Thursday, January 16, 2025 (Court Day #760)
I ordered a pair of Kitchen Blockers after work right before I left. I’m curious to try them out for eye protection versus the cheap clear plastic safety glasses I’ve been using. [They later send me a 10% off discount code to share: ANDREW10.]
Skypark
Arrived at 7:04 p.m. at Skypark. It was busy enough that I had to park down the street and around the corner. It was 54°F and the air was still.
Games
In my first game, I played with a guy named Jeff against Mark (the cook) and Sam with the Indian accent. Surprisingly, Sam did not lob much at all in this game unlike Tuesday. (Good for me, he was deadly at his lobs!) My playing this game was absolutely horrible… well, for me anyway—more is expected of a 4.0 level player. As far as I can tell, Jeff is more like a 3.0. We were down by quite a bit, and then Mark started making a number of mistakes and we clawed our way back into the game only to lose in the end. That’s a game that I’d happy was not recorded.
My last three games were paired with Anthony against tall lefty Aaron B. and David L.
In the first game, Anthony and I got clobbered, something like 11–3. Anthony apologized in the middle of that game for costing us points.
We switched sides and played again but this time Anthony and I won 11–5.
We switched sides again and played a rubber match. In this one, I kept track of my errors and I made half a dozen (or fewer) errors in this entire game. Some lost rallies were simply just great shots by opponents—one of which was a great crosscourt dink by Aaron that was too sharp and long and out of my reach for a winner. We lost this game by a solid margin, but still a fun game. Anthony is a good guy.
We wrapped up just before the lights clicked off at 8:30 p.m.
Fire!
As we were all gathering up to head out, David shared a photo that a friend sent him. The battery facility at Moss Landing (about half an hour south of Santa Cruz) was on fire. If it isn’t still the biggest energy storage in California, it’s the second one. Lithium ion batteries. Those will be extremely difficult to extinguish.
Here’s a link to an article, it’ll likely continue to get updated:
https://www.ksbw.com/article/smoke-fire-moss-landing-battery-facility-water-testing/63486518
Number of days on a court: 760
Number of total hours: 3,066
Number of paid coaching hours: 105.5
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