Category: Pickleball (Page 133 of 325)

Monday, December 5, 2022. (No Play)

I got a surprise in my Facebook feed at lunchtime today…

Major League Pickleball. There has to be lots of cash being pumped into all these pro leagues to support the advertising.

Doctor Appointment

I had a 2:30 p.m. appointment with Dr. Welle, the surgeon who did the rotator cuff repair on my shoulder. He poked and prodded my right knee a bit then moved my leg back-and-forth and, in the end, we decided on a Cortisone shot plus a referral to physical therapy. The doctor got out the Cortisone shot and I was kind of amazed at how much liquid he shot into my knee. It was the entire syringe of a milky substance. Without me asking any questions, he assured me that even though he was injecting the shot on the right side of my knee, it has a cavity and a Cortisone would help with the entirety of the knee, including the left side as well.

Back to Work . . . Ow!

I returned to work after my doctor’s appointment and about two hours later my knee started to hurt—and I mean, hurt a LOT. After an additional 30 minutes or so it got extremely painful. So painful that walking was excruciating. While at my desk, I looked up online the side effects of a Cortisone shot into a knee and it said “extreme pain and swelling”. No offense to my good doctor, but he hadn’t warned me of any of the side effects!

By 5 o’clock I was sequestered in my office sitting in my chair at my computer and not moving. Even standing up out of my chair took a lot of willpower since it the so painful. I made a couple of attempts to walk out into the store and I used an empty mailing tube as a cane. The best I could do with that was shuffling and I didn’t get very far from my office doorway! One of my staff offered two ibuprofen which I gladly accepted. I gave up moving around and just sat at my desk and did work there, leaving everything else to my staff. I warned my wife that I might need a ride home after work.

I did manage to drive home although I ended up using my left foot on the brake and my right foot on the gas since just moving my right foot back-and-forth between the two pedals was very painful. When I got home, I traveled around as little as possible. After eating dinner, I shuffled back to my bedroom and laid down, elevating my leg.

I got up in the middle of the night and the pain had reduced by about a third. Very promising.

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Tuesday, December 6, 2022 (Court Day #565)

By this morning, most of the side effects of the shot were gone and I was about 80% back to normal. Thank goodness! Things like this make one not take walking for granted!

A friend of mine, John Z., I contacted me recently about learning to play pickleball. He was going to come on a Sunday with his son a week and a half ago, but it didn’t work out as his wife had other plans for him.

We arranged for a Tuesday night at Skypark. He texted me this afternoon and asked if I was still going considering it is wet and cold. I texted back saying it is never too cold for pickleball!

When I arrived at the courts at 6:45 p.m., at the arranged time, I pulled into a completely empty parking lot. I was wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt and Ted’s “on loan” brace on my right knee. There were two players out doing a singles game. I also saw a lone figure walking around on the courts a little bit aimlessly. I called out asking if it was John and he replied in the affirmative. He came out and met me at my car I presented him with one of my backup paddles.

Starting from Zero

I started out John with dinking to get him a feel of the weight of the ball and how it reacts on the paddle. He was used to tennis. We did that for a little while and I explained the rules and very basic strategy. Then I had him do some serving. He did quite well, getting most of his serves in. (When my brother John tried for the first time, he got less than half his serves in!) We moved on to a game of skinny singles with some straight on and some diagonal. It was no surprise that I beat him twice by a very wide margin.

Scott & Christian

On a nearby court were the two young guys—in their late 20s—the two who had been there when we arrived. One was named Scott and the other one was named Christian. They asked if we wanted to play doubles. When we finished our skinny singles game, we invited them over.

I could tell that they were relatively new players. John and I played against them and beat them twice. For his first time out John played well. From what I surmise John plays tennis somewhat regularly.

When we were in the midst of the second game against Scott and Christian, a man along with the younger guy laid down their paddles next to the court and asked if they could take on the winners. At this point I got much more interested in making sure we won the game—it was a close score—which we did.

Terry & Gavin

Scott and Christian left, saying they have been playing for two hours. It was time for Terry and his nephew Gavin. Terry was visiting from San Diego County and Gavin is living in Aptos going to school at Cabrillo College. Gavin grew up in the foothills of the Sierra mountains.

John and I won the first game, lost the second game, and then came back and won the third game. Gavin was the weaker of our two opponents but he was a decent player. For his first time out, John did really well.

What was crazy was the number of balls that we broke. We were initially playing with Terry’s ball but it broke. Then I got one of mine out, then it split along the seam. Out came another ball, and it too broke after a while. I dug out third ball of mine and it lasted a little while until it broke too. The last ball, one of Tristan’s “11 to Win” balls, lasted through the final game. We broke four balls in three games. Granted, none were new. But it wasn’t super cold. Sure, in the nippy mid-40s, but I was playing in the high 30s last week and we barely broke any balls. Maybe it was combination of temperature and just hitting the ball hard.

We were done playing about 9 p.m. then John and I chatted for another 15 minutes before heading to our nice warm homes!

Number of days on a court: 565
Number of total hours: 2,533

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Saturday, December 3, 2022 (No Play)

Today was parade day. Rain was predicted, but it would be light and the parade would be held “rain or shine” and only canceled for safety concerns like dangerous conditions such as hail or high winds.

