Friday, January 17, 2025 (Court Day #761)

My wife flew out for her “girls’ weekend” in Palm Springs this morning, which means that I am on dog duty for the next few days. My brother John texted me this afternoon asking if anyone was playing tonight. I told him that it would have to be 7:30 p.m. for me and he said that would work for him. Fortunately, the Skypark lights stay on until 9:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.

When I got home after work shortly after 6:30 p.m., our younger dog Pepper was slightly freaked out and shaking. (They are demolishing a house three doors down that was destroyed in a fire a little over a year ago.) She also wouldn’t eat her dinner. So I took her for a walk. Pepper was on a mission, walking the fastest that I’ve ever seen her. I was feeling the burn in my calves as I tried to keep up! She was on a tear for about 20 minutes. When she led us back to our driveway, she circled for a minute and then apparently decided that she wanted to do the same walk again! I let her go halfway down the block but then I stopped her and carried her back home. She was no longer shaking and ate her dinner. Finally, I could get to pickleball!

Skypark

I pulled into the Skypark lot at 7:47 p.m., there were a few empty spots.

When I walked in, there was a game going on between Jax and Sam against Diego and Spencer. Those were the only familiar faces. There was also a group of 20-year-olds on one court and three people on another court. When John arrived about five minutes later, it didn’t make much sense for John and myself to go ask a group of three if they’d like to play, so we opted to drill.

We started with straight-head dinking and then crosscourt backhand dinking. I was coaching him through the process.

Spencer’s group wrapped up their game and headed out.

Serve Drilling

I then had John work on serving and I took the opportunity for myself to try out a drop serve with an intense slice. I have to admit, if I’m going to do a slice like that, it’s going to take a whole lot more practice! Most of my chop serves ended up in the net!

Drive Drilling

At this point, I gave John my protective glasses and I had him stay at the kitchen and I was hitting forehands and backhand drives at him as hard as I could. He did a pretty good job making contact with the balls. He got most of them back over the net and into the court, but some landed in his side of the net or flew out. Most were not in great control… yet!

Skinny Singles

Next, I had us play a game of skinny singles where for even scores we played diagonally and if one of us was serving with an odd score we shifted over after serving and just played straight across from each other.

I did win 11–0, but there were three or four sideouts. Mid-game, John had shared, “Even though I’m losing, I’m having fun!” That’s what we want!

After the skinny singles game, John said he was burnt out, so he called it a night. (John is an early riser.) I checked the time and it was 9:15 p.m. We’d been there for an hour and a half.

It was an enjoyable and productive outing.

Once we were in the parking lot, we stopped and chatted for 15 minutes or so, then we went our separate ways, never to see each other again. Dun, dun, dun! Kidding. I see John all the time! Ha ha!

Number of days on a court: 761
Number of total hours: 3,067.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 105.5

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