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The Habit of Tennis

This weekend I played a lot of tennis and at a makeup match Sunday afternoon I saw two things on the court I had never seen before. (We won 6-4, 7-5 with an ace on my serve, thank you for asking). The tennis court was half way between a University and a Catholic seminary. On one court there was a foursome of Chinese students one of whom played tennis while he talked on a cell phone. On the another court two nuns played a match. How could I tell they were Nuns? They playing in their habits! It was a warm breezy day and they flopped in the wind like flags. After a bad shot one of them said "That was a lesson in humility." Amen Sister, I know the feeling.

My First Back Flip

Earlier this summer, an accomplished diver at the Aviator’s Pool casually mentioned a back flip was the easiest dive to learn. Of course I wanted to try it! Although he was a good diver, he may have landed a few too many times on his head to be a good instructor (which may have been why he didn’t have any hair) because he did not bother to tell me much else besides jump backwards, tuck my knees, and avoid hitting my head on the board. After following his advice and landing painfully on several different parts of my anatomy I was finally able to land feet first. What a trill!

Here is how I did it.

First I walked to the end and turned around with my back to the pool. Then I backed my left foot, then my right foot, over the edge of the board. My weight was resting entirely on the balls of my feet so I had to extend my arms to maintain my balance. Once I found my balance, I lower my arms to my side because I had seen divers do this in the Olympics. Pushing down with my toes and bending my knees, I raised my arms to depress the springboard. According to the experts, I should have raised my arms above my head while pushing down, and dropped my arms back down to my sides while bending my knees. Then I lifted my chest up and tilted my head back and pulled my knees to my chest and I landed feet first in the water. Victory!

See more progress on: backflip

Bike to Work Day

June 28th is Bike to Work Day in Colorado. Since I don't really commute riding my bicycle to breakfast seemed the like the best way to mark the occasion. My destination was a few miles away at the Delectable Egg in Lowery, but thanks to the many, many stop lights between the two points, it did not take me any longer to ride than it would have to drive. There would be many benefits to society if more people used bikes instead of a cars: our foreign policy would be less dependent on oil producing countries, global warming might slow down, the obesity the plagues so many Americans would be reduced. Yet despite these benefits popular culture impels us to spend or lives behind either a windshield, a television screen, or a computer monitor.

Biking to work is a Colorado tradition. When worked downtown I used to ride my bike everyday. So relatively popular was bicycle commuting that by 1995 the Denver Regional Council of Governments began helping the area's cities and counties link local events together and Bike to Work Day is the result.

At the restaurant the delectable hostess, who I will call M. told me a funny story. Two of M.'s friends, a couple, decided to bike from Denver to Chicago. Along the way, at exactly the half way point, 500 miles of riding in either direction, M's male friend proposed to his girlfriend. She must have thought "I am in the middle f%$*(#) nowhere, it's too far to go back, so I better say yes". Later on, after they arrived in Chicago she disengaged herself.

Riding back to Stapleton I passed four other cyclists on their way to work but hundreds of cars.

Last Day

Today marked the official end of the 2006 ski season in Colorado. After 227 days the lifts finally stopped running at Arapahoe Basin, North America's highest ski area.

I was on hand for the occasion. For so late in the year there was an amazing amount of snow and the temperature was toasty. Needless to say I got about a summers worth of a tan in an afternoon. This is a picture of me at the 13,050 summit taken by my good friend and the hardest working man in othapedics Ed Pino. 

Earlier I rode the lift with a pair of first year medical students and we compared notes about dating. When I told them that my date range was anywhere between 23 and 53 years old they were not very impressed that I could date women their age, but thought dating a 53 year old totally rocked. They also told me that they never asked for phone numbers but just gave out their cards everywhere they went. By their estimates about 10% - 20% of the women who they gave cards to would actually call. This seems backwards to me. If you ask a woman for her phone number you can be 100% certain you will be speaking with her.      

A-Basin was surprisingly crowded for closing day bringing both people attracted by the snow and people attracted by the carnival atmosphere that marks the end of a ski season. Although some of the skiers were formally attired in tuxes I favored a more casual look and skied in shorts and a t-shirt. Although this was less clothing than most people wore, it was hardly extreme. One woman skied topless while others wore bikinis.

Although there is still skiing in Zermat and Argentina this is it for Colorado.

Lacrosse Drill

Here is a drill I would like to try next season. It is called the bulldog game. Split the group into to two teams of equal size. One team stands at the side lines, the other in the middle of the field. The players on the sidelines each have a ball, the players in middle do not. On the call "bulldog" the team on the sideline runs to other sidelines though the players in the middle. If a player loses the ball he becomes part of the team in the middle. The drill continues until one player is left with the ball.   

First Game of the Season

Tonight I had my first USTA game of the season. We lost 6-4, 4-6, 3-6 to a couple of young guys from City Park. My ankle was still a little painful after the match and my balance is not as good as it was before the injury. It seems to me that the secret to success in Men's 3.0 tennis is having a good serve. Mine is still uneven.

From Coaches Infoservice:

Remember that the serve is composed of a sequence of body rotations and a fluid motion is more desirable than attempting to increase the velocity of a specific segment.

From Tennis 4 You

There are four kinds of serves you need to be aware of, the flat serve, slice serve, kick serve, and the topspin serve

We also lost because I did not protect the ally, too many of my ground shots went long, some of my returns went right up the middle of the court and made for easy net shots, and I ran through some shots. We also allowed them to play their game, not hitting to the weaker player enough and not hitting to their backhand.