The parade staging time began at 8:30 a.m., and every group had to be checked in with the registration booth and in place ready to go by 9:30 a.m.

Calm Before the Storm

I parked near my work and walked the length of the parade route from the finish to the start. It was like a ghost town along the way with me only seeing a smattering of volunteers wearing reflective safety vests, plus some local transients. With the light rain and the cool temperatures, a lot of the groups decided to wait until closer to 9:30 before appearing.

Since last night, I’d been texting back-and-forth with Dan Bliss trying to make arrangements for when and where and how to get his temporary portable net and the club banner to our designated staging spot and have them be supervised. Dan and I met on a side street at his truck and carried the items a few blocks to where we would be waiting. Then I kept and eye on them and Dan moved his truck to the end of the route. (He parked right next to my car actually, at my suggestion.)

Gradually, people began to trickle in and by 9:30, we had about a dozen of our people. Maia had arranged for her and several friends to dress up in pickle outfits—absolutely awesome!

Staging near us were representatives of a local pizza place and also a restaurant.

By 9:45 a.m., we were closer to 15 people. A nice surprise, shortly before 10 a.m., Matt Babb and his young son Lucas appeared. They’d been watching World Cup soccer earlier but the game finished and when Matt asked Lucas if he wanted to the parade, Lucas said yes. I loaned them my paddle and ball since I’d start the parade by carrying the banner and wouldn’t need them.

There is a bit of an issue as our location in the parade ended up behind a truck built in 1935 and that truck had some pretty smelly exhaust. Maia was particularly unhappy about it. When I talked to the block supervisor, she said we could switch in front of the truck, but unfortunately, another supervisor further up the block later switched us back. As we would progress down the actual parade route, we left an abnormally generous space between us and the truck fumes.

While the parade kicked off at 10 a.m., since we were closer to the end than the beginning, it was at least half an hour before we’d step onto the actual parade route lined with people.

Once we started, the parade progressed quickly.

We demonstrated dinking on the route and Matt’s son Lucas did one of the better jobs getting the ball back over the net!

Partway, Mark Dettle offered to carry the banner and gave me his paddle to use. (Lucas or Matt still had mine.) I told Mark that I was bending the PVC pipe up using my left arm as a fulcrum otherwise the banner would bunch up in the middle. (The pipe needs to be a bit thicker since it was sagging significantly.) At some point, Maia took over for Barb then Maia and Mark would finish out the parade leading the way.

As we made our way down the route, people—especially kids—would call out that they have played pickleball. Errant balls made for good crowd interaction too since we had to chance them down and retrieve them from helpful bystanders.

Along the route, we got nice shout-outs from the three spaced announcer booths. Later on, we were one of the groups featured on the Downtown Association social media feed.

We had a number of people ask about where and how to play and gave a whole lot of families a very happy exposure to pickleball.

Afterward, Dan and I walked his rigged-up net and the club banner the two blocks back to his truck and called it a day for the parade. I drove home, showered, and head to work.

Video

The downtown association made a video of the parade available to the public:

It was a fun event. Maia was asking Mark whose great idea it was for us to participate. Yep, that was me with my USA Pickleball Ambassador “hat” on. I think I earned my stripes for the year in that role.

Number of days on a court: 564 (No change)
Number of total hours: 2,530.5 (No change)

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.

Tuesday, November 29, 2022 (Court Day #564)

I left work and arrived at Skypark at 6:40 p.m. It was quite cold and I was wearing just shorts and a T-shirt and my hands were freezing. Well, not literally freezing but very cold. You could easily see your breath, for instance. At least 3-4 times tonight, I got the question, “Aren’t you cold?”

Brace, Brace, Brace

I was like the bionic man. I had my tennis elbow band on my forearm, the brace on my right knee, and a wrist brace. The thing I hate about the wrist brace is that the paddle rests in my hand differently against the brace wrapped around my palm and—as much as I try to adjust for it—it changes the angle of the paddle.

Flush This One

I played pretty darn horribly. Particularly of note, I played a game with Avery against Casey and his dad Tim. Every single point that Tim and Casey earned was due to my error. Avery played a clean game. Casey and Tim won 11-0. I can’t say that Avery and I lost 11-0, because that would not be fair to Avery. It was all me.

I played a little bit better later in the evening, but that’s not saying much. I played with Nicole against David and Minori and Nicole and I won. Nicole was ready to go home and left. David, Minori, and myself were the three people out, so we had to wait for someone else.

Hungry?

I ended up in a game with Max and Minori had to be talked into playing that game since she was quite hungry and ready to go eat. The funny thing is after we finished that first game of Max and I against David and her, Minori immediately went to the other side of the net and got ready to play another game! So much for hunger overriding the desire to play pickleball!

When I left Scotts Valley the monitor on my car read 39°F, or another way to say it, it’s 7° above freezing. No wonder my hands were cold! Play wrapped up at 9:30 p.m.

Parade Count Down

It’s looking like it might rain the day of the downtown holiday parade this Saturday. I’m hoping that doesn’t scare away club members and we end up with a sparse showing.

Number of days on a court: 564
Number of total hours: 2,530.5

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.