I took off on Friday the 13th to attend a USAPA Sanctioned Pickleball tournament in Terre Haute, Indiana. I had purchased a 2011 Volkswagen Jetta diesel just two days prior and was eager to see what mileage could be achieved on a long road trip. The tournament registration form didn't have an address for Brittle Bank Park, just directions off of I-70. Since we wouldn't be coming off of I-70 I tossed the sheet in the glove box and I used the GPS of coordinates (39.462769, -87.357056) from the USAPA site. I plugged in the coordinates and away we went.
We drove four hours south on the western side of Indiana. The landscape is lush green rolling farmland as far as the eye can see. Stretches of the land are dotted with wind generators that fan the countryside with their giant white blades. It’s where the past meets the present. It’s quite beautiful. It sounds far more promising than it really is. It's lush green for miles without a rest area in site. My gnat-sized bladder should have recognized this as a sign of how this trip would play out. Just then we saw a giant black and white billboard that read, “Hell is real!” Sheesh. The other side read, “Jesus is real!”
When you are driving a brand new car on Friday the 13th the universe gets some sort of memo. It alerts all foreign objects that they should be attracted to or pull out in front of your shiny car that has less than 500 miles on the odometer. There was the asphalt truck barreling out of the construction zone. Several farm tractors and discers using a lane and a half on two lane roads. The end loader that brought huge wakes of dust as it pulled arbitrarily into traffic -- although there was no road construction sign posted. A fire truck was being towed out of a fire station and blocking both lanes of traffic. A thin man assisting with the towing was walking in the road and wearing an orange t-shirt that read, “I survived pervert row!” The universe generates all kinds of road blocks.
Driving along I noticed that the GPS wanted to take us to Paris. Now before you don your beret and say, “oui, oui” in your best high school French accent – it was Paris, IL. Pulling over I discovered that although I had input the GPS values as decimals, it converted it to the format of degrees, minutes, seconds. A minor fix and we are on our corrected path without losing much time.
The coordinates on the USAPA site take you an intersection of Poplar Street and Hamilton Drive. There isn’t a Pickleball court in sight – the coordinates are just off the grid. After taking the scenic route through this neighborhood, I stopped and admitted to a young boy doing yard work that we were lost. He doesn’t know the park although we were only three miles northeast of it. His friend asked if we are in town for the Pickleball tournament and gave us directions to the park. Upon arrival at the park I promptly saved the correct coordinates to my GPS.
We played some drop-in games with a few of the players that were signed up for the tournament. The weather was 80° and humid. The bugs were fierce and I think I swallowed a couple on my way to the kitchen - not exactly the dinner I had in mind. The wind picked up and assisted my serve by pushing it down, making it a short drop shot into the service area close to the no-volley zone line. The local player on the other side of the net said, “Nice serve, Ethel”.
After some hard games of Pickleball we decided to head to the hotel to get cleaned up before dinner. We left the courts wanting to check into to hotel that was less than four miles away. This should have only taken about ten minutes to drive there. Twenty five minutes later we were still sitting in the car waiting for two trains. This had to be one of the world’s slowest train car connections to get out of its own way, much less ours.
Arriving at the hotel the clerk, Angela, was curious as to our business in Terre Haute. I describe Pickleball and Brittle Bank Park. The clerk has never heard of the park even though we are in close proximity to it. Was I in the Twilight Zone? Clearly Brittle Bank Park is a well hidden jewel. We checked into the hotel and Angela tells me of the amenities and where to park and enter with luggage. She hands me the keys to our room - Room 313. Really?
The hotel was the perfect size and price despite the looming thirteen theme. I proceeded to shower and managed to twist the top off of my travel shampoo bottle. Who does that? All of these things are of no consequence but seemed to have accumulated on this particular Friday, the 13th.
The next morning there were looming angry gray clouds. There was a 70% chance of precipitation. We showed up to the park and it started raining 15 minutes later. We packed up and headed for the gymnasium at Indiana State University. My partner for Women’s Doubles was Barb. She has a 3.5 rating which means she had to play up to my 4.0 level. This made Barb and instant target and many of the shots came rocketing to her backhand. It was best two out of three games. We mostly bowed out in two, but we had fun regardless. This was only Barb’s second tournament so I hope she isn’t too discouraged from playing up in the future.
Sunday we were directed toward the university straight away. I paired with Bill who has an equal rating. A typical match that is two out of three games should take about 45 minutes. Our first match was an hour long. We won one and lost two in tight games. Our second match was an hour and twenty minutes long. We won one and lost two – one of which was taken to 13 points. Our marathon matches had taken so long the other teams were waiting in the wings to play us. No rest for the wicked. Our third match we surrendered in two. Other players were in disbelief as to the length of our epic Pickleball battles. One of the scorekeepers gave her condolences that we didn’t make it to the medal round. I really could have cared less; I needed to be able to walk the next day. We had played solidly from 8am until 11:30 and I was whipped.
Overall it was a good tournament. We met some new friends, made some networking connections, and played a lot of hard Pickleball games with soft shots. There are some very tough players in the Greater Terre Haute region and I look forward to meeting some of them again on the courts.
