Super Seniors Tennis

Our Super Seniors men's team had its first match of the season, last night indoor at White Bear tennis club (now a Lifetime Fitness club). To play in this league you must be at least 60 by the end of 2008, and have a USTA rating of 4.0 or lower. There are five teams in the league, which covers the metropolitan area. Each match is composed of three doubles matches and the winner is whoever wins the most of these three competitions. I played the number one doubles with a guy I'd not played with before against two guys that I know pretty well and who are both very good doubles players. We had a long match, considering the score. We extended several games to multiple ads, but won few of them. My team lost 6-1, 6-3, as bad a score for me in quite a while, but I felt pretty good about the level of competitiveness. Our team's other two duets lost by similar scores. And the White Bear team members are good hosts. They brought beer, soda, chips, and some home made bean and cheese chip dip that was quite good. They shared the largess and were quite convivial.

These are the courts at Sibley High School. I played mixed doubles there Tuesday night.



We had a big rain storm roll through this afternoon and refreshed the gardens and maybe saved some of the St Paul park trees that have been sorely neglected by the city forestry department.

Trees

I was at Linwood Park and noticed the trees that they so meticulously planted at taxpayer expense in the last couple of years. They must have some flaw in their plan, in that, when the summers are dry, they don't water the trees and thus have to replace them the next year. You'd think that the park board could send some interns out and splash some water on the expensive trees and keep them alive through the droughts. That's just my opinion and I could be wrong.

These are recently planted trees on park land. Only one is completely stone dead.


Enough ranting. It was a beautiful day, about eighty degrees, and I played some tennis again today. There was wind, but we played on the sheltered courts at Marie and it went pretty well. The evening mellowed into a sweet twilight and a very beautiful pastel sky at sunset. One of the top ten days of the year without much doubt.

The Prairie Princess will be driving home tomorrow for the Independence Day holiday. The weather creatures are predicting pleasant weather for the weekend.

Wimby is down to semifinal action. The men played today. Federer and Nadal are still in the action and are likely to meet for the championship this weekend. I hate to pick against the five time defending champion, but I still like Raffy.

Central Standard Time Arrives

The first day of CST - Central Standard Time. I awoke early to chat with Kagami Sensei from Ogaki City in Japan. The normal 8 am time here moved back to 7 am, so I pretended that the clock hadn't changed until after the chatting concluded. She's been having some trouble with one of the Japanese teachers she's trying to help. He makes up lessons for the English classes and tends to use wrong English expressions without checking for authenticity with KS. He made up a song in English and used the word "clothes", but pronounced it like it had two syllables "clothe - es", and then taught it to several classes. KS objected, but he wouldn't change it because it changed the rhythm of the song. Americans are not the only nationality with obstinate old men.

In any case KS is still doing well.

The photo is a lovely oak tree on Summit Avenue that still owns its leaves.


I took an afternoon walk in the late fall sun with Herb. The evidence of the just passed Halloween holiday is still around. There are lots of sunken cheeked jack o'lanterns, many that have been gnawed by the herds of squirrels who are getting ready for winter.

I'll be playing tennis tomorrow and voting on Tuesday.

Autumn Trek Photos

The Blogger facility is working a little better today,so I'm uploading the photos that I wanted to use yesterday. Blogger failed me once today, but my repeated upload attempts eventually succeeded.

Yestreday's bike trek began in my own backyard. My sweet little maple tree is beginning to drop all her leaves. They changed color and then the winds came and this is what remained yesterday.


My journey took me to the River Road across the Ford Parkway bridge, and by Minnehaha Falls. It rained for about 18 of the last 21 days, so this is quite high water in the Creek that flows over the precipice. It's a fierce waterfall this month compared with the July barely adequate flow. And the leaves have decided to redecorate.


This is the photo of the spot where the trek odometer reached 400 miles for the year. A puny total for some, but not insignificant for most Social Security recipients. The bridge behind the bike goes to Pike Island in the lowland below Fort Snelling. It is one of the few places in the Twin Cities that you will find a sign forbidding bicycle travel. (There is another one very near Minnehaha Park in the Longfellow Gardens area). It was a busy place when I rode there yesterday, today it was likely deserted.


I found my broom and sliding shoes for curling and went to the club on Selby for the open house today. The place was populated with new curlers, but the event was not very well organized. I watched for a while, then came home to watch the Vikings lose another game, this one to the Dallas 'Boys. I think I'll be able to remember the curling delivery for the first night on the ice this Wednesday.

Twelve Days for a Maple Tree

The heat wave is over, probably for the year. The high today was 67 and it's back to 53 now, so it feels like October again. We had an inch and a half of rain today. The trees are beginning to change colors with a vengence. My backyard maple tree is pictured on September 26.


The maple tree on October 8, today. Twelve days later. It's changing colors on the way to winter.


Baseball is in the middle of playoffs. I think the Yankees were eliminated from contention tonight by the Cleveland team. I used to watch baseball faithfully, especially as a kid. Dad was a big Yankee fan and had stories about Ruth and Gehrig from the days of his youth. And since he coached baseball and filled us with the lore and magic of major leaguers, I was a big Yankee fan. It was the days of Mantle, Maris, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, and all those names from the great teams of the 50's and 60's. This week is playoff time and I can't even name all the teams, but I know that there are a lot of millionaires playing the game. This is the era of Steinbrenner. I guess that I lost that loving feelin'.

And steroids strike down Marian Jones. I guess that it isn't just bikers and aging home run hitters that have connections to the Balco Lab. She seemed so clean and honest, too.

There was tennis today again, three sets at the indoor Wooddale club with the regular set of geezers. It was good tennis again, long points and good competition. No blood was shed.