Glass court at the Delaware Investments U.S. Open
The frustrating thing about the first few days of the 2011 Delaware Investments U.S. Open Squash Championships is that you want to watch every match, and if you want to watch both men’s and women’s matches, you have to choose. So sitting in the bleachers at Drexel University on Saturday, I watched two Australian countrymen, David Palmer vs. Ryan Cuskelly, in the early afternoon, and then I decided to go looking for the women. Continue reading
Violet light seeped filmy and translucent through the windows facing east. Birds were warming up their morning voices. The muffled chime of a bell buoy tolled now and again from across the water. And then I ruined it all by checking email on my smartphone.
“We are sorry to inform you that we are going to have to cancel the *Frost Valley Triathlon Race. We just received news that all roads going into Frost Valley are closed and 50% of our run course is under water.”
Fuck. Continue reading
It was embarrassing . . . everyone kept passing me—the guy with the head phones and ratty sneakers, the two girls with muffin tops chatting to one another, even the woman with legs half as long as mine. I was sorely tempted to step on the metal and zoom past them, but I needed to be humble. This was my first run in over a year and I didn’t want to regret it the next day, or the next week for that matter. Because I had a plan. . . . Continue reading
not me, nor my brother....
Beads of water form and gather on my arms and no matter how many times I wipe the handle of my racquet with my skirt, it’s still slick. Remembering the a/c challenged courts from last year’s round robin, I’ve come prepared with three bandanas, two wristbands, and a towel, but they can’t keep up with my body’s insistence to drench itself. It doesn’t care that I’m playing one of the most significant games of my life. I’m on a roll and I’m about to take him down. I’m serving well into the back corners, getting him on the defense, and then putting every loose ball away. It’s 8-3, 9-3, 10-3, 10-4 . . . and then he goes for a drop and tins it. I’ve just beaten my brother. Continue reading
somewhere on the Atlantic
I am bleary-eyed and sleep deprived when I slide open the door to the cockpit and stick my head out to test the air. Usually, the two person watch shift before me is slumped over at the wheel or sliding down in their deck chairs at this hour—all they want to do is get back in their warmish, dampish bunks and get more z’s. But this morning, they are jumping around like mountain goats. Mountain goats in bright yellow and red foul weather gear. The one in red is yelling and pointing at something off to the port side.
“What the f*ck is that??” Continue reading
The Last Printing House 5.5 team
I’m about twenty minutes late. Maybe half an hour, when I get off the elevator on the 7th floor of the Harvard Club. The first match of the men’s 5.5 semi-finals was supposed to start at seven p.m. But it was also supposed to be a win for Printing House. A pretty sure thing, on paper at least. So I wasn’t too worried. Until I get close to the courts and the guy who was supposed to win is standing in the hall outside the courts looking, well, not like a winner.
“You already play?” I ask.
He nods and my heart is already beginning to sink as I ask the inevitable question. But I already know the answer. When you win, it shows. It wasn’t showing. Continue reading
Racquets Court at R&T
I am sitting in the gallery of the racquets court at the Racquet and Tennis Club in New York. It is enormous and starkly beautiful, the floor and walls lined with thick slate that is a deep heavy gray, almost but not quite black. The service boxes and cut lines are painted a gleaming red. In fact, squint your eyes, and you could be inside a Josef Albers painting.
But it’s the space inside the court and the air rising all the way to the massive steel and glass skylight above that is most impressive. At this moment on a Sunday morning, the light filtering through the glass above and drifting down to the dark court, it feels like a chapel. A chapel for men.
Princeton's Court 1
Walking into the gallery of court one is like wading onto the subway platform at Times Square in the heat of summer. It’s humid, it’s hot as hell, and there are so many people it’s almost impossible to move. Fortunately, the line inside the door loosens and I squeeze by a few bodies to a place at the very top of the bleachers where I can look down on what I’ve come to see—two of the best men’s collegiate squash players battling it out on the court below. Princeton Tigers vs. Trinity Bantams. It’s one the last big matches of the season. Continue reading
Ashour in hot red; Matthew in cool blue
Ramy Ashour is a showman. This I decided while watching the finals of the Tournament of Champions last night. He comes onto the court prancing like a race horse in his silky green sweatpants, bouncing the ball from his racquet to the wall all around the court before his opponent enters, the less flashy but supremely talented world #1 Nick Matthew.
While they warm up, I notice their physical similarities. Close to the same height and build. Lean but strong. I’d seen a few other ToC games over the weekend and the differences in match-ups were often more pronounced (Palmer appeared twice the muscle heft as Illingworth). Ashour and Matthew also both seem incredibly fit and hit the ball extremely crisply. I was able to grab a prime (and free!) standing spot by the front right corner and I keep flinching every time the ball comes shooting at me.
And then the match begins. Continue reading
The wheel was spinning. Sweat was dripping. And I couldn’t stop grinning. I
was back in the saddle again—as they say—and loving it. Between Christmas and New Year’s, I’d put over one thousand miles on my pick-up truck, but very few on me. I’d skied some rare powder in Vermont, played a few fun games of squash in Massachusetts, and hiked up a flight or two of stairs at a museum in Boston, but nothing was all out, lungs bursting exertion. And I just wasn’t feeling like myself. Until I got back on a bike, pedaled as hard I could, and my view of the world immediately improved.
Some may rack this up to endorphins—those happy little neurotransmitters that are released during moderate to strenuous exercise and give you a nice blissed-out feeling. But I think it’s more complicated than that. I think it may be an addiction. Continue reading
Crossing the Atlantic by Catamaran.... (click on photo for story)
squeaky feet 