Katie, Patrick & I recently restarted our traditional 3-way racquetball meets of Friday afternoon. Patrick & I always have played left-handed to make things more even for Katie.

Winding the racquet safety string around my healing left wrist, tight enough to support the racquet, I announced to Katie and Patrick that I was going to play them left handed today. They were both initially incredulous, but I said that my physical therapist was trying to get my grip back to full strength, and this was as good a way as any. KT served first, and from the beginning as well as later, she took advantage of me mercilously. All her serves crawled along the right wall, and as I was on the right and Patrick was on the left, my returns had to be with my normally poor, and currently pitiful, back-handed left. Without the help of the safety string the racquet would have flown across the court, at least on the few occasions when I managed to hit the ball. Usually I just flailed.

Patrick flailed too, though with more zip and power. When it was my turn to serve, I couldn’t even get the ball over the foul line, and double faulted. Then it was KT’s turn to torment me with her wall grazer serves, For my next few serves, my feeble swing didn’t succeed at getting a ball into play until the score was 6-2-0 (K-P-D). Then at least I got the ball into play, sometimes accompanied by a wrist twinge or two. For the entire game, KT dazzled, bamboozled, and baffled her two patzer opponents, volley after volley, until she finally won, 15-2-2.

In the second game, I tried a new strategy, since I couldn’t hold the racquet tight enough to return the ball with anything more than an arching bloop. My first attempt was a golf grip with my left hand grasping the racquet and my right hand pressing against the left index finger and thumb. That didn’t violate the rule of the game that I had set–it was still basically left-handed play. The extra arm in the swing, though, threw off my coordination, so I missed the ball completely in my first attempts. But on those occasions when I connected, I could give the ball a good smack. I scored two points that way, and then started developing on a baseball grip. This got me a couple of more points. Meanwhile, Patrick, still playing left handed, had regained his eagle leftie eye, and was beating me and KT 11-4-4. KT and I stopped his momentum for a few more volleys, me with my baseball grip, and she with several spectacular diving kills. But Patrick went on to beat us soundly, 15-6-6.

At last it was 6 pm, end of our court hour, time for me to go meet Beth at the local Tex-Mex, and time for KT & P to fix their dinners at their apartments. We congratulated each other with hugs and went our separate ways. So what if I lost both games, my therapist will smile at me when I tell her I played (or tried to play) left handed r-ball. Tonight I expect I’ll have to dip into the Ibu-advil Motrin pillbox again, but next game I’ll have that baseball swing down pat and my southpaw racquet game will be stronger.

rakkity

Peter’s brother, Jim Finlay.
Michael and Jim
Photos by Emma

Rakkity hopes to play a left-handed racquetball game today. The old left hand is only about 1/4 the strength of the right, but the doc and therapist both say to start strengthening the left wrist, so now is the time. Katie has volunteered to play this afternoon and gauge the left hand’s mettle. Dom, if you’re listening in, get ready to gird your loins and your racquets!

rakkity

The season’s first snowfall. Chysanthemums outside Concord Park.

Rakkity made it to the court last week, and handed two racquets to the “little” rakkities, Patrick (6′ 1″ and 180 lb) and Katie (fit horsewoman and soccer player). “I hope you’ll be gentle”, he thought, putting his left hand into a protective nylon splint as he entered the court for this 3-way game.

The usual rules are for dad to play left handed, but that wasn’t an option yet. After a few volleys, it became clear that dad’s right back-hand returns were less than optimum, (even painful), so in a spirit of generosity, he offered to stop using backhands at all.

Patrick’s left hand was rusty, and he could barely stay even with his sister, but Dad was killing the ball pretty well, and won the first game 15-6-6.

By then, P & K had learned to return the ball to Dad’s backhand, and they stayed closer, scorewise. Several times, dad went towards the ball on his left, ready to hit it back-handed, then remembered at
the last second about the no backhand rule, and had to spin around to hit forehanded. Usually it was a wild swinging strike, leading to much levity on the court.

Except for those hilarious failed righthand/backhands, the game was uneventful and dad won again,14-10-10.

This was a great victory for king rakkity, but he kept in mind that a 3-way game is easier than a 2-way game, and besides, he would have been slaughtered if P. was playing right handed, and if K. was 3 inches taller.

It’ll be a while till rakkity can meet the Dominator on the court. By then maybe the Dom will have gained another 10 lbs from inactivity and his game will have faded. In the mean time, 3-way games with the kids will be fun exercise and training for that future day. And maybe rakkity will find a good fat recipe book to give the Dom for Thanksgiving.
r.

Nubus, my mother’s cat.

Jeff and Karen’s tomatoes.

Hi Mike,

Just to disabuse you of the idea that I haven’t been working
on the latest mountain E-pic….

A tale of OS woes

I’ve been trying to get all of my recent mountain pictures onto my Mac mini with limited success. Previouly I had found that a direct camera-to-mini transfer wasn’t working, and I also had had problems with reading my flash drives with the mini. Then yesterday I had the bright idea that I’d make a CD of the pictures I had previously transferred to my MS laptop, and use that to transfer them to my wonderful Mac mini.But what a can of worms I opened up.

First, let me give (as much as I hate to) an A+ to Microsoft for making camera-to-PC transfers easy. But wait just a minute, Microsoft, don’t get smug, that grade is about to be counterbalanced!) After looking at a couple of slideshows on the laptop PC, I convinced myself that all the pictures were readable and proceeded to make a CD of them. That seemed to go well–I could view all the CD pictures on the laptop, so I pulled out the CD and stuck it into my Linux desktop machine.

