Getting Pickled
I have a funny relationship with pickles. I think it must have to do with PH balance or something. There are times I like them and times I find them very distasteful. If I’m going to have a hot dog, I generally prefer one with mustard and relish and relish is nothing more than ground up pickles, right? Maybe its the combination with mustard (something I believe Heinz may have combined and sold as a specific mustard/relish condiment combination). But put a pickle in a burger, hardly a novel concept in the western world, and it will stop me in mid-bite and cause me to open up the bun and find a way to slide that nasty bit of vinegary green stuff off to the side. It’s not like biting not a tomato for me, which is a very unpleasant awakening that might well cause me to put down the burger for good and feel like I have survived a near poisoning. A pickle doesn’t offend me by taste so much as it cautions me that if I eat it I will regret it as it turns my stomach in a sour direction.
That’s a lot of information about what goes on in my mouth and stomach and as common as I suspect some of these thoughts are among you, I’ll bet you are wondering why I feel that anyone needs to read about how I feel about condiments. The truth is that my mind is wandering and not very focused this morning. I am in pre-holiday mode. We have our box of holiday cards ready for personalization, but that monkey does not climb on my back for about a week yet. Kim is watching a Hallmark movie or two, but we are not yet into holiday movie countdown. In a nutshell, I am at loose ends at the moment and want to be enjoying myself and the freedom that comes with such moments, but am not entirely sure how to go about that. That means that I have not yet settled into this whole retirement thing altogether and still have some work to do at finding my peace with the world.
One of the biggest areas of finding my groove revolves around exercise. I seem to have plateaued for the moment. For the past three years, the household projects, especially the back hillside, have upped my exercise game enough to have caused me to drop about 40 pounds or so, but that number hasn’t gone up in quite a while so I suspect that since I am not eating much differently (pickles included), I must have gotten to a balancing point with my level of exercise. I know. How the caloric math works and I do understand that the size of my bulk drives the caloric utilization in an ironic way. As I have lost weight, it takes less calories to move that weight from one place to another, so unless I want to eat less calories, I have to move that weight around more to stay in balance. There is only so much of that balance that I can make up for with my restless leg syndrome and wiggling my legs when I am trying to sit quietly (as I am doing right now as I write this story). I’ll bet that is worth one slice of cheese per day at most. I have left the walking sticks (the ski pole type) by the kitchen door to remind me that I really should start walking the neighborhood like every other person my age does around here. I’m not there yet and I say that with the conviction of someone who rode his motorcycle down the driveway to the street yesterday to see how the new irrigation nozzles by the road were working. There are sometimes reasons to do that, but I knew it was physical laziness when I did it.
Earlier this year, this exercise Jones got me to take Kim to the Pickleball courts and join the Castle Creek PickleBall Club. It was a $100 commitment for six months plus the cost of paddles and a few lessons, so not a big investment. I liked it, and more importantly, Kim seemed to like it enough to keep her going back with me for several months. We took several of our visitors (Gary, Oswaldo, David) for a trial run on the theory that everyone wants to say they’ve tried PickleBall these days, and I have to say that they all seemed to really like it. We went weekly for several months and then summer intervened and we lost the thread. I reenlisted for another $100 at the semiannual turn, but hadn’t been back to the courts. As the heat of summer has faded into the Fall and the weather has gotten into that nice low 70s place, my mind has turned back to PickleBall.
A few weeks ago I threw out the idea at a dinner party with our neighbors of a PickleBall gathering. At $5 per guest, I felt I could be magnanimous. The trick would be to go after the usual morning PickleBall rush. I suggested high noon on a Friday, far enough out so that no one could refuse. That day was yesterday. When I started to remind everyone (Mike, Faraj and Sam) that we had agreed to do it, I was met with some skepticism as to whether there had truly been a social contract reached. Mike plays softball three times a week and Sam does the same with tennis. Faraj says he fishes, but I think his tackle is stored away for the season. Anyway, I knew tennis-playing Sam would be in, so when Faraj jumped in I knew the peer pressure on Mike would be enormous. And it worked. So, yesterday I told everyone to meet at the PickleBall courts and gave them an Apple Maps pindrop to find it. Only problem was that as mediocre as my PickleBall skills are, my Apple Maps skills are worse and I sort of fucked that up. Nothing two phone calls from the courts and an apology couldn’t fix. Suburbia is a forgiving place when it comes to driving directions.
I have four paddles and with spouses, we were eight, which seemed light at the start and then just right as we did the “After you, Alfonse” dance about whose turn it was to play or rest. As suspected, the noontime courts were totally empty, which was good given the learning curve the group had to go through. PickleBall takes a while to adjust to the non-bounce of the whiffle ball and there were lots of “not like Tennis” comments, which is the norm it seems. Mike, the softball shortstop with an 18/20 rating and a 159-pound fat-free body composition, could only take so much practice, so we launched into a series of games to get into the swing. I was impressed that everyone, especially the wives in this picture, seemed to be enjoying the play. That is the testament to the social and physical aspects of PickleBall. You can get good enough to enjoy the play in almost no time at all if you have even a snick of physical capability, which everyone on the court did this day.
I wasn’t surprised that Mike and Melissa were solid players, they are young and athletic. As for slightly older Sam and Chris, they are tennis players, so they were on their game very quickly, looking right at home. Kim and I had the benefit of a few lessons, so we were competent enough, but no one would presume either of us had championship potential. But the real dark horses in the pack were Faraj and Yasuko. Faraj, was jumping around getting to everything like a Persian Cat on a hot tin roof. And Yasuko, with her Geisha-like calmness was slamming in her serves with great respect and humility while rarely missing a point. The body chemistry of PickleBall seemed to suit us all and I suspect that we will be getting pickled together again soon.