The Pickleball Cabin

 Well, the saga continued...  The Polestar 4 *IS* an excellent car, but it also the reason I won't be getting a Polestar as my next car, or any time soon.   I do really love the ideas and the technological aspirations of the Polestar 4, and in any other area of life I'd probably put up with the niggles (and the dashcam's inability to stick to the windscreen) and work around them, but...  I had the Polestar 4 for nearly 2 months, and knew I had to give it back soon, so far so good, I was enjoying the car and actually dreading going back to my 'little' Polestar 2, despite the quirks of the navigation saying I was about 200m away from where I acually was on a regular basis, but then it happened...   One morning I went down to the car to drive my Son to college and no Driver assist - odd, think I. Sure that a simple 'reboot' would solve the issue, after delivering him. I got out, opened and closed all the doors, and windows. Powered the car down and got back in...

           The tournament...    The day of the tournament arrives I can't get access to the hall until an hour before people are due to start playing! Cricketers are still at their practice, whacking the ball around but there is a safe space to start putting the nets together, so I get to work. Cricketers clear off with around 45 minutes to go, time to mark up the NVZ... which takes longer than it should, but thanks to help from some of the incoming players gets done in time.   Get all players to register via a google form (who knew only one person could enter data at once - even on multiple devices?). Accepting terms and conditions, etc...  Then on with play - round robin, everybody plays with as many others as possible - 9 rounds over 4 courts with 23 people playing (one late drop out)... Players from 20s to 80s whacking the ball in all directions.  After 9 rounds, using the pickleheads app to create and record matchups, the top 3...

Some of you will know that I took the plunge into Electric Cars a couple of years back, leasing a black Polestar 2. Shadowfax     I've taken this to and from the continent, and the only time I've had problems charging it was in Oxford finding a working fast charger.   It is a great car... But the other week it died (RIP Shadowfax), or rather the 12 v battery, that runs the onboard systems, as well as the TPAM battery both died. These don't get charged by the charging infrastructure, but are charged when driving - I'm not sure how they got discharged as I'd driven to and from Oxford the previous day, and had 39% charge on the drive battery. The next day I tried to unlock it but.... dead as a doornail, it was emulating a Norwegien Blue - pushing up the daisies, it was an ex-polestar.... Recovery person came out and  'jump started' it but told me it was likely to happen again within a week, and I should get it to the garage, via the Polestar recorery, ASAP. The...

Tennis Dying? Video is self explanatory...    

  So... I went along to the Franklin Premier Pickelball League draft/try out and pickleball festival yesterday... Got a bit of a shock with most players there were 4.2+ and playing how we generally play just didn't cut it!  The techniques I've been taught to coach - up to 3.5 level - just don't work A Long-Dink, for instance, as third shot, just gets pummeled as the players whip the ball adding top spin from balls beneath the level of the net... And anything slightly high turns into a volley-battle... Lots still to learn... It was great fun though - I learnt a lot through losing.. And hope to be back next year, to see how much I've improved (IF my legs can cope).. 8 hours of pretty non-stop play has left me hobbling a little today - by the 17:00 I was struggling to waddle up to the NVZ...   A number of players were using the REAL Ben John's Perseus IV -  to which my 'knock-off' got compared favourably! (even without JOOLA written on it - though probably not ...

 OMG... I got my new paddles through (from Ali-Express and AliBaba) the other day, and was able to try them out for the first time yesterday...   What a difference.. The Ben Johns Perseus clone feels so close to the real one - it looks, feels and sounds exactly the same (to my unpracticed ear), so much so that I think the blurb on the site might be true - and that this is essentially a pre-press of the real thing - it even has Ben's Signature on it... Now I KNOW how easy it is to put whatever graphics you like on a paddle (see my upcoming Pickleball Cabin Paddles - but that's another blog), but this feels real.. AND I can do a *proper* banana server with it - the first time I tried I was astonished!   At the weekend I was playing at the Premier Pickleball League event - Draft/Festival, a senior coach/player asked me to take a look at my Ben John's paddle commented that it seemed exactly the same as the REAL one... but said I'd not be allowed to use in a real tourney.......