Paddle Tennis Quotes

The swamp smell that arose was outrageous amid the genteel mansions of the automotive families and the green elevated paddle tennis courts and the graduation parties held under illuminated tents. Debutantes cried over the misfortune of coming out in a season everyone would remember for its bad smell. The O'Connors. however, came up with ingenious solution of making the theme of their daughter Alice's debutante party "Asphyxiation".

Goggles but no bathing suit?" she asked. Daniel blushed. "I guess that was stupid. But I was in a hurry, only thinking about what you would need to get the halo." He drove the paddle back into the water, propelling them more quickly than a speedboat. "You can swim in your underwear, right?" Now Luce blushed. Under normal circumstances, the question might have seemed thrilling, something they both would have giggled at. Not these nine days. She nodded. Eight days now. Daniel was deadly serious. Luce just swallowed hard and said, "Of course." The pair of green-gray spires grew larger, more detailed, and then they were upon them. They were tall and conical, made of rusted slats of copper. They had once been capped by small teardrop-shaped copper flags sculpted to look like they were rippling in the wind, but one weathered flag was pocked with holes, and the other had broken off completely. In the open water, the spires' protrusion was bizarre, suggesting a cavernous cathedral of the deep. Luce wondered how long ago the church had sunk, how deep it sat below. The thought of diving down there in ridiculous goggles and mom-bought underwear made her shudder. "This church must be huge," she said. She meant I don't think I can do this. I can't breathe underwater. How are we going to find one small halo sunk in the middle of the sea? "I can take you down as far as the chapel itself, but only that far. So long as you hold on to my hand." Daniel extended a warm hand to help Luce stand up in the gondola. "Breathing will not be a problem. But the church will still be sanctified, which means I'll need you to find the halo and bring it out to me." Daniel yanked his T-shirt off over his head, dropping it to the bench of the gondola. He stepped out of his pants quickly, perfectly balanced on the boat, then kicked off his tennis shoes. Luce watched, feeling something stir inside her, until she realized she was supposed to be stripping down, too. She kicked off her boots, tugged off her socks, stepped out of her jeans as modestly as she could. Daniel held her hand to help her balance; he was watching her but not the way she would have expected. He was worried about her, the goose bumps rising on her skin. He rubbed her arms when she slipped off he sweater and stood freezing in her sensible underwear n the gondola in the middle of the Venetian lagoon. Again she shivered, cold and fear an indecipherable mass inside her. But her voice sounded brave when she tugged the goggles, which pinched, down over her eyes and said, "Okay, let's swim." They held hands, just like they had the last time they'd swum together at Sword & Cross. As their feet lifted off the varnished floor of the gondola, Daniel's hand tugged her upward, higher than she ever could have jumped herself-and then they dove. Her body broke the surface of the sea, which wasn't as cold as she'd expected. In fact, the closer she swam beside Daniel, the warmer the wake around them grew. He was glowing.

To illustrate this relation, think of a game of table tennis. As the ball hits the table, it will bounce up and down. When we restrain the upward bounce by holding the paddle parallel to the table at a small height, the ball will bounce up and down at a faster rate between paddle and table. If the paddle, the table, and the ball were perfectly elastic, the ball would not lose any energy in the process. The closer to the table we hold the paddle, the more precisely we fix the location of the ball-but at the expense of having it move faster and faster. If we removed both paddle and table in one instant, we would not be able to predict the direction in which the ball moves-up or down. We simply don't know in which direction the very rapidly bouncing ball was moving at the very instant of removal. Consequently, we might say that this process just prior to the removal of table and paddle fixes the location while failing to give us any good information on the velocity; it makes the velocity uncertain. What distinguishes this macroscopic process from the quantum mechanical uncertainty relation is that in principle we can calculate the velocity of the ball at every instant from the initial conditions (how the bounce started) and the boundary conditions (the relative positions of table and paddle). In principle, macroscopic motion is free of uncertainties.

When Diana finally felt ready, they went back to the shelter in Dennis and found a medium-sized mutt, a cheerful fellow with bushy brown fur and eyes like bright black buttons. He seemed to be the result of the union between a corgi and some kind of terrier, and, like Willa, he'd been abandoned, tied up underneath a bridge, starving, with his fur full of mats and burrs and every kind of bug. Diana and Michael brought him home. They brushed the remaining dirt and twigs and burrs out of his coat, and fed him kibble soaked in chicken broth, and tossed a tennis ball for him to fetch. Eventually, his favorite thing became sitting in the prow of a kayak with his back paws on the base of the boat and his front paws on its top, gazing out across the water as Diana paddled.

Pickleball is a sport most people have never heard of but is a big deal in Florida's retirement communities. It is a geriatric version of tennis played with Ping-Pong paddles and a Whiffle Ball on a court similar to a badminton court... Jeff Laughlin, a North Carolina sportswriter, visited a pickleball match and reported that "the absurdity of the name can only be rivaled by the absurdity of the sport itself." Because the rackets are pretty lightweight and the Whiffle Ball is, well, a Whiffle Ball, no on can hit the ball hard enough to get it past an opposing player. The result is a game featuring "long, arduous volleys" that seem to end mainly once someone gets tired of swinging the racket or it's time for lunch. Laughlin characterizes the sport as "incredibly easy and boring," but to aficionados, apparently, it is a great way to work up a thirst for an afternoon martini.