Sunday, February 9, 2020 (Court Day #335)
As I sat in bed after waking up, it sounded like rain. I was puzzled since it couldn’t be actual rain. As I got moving, it figured it out. Wind.
I arrived at Derby Park about 8:55 a.m. to set up. I was the first one there. I was a chilly morning. I was expecting the courts to be a mess with the wind, but in an ironic twist, the wind had blown off the courts! I used up about half the battery blowing dust and a less-than-normal amount of plant debris off the courts.
Stuart was one of the first to appear. He’s been coming lately. He looked at one of the city nets, judged it unplayable—I certainly wouldn’t want to play on it, we’ve been just moving it to the side for a number of weeks—and outright disassembled it, leaving it next to our storage bins.
A man named Sam appeared. He said he was from Alabama. He and his wife would later be heading down to Monterey then on to Arizona for a tournament. When I asked, he told me he was a 5.0 player. He said he’d be playing against Scott Moore and Dave Weintraub. Well, then, a very good player! It’s a moments like these that I’m most disappointed that I can’t play right-handed for the time being.
After about an hour, the wind really picked up, nets were blowing over. I was playing with Tony against Eric and Ted. The net blew over twice. The second time, Tony and Eric grabbed their backpacks and used them as weights on the net bases. That greatly helped, thought the center of the net tried to blow over anyway! Tony and I won that one, but it was bizarre conditions—I think we did a better job adjusting for the conditions.
A woman there asked about the progress of recovery for my right elbow. I told her it’s been over a year now. She asked if I had tried acupuncture. I said I hadn’t but was considering it, but needed a recommendation. She said, “I know one.” She added that there’s one named Peggy Chen in town and that she’s also a full MD. Something to look into.
I got to play one game against Sam (and Grita’s friend Caesar) with Stuart as my partner. Yes, Sam is a great player! Stuart is a good player—he keeps shots low, scrapes up low balls, executes good lobs—but he utters an excuse for almost every mistake he makes. I hope knows we don’t expect him to be perfect.
I played a game with Juls against Cal and a woman I don’t know. It was nuts. Debris was swirling around our feet, balls would change direction or drop or sail unexpectedly, gusts might make you lose you balance if you weren’t careful!
I left Cal and Shawnte and a couple of women playing. I locked up and hit the road.
Home
When I said it was windy, I wasn’t kidding.
When I got home, our neighbor’s venerable tree had toppled over. Social media had photos of trees down all over the area. The main freeway through the county was closed in both directions due to trees and power lines down.
My son Nicholas and I decided to go see a movie In Scotts Valley but the roads were crawling and we never made it even a quarter of the way to the theater. It took us three times as long to get back home after got off the freeway and we turned back home. The traffic was a mess. Power was out to some stoplights.
Still that wasn’t enough to keep some of us from playing pickleball this morning!
Number of days on a court: 335
Number of total hours: 945
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