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I got up early today to play pickleball in a different place. Many of the same people but the tennis center is running a tournament so no PB there. We met at a really nice municipal athletic field where they have half a dozen courts. No reservations. They do something called paddle stacking. If you want to play you have to put your paddle on the designated bench in stacks from right to left. Four paddles is a match and when a court is available you play with whoever has the other three paddles. No one is supposed to keep their group, it is random selection.
The whole thing is a massive social experiment in action. There are contracts, agreements, push and pull and mostly being nice and playing by the sandbox rules. It is fascinating to watch. A couple of weeks ago there was a girl there, maybe mid 20s, reading on her Kindle on a comfy sheath she brought and when the court became available she joined the other random people who she'd never met and played a match, came back, put down her paddle in the next slot of stacking and went back to her book.
I played tennis for maybe 40 years and it was nothing like pickleball. Not just the game but the social contract that comes with it. I've learned to really work on my attitude so I'm a convivial person to play with. It means shutting my mouth a LOT when I'd normally make a comment trying to be funny. And not sweating at all when my opponent calls a ball out that was clearly, to my eyes, in. It is good for me. Difficult, but good.
I miss my son, Matt, who I'd absolutely love to have with me playing PB. He and I used to play tennis as doubles partners. We pretty much sucked but it was wonderful. This would even be better.
After PB I went out to the small spread of my friends who are in Louisanna alligator hunting. This is what their yard looks like:
They have a dozen chickens roaming the yard somewhere. I feed them, feed the cats, clean up the litter box, make sure everyone has water, and today I also fed the deer. So they came around and posed for the picture.
It was fairly cool in the yard and fairly quiet and the day just seemed to be nearly perfect in that moment. Didn't need or want much of anything more.
Yesterday I ran across a guy, Huberman, a Stanford science geek who has been around making waves in the better living through science realm for a while. I don't much like him. He's a bit too much bro for me BUT I'm happy to suck the good stuff from his podcast.
He went through the concept of timed eating, AKA fasting. I pretty much do that already. We used to call it skipping breakfast. If you go to bed early and don't eat for the couple of hours before bed and then wait an hour or two before eating in the morning then you are fasting. Easy to do 16 hours off and then an 8 hour window of eating.
Huberman has the science to demonstrate what happens, all good things for most people, when you live that way. So I adjusted my morning and didn't eat anything before PB. I thought not having anything would really screw me up but it did not matter at all. And I drank a protein drink and ate a bar on my way driving back, breakfast at 10AM after a couple of hours of exercise. It was actually pretty enjoyable.
We'll see how that works. It would be easy for me to not eat after 7PM. Tea and water only. And black coffee in the morning and more water before eating. And exercise.
We'll see how it goes.
The whole thing is a massive social experiment in action. There are contracts, agreements, push and pull and mostly being nice and playing by the sandbox rules. It is fascinating to watch. A couple of weeks ago there was a girl there, maybe mid 20s, reading on her Kindle on a comfy sheath she brought and when the court became available she joined the other random people who she'd never met and played a match, came back, put down her paddle in the next slot of stacking and went back to her book.
I played tennis for maybe 40 years and it was nothing like pickleball. Not just the game but the social contract that comes with it. I've learned to really work on my attitude so I'm a convivial person to play with. It means shutting my mouth a LOT when I'd normally make a comment trying to be funny. And not sweating at all when my opponent calls a ball out that was clearly, to my eyes, in. It is good for me. Difficult, but good.
I miss my son, Matt, who I'd absolutely love to have with me playing PB. He and I used to play tennis as doubles partners. We pretty much sucked but it was wonderful. This would even be better.
After PB I went out to the small spread of my friends who are in Louisanna alligator hunting. This is what their yard looks like:
They have a dozen chickens roaming the yard somewhere. I feed them, feed the cats, clean up the litter box, make sure everyone has water, and today I also fed the deer. So they came around and posed for the picture.
It was fairly cool in the yard and fairly quiet and the day just seemed to be nearly perfect in that moment. Didn't need or want much of anything more.
Yesterday I ran across a guy, Huberman, a Stanford science geek who has been around making waves in the better living through science realm for a while. I don't much like him. He's a bit too much bro for me BUT I'm happy to suck the good stuff from his podcast.
He went through the concept of timed eating, AKA fasting. I pretty much do that already. We used to call it skipping breakfast. If you go to bed early and don't eat for the couple of hours before bed and then wait an hour or two before eating in the morning then you are fasting. Easy to do 16 hours off and then an 8 hour window of eating.
Huberman has the science to demonstrate what happens, all good things for most people, when you live that way. So I adjusted my morning and didn't eat anything before PB. I thought not having anything would really screw me up but it did not matter at all. And I drank a protein drink and ate a bar on my way driving back, breakfast at 10AM after a couple of hours of exercise. It was actually pretty enjoyable.
We'll see how that works. It would be easy for me to not eat after 7PM. Tea and water only. And black coffee in the morning and more water before eating. And exercise.
We'll see how it goes.