Tuesday, July 12, 2022 (Court Day #515)

I’m leaving for New Mexico with my wife tomorrow morning for my daughter‘s “white coat” welcoming ceremony at medical school. As a result I needed to stay a little bit later at work to finish some administrative tasks.

It was overcast there still a little warm in Santa Cruz, but the clouds gradually disappeared as I drove to Scotts Valley and the sun popped out.

Skypark

I got to Skypark in Scotts Valley a few minutes after 7 p.m. It was striking to me that there were three tennis players on the two tennis courts and there were 35 players plus myself using the eight pickleball courts.

My first game was with TK against Matt and his friend Paul. TK made a lot of errors including driving a lot of his serves into the net, and that made it a much closer game.

You Owe Me $5

TK has a great serve when he gets the ball in. Before we started one particular early game together—we played several as partners tonight—I told him, “For each serve you hit into the net you have to give me $5.” He smiled, “What do I get?” “You get to play with me! I’m kidding!” He did do better.

Overall, I played pretty well tonight, so I did miss maybe 4 to 6 drop shots over the course of the two and a half hours that I was playing games tonight.

The last game was pretty fun. It was myself and TK against his friends David and Minori. She’s actually becoming a fairly decent player. She got a number of shots back over the net that I was not expecting her to get back, and they were not easy shots to return.

That last game ended about 9:25 p.m. and sure enough the clock flights clicked off five minutes later at 9:30.

I’m looking forward to play in Las Cruces, New Mexico, though there’s a prediction for temperatures is about 100°F. There they started playing outdoors at 6:30 a.m. to avoid the heat. The courts are about seven minutes of driving from the hotel where my wife and I will be staying, so pretty close.

Elbow

I’m feeling some pain where the bones meet are my right elbow. Not good. I haven’t been icing my elbow after play the last few weeks, but I did tonight.


Number of days on a court: 515
Number of total hours: 2,374.5

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