Tuesday, August 25, 2026 (Court Day #958)

At 6:13 p.m., I was pulling out of the parking lot at work. It was a warm 77°F and sunny with high patchy clouds.

Injuries

My right knee is continuing to give me trouble. Though the plantar fasciitis in my left foot has been relatively minimal today.

Lights?

As I drove, I was wondering when the announced change to the lighting would really go into effect. It was supposed to start a week ago, but then the lights stayed on until 8:30 p.m. anyway.

Skypark

As I walked in, I noticed that the posted courts hours on the signs had been changed to rad 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Also, posted on the gate were notices about the trial change to the court hours.

Hmmmmm…

I’m not going to mention any names, but this evening, there was a game that was a fairly close score. I was partnered with a player who was generally considered to be one of the regular stronger players at Skypark. The thing is, he can hit hard, but I kept track of my errors in that game and I had three the entire game. The reason our opponents were even in this game was because my partner was driving shots long and hitting drives and serves into the net. And some drives that were otherwise good, he was too deep in the court or out of position in the ball came back in fashion that made it extremely difficult to get it back over the net. I’m not going to mention this player’s name anywhere in this post.

Shane

A player that has showed marked improvement is Shane. He’s young and athletic and always had that going for him. But he has developed better accuracy in his shots and he has quick hands. He has become formidable. He still needs to work on his consistency, but so do I!

Paul and I played against Shane and Shreyes. We found ourselves down by a significant margin with some errors by me and some errors by Paul. We started dialing things in, crawled within one point, but then went on to lose 8-11.

We are now two months past summer solstice and it’s definitely getting darker earlier. I didn’t check the time but I’m guessing the lights came on around 7:30 p.m. I never play as well outside under lights.

Lights Out!

The lights clicked off at 8:05 p.m., so the new lighting schedule is officially in effect.

Wednesday, August 26, 2026 (No Play)

Apparently, a pickleball gauntlet has been thrown down by a political commentator:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DcgdOtQlqt3
“Tucker Carlson challenged Mark Cuban to a pickleball match after a scathing clip from Tucker’s podcast dropped and Cuban responded.”

Number of days on a court: 958
Number of total hours: 3,526
Number of paid coaching hours: 231.5

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