Thursday, January 11, 2024 (Court Day #620)

I left work early to cook dinner for my wife, but she had forgotten that I was planning that tonight and she wasn’t too keen on me cooking what she had prepped for. She said that I could go to pickleball, so that’s where I headed. When I pulled up to the courts at 5:30 p.m., it was a chilly 46°F.

There was plenty of parking and weirdly only two games going, but I don’t remember ever being at Skypark that early before. I asked someone if this lack of players was normal at this time and he didn’t know either.

I got into a game fairly quickly and people started to trickle in. At the peak of the evening, all eight courts were going, though earlier on, one court at the end was not being used because it had some slippery wet spots on it.

You could easily see your breath and people were complaining about the cold. My hands were numb. I was wearing shorts but I wore my sweatshirt the whole session…typically, I remove it after a few games—not tonight!

The first hour and a half worth of games were confidence boosters. I was winning every single game regardless of who I happened to be partnered with and I was rotating through various people against various opponents. I played some games with Paul, Minori and her boyfriend David, and later Matt Babb arrived as well. Paul and Matt played against David and me. They won a game. We won a game and then in the last game I was not playing well at all and we lost without scoring a point. By then I was quite tired and hungry. It was 8:17 p.m. I was having a hard time concentrating, so I figured since I’d be playing tomorrow morning at Brommer anyway, I would call it a day and head home.

I had my moments—like doing a beautiful dropshot from the baseline to reset the point after a deep lob over my head—but, overall, I was not happy with my play. I’m continuing to wear my right knee brace and my right wrist brace and those help minimize discomfort.

My car read 43°F when I left, it had dropped only about 1 degree per hour. Interesting.

Number of days on a court: 620
Number of total hours: 2,703
Number of paid coaching hours: 9.5

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