Inflatable Sailboats

Vickie Rudolph told me about inflatable sailboats, which seem perfect for Colorado. Apparently there is a business devoted to just these type of watercraft. Sail Boat To Go

Lacrosse Letters

Hi Bruce,

How are you doing? I just wanted to tell you about a funny thing that happened to me this weekend. I was invited to play in a lacrosse tournament in San Diego at the UC San Diego campus. It was a big tournament with about 20 teams. Needless to say we lost our games and didn't win the championship, but I had fun however. I hadn't played in 20 years. It was a blast! Anyways, we played a team from LA and i noticed a guy that looked very familiar. After the game i went up to him and we spoke and it turned out to be Rob McElroy. He was the guy who played for us when we coached the George Washington team in 1981. Remember him? He was by far one of the best guys on the team. I think that he went to Graland before GW. Anyways, he lives in Orange County and works for a software company and is doing well.  It was fun to catch up with him.

Best,
Tom

Hey Tom

That is a great story. I do remember Rob, although it is hard to picture him as a adult. Personally it is good to see his experience with George Washington team did not sour him on Lacrosse. Remember the time the team had a game, you couldn't go, and my Mom would not let me have the car? Finally I convinced her, but by then the game was about to start. Everyone - our team, their team, the spectators, and the officials - were waiting for me and the whistle blew blew the moment I arrived at the field. Of course we lost, but that didn't matter to me because I felt important.

It reminds me of the time we tried out for that professional soccer team at McNicholes Arena. You might have had a chance to make the team, but I had no business being there. It wasn't until many years later in Boston that I even learned how to play soccer. Looking back, I really did not take the sport seriously. Not if being serious meant practicing or learning the rules of the game.

I wanted to be an athlete without training. Come to think of it, I didn't really train that much when I ran the Boston Marathon either but somehow that turned out differently.

When my time to try out came, I tried to stop a fast break but slipped on the field and slid under the artificial turf exposing the ice. It wiped out that whole side of the defense and the other side scored easily. What I really wanted to accomplish was to do something I could tell girls about so they would want to sleep with me. In the actually fact, the experience was so embarrassing I could never bring myself to mention to anyone. Eventually I realized pretending to be an athlete was not the way to convince a women to take an interest in me.  So I had to develop other ways to get them to sleep with me, like pretending I was interested in marrying them.

Today I am helping coach my son's Lacrosse team, but as an assistant to two coaches 20 years younger me. They know a lot more about the game than I ever learned so I never mention my past coaching experience, but content myself with helping the practices and games run more smoothly. Two weeks ago before a game, I slipped on wet grass going scooping up a ball and gave myself a third degree sprain. My entire foot swelled up to two or three times its normal size, but I didn't go to the emergency room until after we had won the game. I haven't missed a practice since, although I do coach in a foot brace that reaches up to my knee. Now I send my players after missed shots.

Our team is coming together, and so far we have won every game we have played, even the hard ones where we where behind at the beginning. Now that they have the basics, the game is teaching them more than we ever have as coaches. The only real thing I can teach them as a coach is not to give up.

Talk to you soon,

Bruce

Lacrosse Philosophy

The team I assist in coaching had a game today. We scored more goals than our opponents, which is gratifying for the coaches. For the players, especially since they are 9 years old, I think other objectives should be emphasized. I would like to see our teams philosophy be, in order of importance:

• To have fun
• For the team to play well
• For me to play well
• Develop new skills

A Good Day for a Swim

Today I took the plunge and joined the Boulder Polar Bear Club on its annual New Year's swim in Boulder Reservoir. To say the water was icy would be no exaggeration. The entire reservoir was frozen over, except where the club had broken up a swimming area between two docks.

This is the 22nd annual plunge, and it was started by one of the Colorado's true eccentrics, Norwegian Trygve Bauge. Trygve is perhaps best known for keeping his grandfather's body frozen inside a styrofoam and plywood freezer full of dry ice in a small storage shed in Nederland, Colorado. He lies there today, in Trygve's own words as "a frozen corpsicle, awaiting Re-Animation".

Trygve founded the Boulder Polar Bear Club in 1983 to popularize his theories about the life-extending benefits of cold and as a way to meet girls. Since the first year's event attracted only three swimmers, both theories have required the test of time. Fortunately for the former theory, the Polar Bear Swim has now grown to over 600 people, many of them single women, all of them bikini clad. Unfortunately this has proved no boon to Trygve's social life since he was deported from the United States in 1994.

Why all the women I saw who jumped in the reservoir wore bikinis is a mystery, although of particular interest to me since I am now in an exclusive relationship. The experience of the Arctic would suggest that lots and lots blubber would be an advantage. Yesterday I discovered at the Zoo that real Polar Bears try and eat nothing but fat. After consuming all of a seal's blubber, they typically leave the rest of the carcass behind. A mental inventory of the animals of the Arctic: polar bears, musk oxes, whales, seals and walrus don't call svelteness exactly to mind either.

Why do almost all of the women at the Polar Bear Plunge exhibit the trim muscles and toned features of the serious fit? Where are all the fat girls with their natural body advantages?  Let's be honest, I will never understand women.

You might ask, gentle reader, why jump anywhere, which for all intents and purposes, is like a giant glass of ice water? I don't have a good answer for it. Although I could say it was for fun, it really wasn't any fun, at least the 30 seconds or so I was experiencing life as a frozen fish. The only thing I can tell you is that I felt better coming out than going in, and that is a good reason to do anything.