Submitted by Sue Liley

Author's note:  Last names have been eliminated to protect our pickleball communities.

My husband and I discovered pickleball while vacationing in St. George, UT.  We were driving past the indoor court (now a trampoline park) sign on Dixie Drive and he said, "What's pickleball? Let's go check it out."  They also had indoor soccer so I figured it was a kiddie game, but we went in and, as karma would have it, the owner was opening up for the evening and offered to show us how to play.  I had been the head women's tennis coach at the University of Oregon in the 80's so I had a head start, but both Rusty and I had a great time.  Afterward we raced to the nearest sporting goods store to buy paddles before it closed for the night.

Ten months passed --- so did several tournaments --- and several medals.  (If you leave out the "d" in medals you'll see I'm confessing to several meals, too).  A gal I played singles against at the Grand Canyon Games asked me to play 65 doubles at Oceanside in May.  Bev.  Nice gal.  We silvered and had lots of fun and I met another nice gal who agreed to play Nationals with me.  Barb.  But, we had never played with each other, just across the net. So Barb invited me to practice with her in Palm Desert (114 degrees) and Oceanside (75 degrees) the next week.

And what a week of Camaraderie it was. (I just had to capitalize "camaraderie" because the social enjoyment was so high!)  At 7:00 a.m. Jim, Chris, Arrianne and the others hit and sweated with us at Palm Desert. Then at Oceanside there was a slim quick handed gal named Trudie; a trim little thing with no game flaws that I could see, named Gail; a bearded leftie with a hilltop mansion and a sense of humor, Ken; a long legged gal who made me look like a fire hydrant with cellulite and who won gold in something at Nationals 2010 named Pam; a buff guy with a big serve from St. George, Stefan; a gentle gal with spiked hair and a feathery touch, Nancy; and of course former triathlete and current expert on active aging, my friend Barb.  Sadly, friends Bev, Bob and Audrey were on the road and couldn't play, but otherwise the San Diego gang was there.

We practiced...

We played...

We hydrated...

We dinked....

We limped off court.

You know, I competed in tennis for a hundred years and never met as many nice, fun, active people as I've met in a year on visits to Lakewood, Colorado, Surprise, AZ, St. George, UT and Oceanside, CA.  Not to mention my BFF and fellow pickleball addict from nearby Greeley, CO, Nurse Jamie.

Now husband Rusty is building a log cabin in the mountainous backcountry of Colorado where the road dips and shudders and tires go splat, where every tree is a bidet and the lights don't go out at night because they never go on, where a shower is a dripping bag and the mosquitoes play pickleball on your knee pits and the stars are out-of-control bright.  He's excavating a pickleball court adjacent to the cabin with 3 foot high Canadian thistle for fencing and killer views.   Much of the year you have to hike in or snowshoe 3 miles to get there.  A pickleball court there???  Now that's Pickleball Crazy with a capital "C"!!

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