Have you ever been away from your home for quite a while, and during that time you stayed extremely busy with social and physical activities? You might have come home exhausted, needing sleep and needing to go back to more sane eating, exercise and spending habits. You weren't really ready to go back to work or your routines, so you might have said or thought,"I need a vacation from my vacation" As full time nomads, homeless by choice travelers, we have asked ourselves, how d
Don't worry, everything is working fine. It's not that kind of "out of order". This blog title refers to the fact that I've had to skip a couple of blog posts (which I hope to go back and fill in - sorry Wales) to catch up to near current day. Ky and I were thrilled to learn that there would be an inaugural English Open Pickleball tournament around the time that we had been invited to come pet sit for Zoe in Teddington, England. We planned our entire trip around this event. T
For the sake of completeness of a record of places to play pickleball in Southwest England, this post will be brief but hopeful. In Devon and Cornwall there is currently a woeful lack of pickleball players. But what the area lacks in pickleball, it makes up for in sheer beauty and history. We were so fortunate to return to Teddington, England and pet sit for people who offered us time at their beautiful vacation home in Devon. When people asked where we were headed next on o
Zoe was happy to see us, and we were very happy to see her too. For a bit more than a fortnight (two weeks), we petted, snuggled and cared for this sweet 14 year old kitty for the second time in less than a year in the lovely town of Teddington, just west of London, England. In case you don't already know, we pet sit for people around the world. It's one of the ways that we have been able to afford living a full time nomadic lifestyle for over four years. We sit for well beha
If you've been reading along on this blog for awhile, you might have noticed that I like using pickleball related alliterations in my titles. Today's alliterative word is Shadowing: The strategy in Pickleball of moving in tandem with your team partner, keeping roughly 10 feet between each other. Both players move laterally, approach the net or retreat to the baseline together in sync. It's definitely something I need to work on! Ky and I couldn't see our shadows on the way u
Our proposed route from Alamo to Eureka, CA was only going to be about five hours, but some of you know that is a long time to go without pickleball ;-) If you're away from your home courts and you find yourself craving a game, open up the App Places2Play or look it up at www.Places2Play.org . Last summer we were in Santa Rosa, and we found awesome people and courts at Finley Park. We were strongly drawn to return to it, but we like trying out new locations (ya think?) but t
What comes to mind when you think of Concord? A town near you in one of seven different states (AL, AR, CA, DE, GA, IL, IN)? Grape juice perhaps, or maybe a really fast airplane (but you need an “e” on the end for that). It is quite likely that in the future, pickleball will be what people think of first when Concord, CA is mentioned. Willow Pass Park, just a quick 20 minute drive north of Alamo, subject of my recent post, and if you’re in the general area, this park is one y
Over the valleys and through the cacti to our Airbnb we go.... From Phoenix to Visalia we had a long day's drive, but sights like this kept us awake on the nine hour stretch. Have you ever watched Bull Durham? It's one of my all time favorite movies. Remember at the end when Kevin Costner playing Crash, told Susan Sarandon playing Annie Savoy, that he's thinking about becoming a manager for a minor-league team in Visalia? That's the only time I had ever heard of the Californi
"They" say, "Home is where the heart is." Our philosophy has always been more along the lines of "Home is where you hang your hat (or pickleball cap)". For 15 years, we hung our caps in Phoenix, AZ the majority of the time. If we're forced to call just one place home (governments are so narrow minded), we say Phoenix. We arrived in 2002 in August, and let's just say we must be hardy or crazy (or a bit of both), because we stayed even after one of the kids left a Crayon in the
Our young adult kids live in Tucson, so we visit often to get all the hugs we can. As a result, Tucson has become one of our "pickleball homes". As nomads, we are fortunate to meet all kinds of wonderful people, which we love doing. There is something special though about the people you get to play with on a regular basis. If you are a member of a league, or if you have a great group of friends that you get together with often, you get to know everyone, and fess up... you hav