p.m. I’ve learned that I can park back alongside the courts if the paved parking lot is full.
Tennis Bottleneck
When I arrived, the four permanent pickleball courts are full of players, and a bunch of other players were sitting and standing along the bench and fence waiting for the two tennis players on the dual-striped tennis court to finish and open up the four additional temporary pickleball courts—which would accommodate 16 waiting people.
Tonight, there were three singles games going on for tennis. Two on dedicated courts but the third was on the one court also striped for pickleball. About five minutes after I arrived, the two tennis players who are playing singles decided that they were done. It turns out one of those two tennis players also plays pickleball. I’d seen him in the group once before, but we haven’t been introduced nor played together yet.
Someone asked if I had access to the storage bin with the portable nets and I said I did. I put it in the code and opened the lock box with the key to the bin and we pulled out the four portable nets and immediately set up three of them. The last one also got set up not too much later.
Tonight, with the exception of one game, I had all pretty strong opponents. I was playing reasonably well, though I kept track of how many balls I hit into the white tape of the net tonight. 15. A whole lot! Too many.
Children
Matt B. brought his energetic son Lucas and Paul W. brought his daughter Mallory. While I didn’t play any of the kids—they walked to their nearby home fairly early—Matt said Lucas had an ATP tonight. Lucas is still very much a little kid, but he gets around on the court!
Last Games
The last four games of the night, which were all pretty long, was Tim and myself against Matt and his friend Paul. The first game was pretty even, the second game was lopsided in their favor. The third game Tim and I won 11 to 3. And the fourth and final game Tim and I were leading when Paul and Matt turned it on and end up winning that game. There are fun challenging games. Matt and Paul continue to improve. From what I understand they are still coming out at lunchtime, since they live very very close nearby, and playing singles and drilling. They’re both making less unforced errors than they had in the past.
The lights clicked off at 9:30 p.m., a few minutes after we finished that final game. It was a three hour session of playing pickleball.
Damn.
When I got home, I had some dinner. I was eating salad—no cruttons—when my right canine tooth snapped off at the gum line. (Things you don’t have to deal with with when you are under 50!)
Wednesday, September 21, 2022 (No Play)
I got an emergency appointment with my dentist this morning. She was very empathetic. “Ooo, the nerve is exposed!” (That explains why I didn’t sleep that well last night and trying to brush too near that tooth was exceedingly painful!) She gently poked the nerve with a tool to see if it was “live” and I nearly jumped out of the dentist chair. She proceeded to kill the nerve with some solution on a cotton ball and then did an impromptu root canal. “I haven’t done this in so long!” (Dentists tend to specialize these days and send out things like extractions and root canals.) She put on an temporary filling and sent me on my way after some effort trying to set up an appointment with the oral surgeon who was off for the day.
Thursday, September 22, 2022 (No Play)
This morning, I got a call from the oral surgeon’s office and my dentist had convinced him to go ahead and remove my bad tooth today instead of making me wait two weeks. It was a tricky extraction that took 2-3 times longer than is typical, but it was successful. Now I wait six months then a metal post to goes in, then another four months for it to bond then I get a fake tooth will be put on.
I planned to head to work after the procedure, but I was miserable.
Instead of playing pickleball tonight, I’m lying on my bed swapping out bloody gauze every hour or so and taking Advil. No fun. But it could always be worse!
Interesting Video
Tyson McGuffin does some pro rallies breakdown:
That video lead me to stumbling on this article that has some useful insights:
One particularly interesting tidbit is if one of your two opponents is deadly volleying at the net and they are both back, hit to the deadly one to keep him away from his strength.
Number of days on a court: 550
Number of total hours: 2,488
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