Sunday, December 24, 2023 (No Play)
I worked today for about 5 hours. I don’t usually work Sundays—the store is normally closed—but Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday and so I opted to take pity on last-minute shoppers and have our family business open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. with volunteer staff. It was a pretty steady flow of customers, though not crazy. (For those of you keeping track, yes, it’s only four hours from 11 to 3, but there’s time before and after a store is actually open that work has to get done!)
Relative Pickleball
My brother John texted me a video of his kids opening up a gift, a pickleball set. Two standard paddles, two mini kids’ paddles, and some balls. They were excited!
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve is when my extended family gets together for dinner and gifts. In my lifetime, it was originally held at my mom’s mom’s (great-grandmother’s) house in town when I was a toddler, then it moved to my mom’s mom’s (grandmother’s) house, then decades later, to my mom’s house where it was again this year. We had a “secret Santa” gift exchange and my brother John had me. He got me a “Dink Responsibly” cap along with a travel mug with “Tears of My Pickleball Opponents” printed on it. He also included a bag of a dozen USAPA approved pickleballs from a brand called “Vigel” that I’ve never heard of.
Christmas morning brought a really nice breakfast and presents. My wife and daughter had picked out a new PBAW pickleball backpack for me. (I’m not sure I’d heard of PBAW before.) I’ve been content with my current backpack, but I have had to do several hand sewing repairs on it. This new backpack has a 4-balls-sized pocket on one side and an assortment of pockets, including a vented/mesh pocket at the bottom for a pair of shoes. I probably won’t be using the shoe pocket except for tournaments. A minor but clever feature is a built-in plastic hook at the top for hanging the backpack on a chain-link fence. Nice!
Relative Pickleball
About a week ago my sister-in-law has suggested that we play pickleball on Christmas Day when she and your family came to visit Santa Cruz. Unfortunately, the plan changed in the becoming much later in the day. Charlotte and Nicolas expressed interest in playing so I also invited my brother John to come.
The trick was having enough paddles. I had sent one to New Mexico for my daughter Charlotte. The only other paddle I had sported autographs, and I was not too keen to use it. But I didn’t have much choice as it was the one I had to make up our foursome.
Derby
It was shortly after 2:30 p.m. when we made our way to Derby Park. I brought a portable net however, it turned out that it was unnecessary as only two of the four city nets occupied when we arrived.
I split up my paddles, keeping the special “autographs paddle” for myself. Aside from not wanting to damage the autographs, I realized/remembered that it was delaminating and made for some wimpy shots.
It wasn’t until halfway through the session that I realized that I also had the special reduced-size Focus training paddle. I switched to that—better training and no risk to the autographs!
A woman came over and asked about my children’s “Tillamook” cheese T-shirts. Brooke is her name and she lived in Tillamook, Oregon and couldn’t help but come over and ask. Brooke was there with her son Charlie and her husband Adam. I talked to Adam while Brooke was chatting with the rest of our group. Adam said they started playing about six months ago. I asked if they play at Derby on Sundays and he said they do. I told him that my site coordinator duties would be resuming January 7 and maybe I’d see them out on the courts.
Christmas Dinner
My sister-in-law Liz and family arrived shortly before 5 p.m. We all hung out, had dinner, then opened presents. I got a pair of socks…
I better put my feet up often while wearing them!
Liz really wanted me to open the pickleball trivia game that they’d gotten us. I told her husband Steve that I’d probably know 90% of the questions. There were A, B, C, and D as possible answers or “true or false” . . . but before she got to those, I’d blurt out the answers: “20×44!”, “7!”, “Time allowed to serve the ball!”, “24 inches”, “False”. We went through about a dozen cards and I got them all right.
Then she pulled a card from the a different section. “Which couple got married on the court and were the first tournament directors for the USAPA Nationals?”
“Uhhhhh…” I had no idea. Piper, my niece, carefully just showed me the possible answers on the card and I still had no idea. I guessed the names that seemed most familiar but I got it wrong. Liz was ready to move onto other things. Maybe it was a good thing too, I’m not sure how I would have done if the rest of the questions were like that! Ha!
Number of days on a court: 615
Number of total hours: 2,688
Number of paid coaching hours: 8
To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.
Leave a Reply