Tuesday, August 18, 2026 (Court Day #955)

Officially effective yesterday, the City of Scotts Valley is implementing their trial of cutting off the lights every night at Skypark at 8 p.m. As of last week, the lights still went off at 8:30 p.m., Sunday through Thursday with an extra hour tacked on for Friday and Saturday nights. With the loss of 30 minutes of lights, there was an imperative for me to leave as soon as possible from work.

Unexpected Stop

On my way to Scotts Valley, I noticed that the gas light was on in my car. I looked at the miles left in the display: zero. Oh well, I would need to stop for gas on my way into Scotts Valley.

As I entered Scotts Valley, it was 75°F and sunny with traces of high thin clouds. Very warm.

Knee

Playing on Sunday had stressed my knee and it hurt while walking the dog this morning. It wasn’t intensely painful, probably a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being excruciatingly painful.

Skypark

I walked into the courts at 6:15 p.m.

The parking lot was full tonight but it was a relatively light crowd. I think at the peak, I think there were only 3 to 5 people waiting to get onto a court.

The first game was Chuck and myself against Scott Anderson and a young guy whose name I forget who has curly blond hair that flops out under his cap. His play could be a little bit rough, but he had quick hands and good skills. They went ahead, but then Chuck and I made a game of it only to lose by a couple of points in the end.

Aaron Hicks and I played three games against Pauly and Maria. We won all three games, however, the second one was a little bit closer.

Friendly Fire and Friendly Feeding

Over the course of the evening, I got hit in my upper body four times. Two of them were off of either my paddle or my partner‘s paddle. The first one was early in the evening, in my second game, where a drive and hit me square in the right pec muscle. It was almost like I was waking up from a dream. I should’ve been paying closer attention since I think I had my paddle down. The second one was Pauly hitting me at the armpit, catching me in a chicken wing.

In that last game, there are a few shots that Matt popped up which I just drove with my forehand up to the left side of the court. Between me getting hit with the ball (“friendly fire”) off my partner’s paddle, Matt suggested that I should title this blog post “friendly fire”. Later, after he had popped up a number of shots, he suggested that I should add “friendly feeding“ to the title as well!

Playing with Chris

The last three games were Hispanic Chris and myself against Paul and Aaron Hicks. We played three games. In the first game, Chris and I lost by a sizeable margin. In the second game we lost, but the game was very close. In the third, I played a very clean game. I made only one or two errors. Chris reduced his errors too, though he had quite a few more than I did. From the very first service of the game, Chris and I went ahead 4-0. Pretty soon it was 6-2. Then 8-2. Then 10-2 Then a win at 11-2.

Lights

Though we had been told that the lights were going to be clicking off at 8 o’clock, they were still on at 8:10 p.m. Matt was ready to go home and I had it in my head that I was going to be forced to leave at 8 p.m., so 8:10 p.m. sounded pretty good.

What to work on

When I was on the right hand side, receiving a serve, there were three serves down the middle, low and fast to my backhand that I was unsuccessful in returning the ball over the net. That is a consistent weakness.

Number of days on a court: 955
Number of total hours: 3,519.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 228.5

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