Sunday, December 7, 2025 (Court Day #878)

It was an absolute beautiful day, much like for the parade yesterday. Sunny with only traces of clouds and 57°F. While that may seem a little bit chilly, it doesn’t take long to warm up while getting exercise in the direct sunlight.

Paddles

Andrea, from Aireo sports, says she’ll be dropping off some demo paddles to me on Friday while on her way to a paddle event in Monterey. That will be good, that way I can share them with my students and local players.

Knee

My right knee has been bothering me more than normal. I was walking the dog yesterday morning and with every step, it was a 3 or 4 out of 10 in terms of pain. In Harry Potter books, characters would not say the name of the Dark Lord—”he who shall not be named”—out of fear that somehow simply doing that would conjure him up. Dare I say it? In the back of my mind has been I thought that someday I may have to subject myself to a knee replacement. That is no little surgery. It’s a long recovery time with a lot of physical therapy and, of course, a lot of missed pickleball time too.

No Teaching

I am off from teaching for a few weeks. It’ll be a nice break. I have a new pickleball classes starting in a month. My Advanced Beginner class sold out as of yesterday, but my Beginner class at the moment, has zero sign ups. I’ll likely convert that to an Intermediate class. At this rate, it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to fill a Beginner class. It seems that pickleball is starting to get saturated locally.

Brommer

I pulled into Brommer Park at 9:15 a.m. The parking lot was full, but there were two cars pulling out just as I arrived, leaving me a spot.

Lefty Game

Regular Ed and I played against Carson and a guy named Dave. Due to injury, Dave was playing lefty though he is a righty. I switched to left myself. We lost 13-11. Amusing game. A lot of fun. Carson won on an ATP—pretty good for lefty!

Righty Games

Soji and Dan Dewey played against  René and me. We are up up 6-3 but went on to lose 11-7. It was not entirely my fault, but mostly me. This was my first game after switching back to playing righty, after playing that other game lefty. 

Soji and I won 11-5 versus J.P. and René.

Kent Shain—part of the local pickleball “OG”—and I played against Ed and someone.  We won 12-10. That was a lazy game.

Oren and Aaron played against Alex and me. We won 13-11, then won again 11-6.

Conner & Jim

I teamed up with a weaker player against Conner and his dad Jim, 8-11. I’m surprised we kept it that close. I made three errors in the whole game. Conner and Jim didn’t speed up on me in that game after I countered Jim’s speedup with a winner back to Jim’s feet.

I teamed up with Pavel against Taylor (Track & Field Aaron’s girlfriend) and Nari, who sports a beard. I don’t remember the outcome, but I’m sure we won.

Rick Arnold and I played against Pavel and young Track & Field Aaron. We won solidly. I think it was 11–5 or 11–6.

The last game I played with Oren against René and Rick Arnold. For every error that I made, my partner made two. It was not his best game. We lost 5–11.

Track & Field Aaron has super-quick hands, probably the fastest that I’ve played against. (People tell me I have super-quick hands. Now I know how others feel!) Aaron is a challenge. He can rip balls hard too.

I felt that I played ok today, but there were no elite games.

I checked the time. 1:31 p.m. It was time to go home and have my first meal of the day.

Number of days on a court: 878
Number of total hours: 3,339
Number of paid coaching hours: 185.5

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