Uh Oh. Only about 10% of the pictures were readable there, even with my bullet-proof old workhorse, never-fail, Linux/Unix “xv”. So back to Microsloth laptop. Figuring that the CD-R disk must have been bad, I made another CD. Reading the new CD on the same machine suddenly led to an application crash. Up pops a text advisory” “Please tell Microsoft about this driver crash”. I passed on the info, so they can add it to their database/blackhole. Microsoft gets an F for that, averaging to a C.

Despite the crash, testing the new CD on my Linux desktop surprisingly produced slightly better results–I could read more of the CD pictures than before. (Linux’s grade is indeterminate. Maybe
both CDs were bad.) I set the CDs aside for later when I could put them into the Mac mini.

Back at home that night I put one of the CDs into my Macmini. After a colorful wheel spun on the screen, up popped a CD icon. I clicked on the icon, set the View option to thumbnails and perused the 208 pictures. Apparently about a dozen of them were unreadable, as indicated by the text window that popped up when I clicked some of the icons. Well, at least there were 196 good ones, so I’ll give Apple a provisional “A”.

To save the picture files to the machine, I dragged and dropped the CD icon into a new folder on the desktop. After the transfer, I opened up the new folder, and “whammo!”, the folder vanished from the screen, with a text message saying, “Folder application crashed irretreviably. OS X still operational.” Yes, the desktop was still running, but my new folder was gone to the bit bucket in the sky. Apple gets a provisional “F” for that. The CD icon was there, so I opened it, created a new desktop folder, and hand dragged-and-dropped 196 thumbnails into it from the CD folder. The new folder was fine, and I did a bunch of editing in it. So let’s erase the provisional “F” from Apple’s report card and transfer it to Microsoft for making such a cruddy CD. Perhaps Apple should get an “A” for being able to read it at all.

However, that’s not the end of the story. To eject the CD, I dragged the CD icon to the Trash folder, and the word “eject” appeared over it, but the CD didn’t move out of its slot. I tried right-clicking on the CD and selecting “eject” from the menu, but nothing happened. It was getting late, so I shut the mini down. What grade should Apple get for that?”F-“? A bad CD can’t be ejected? Maybe the problem will fix itself when I turn the mini back on tonight? Stay tuned.

rakkity

One-armed rakkity has been camping in the wild west. And on his return home, “My cast & two pins (titanium 8-penny nails) were removed from my wrist this morning. Calloo callay!”
View larger image

Rakkity

The Beeper

When I landed on my wrist two Saturdays ago, the last thing on my mind was the wristwatch on my wrist. But after the impact, and as I staggered towards the back door, an image remains strong in my memory— a free-standing white watch dial lay on the ground, its face disfigured by broken glass, and the wrist band lay elsewhere, apparently broken away from the dial. Several hours later, lying on a hospital gurney, I mentioned the destroyed watch to Beth. She hated that watch because it beeped every hour on the hour, and couldn’t be stifled. Sometimes I would forget to take it off before going to bed, and Beth would be woken up by a plaintive “Beep!”. Not a loud beep, but enough to wake Beth up (but not me) from a sound sleep. I’d be snoring away, and would wake up just a little while Beth peeled the watch off my wrist to take it downstairs. So when she heard that it was destroyed in my fall, she said, “Great! Glad to hear something good happened today.”

Seized

“Just hold your arm out here and I’ll remove the splint”, Dr. Pyfrom said while I sat down on the examination bench.. My left arm seemed heavier than usual, and as the Ace bandage was unrolled, it got heavier and heavier. Finally the cut Dr. Pyfrom had made 14 days previously was revealed. I was astounded and repelled by the appearance of my arm, with all those staples jabbed through puffy, bloody flesh. Now my arm felt like a lead poker, and I asked Beth for some support. Like the good nurse that she is, she held her strong arms out under my weak one, while Dr. P. swabbed the arm with alcohol, and said soothing words about how well it was healing. It may have been healing, but suddenly I felt clammy all over. Then he said, “How about the right hand?”, as he started to slide a gentle finger down the slightly swollen back of my hand. Then he hit a sore spot. The room went black. Dr. P. and Beth started calling to me as I fell back against the wall. I must have been out for a second or two. After the shock of seeing my left arm, getting some bad bones probed in the right arm pushed me over the edge. Afterwards, Beth said to me, “it was just like an epileptic siezure. I thought to myself, am I now going to have to live with an epileptic?”

Q and As

Number 10: “Whoa! What’d you do to your wrist!”, asked my summer intern, Rick, as I entered the office. “Well, I was standing up high on a ladder in my back yard cutting off a big limb with a chainsaw, blah, blah, blah… And when the branch broke, the tree kicked the ladder forward, and I lost mt grip,… adboringinfinitum…Then apparently I landed on
top of my wrist, which bent into a z shape…etc, etc. Number 20: “Hey, Ed, what happened to you arm?”, a fellow astronomer, asks me in the hall. “Well, I was on a ladder in my back yard cutting a tree limb with a chainsaw, and when the branch broke, the tree kicked back. Then I landed on my wrist.

Number 30: “What happened to your hand?” asks the Starbucks barrista. “I fell off a ladder while cutting a tree, and landed on my wrist.”

Number 40: “How’d you hurt your hand?”, asks the clerk at IKEA. “Fell off a ladder.”

Number 50: “What’s with the cast?”, asks some random person tomorrow. “Ladder.”

The Radiologist

Beth and I walked into the radiology office with Dr. Pyfrom’s order for X-rays of my right hand. After a short time, I was called into the X-ray room and sat in the only chair, right next to an enormous black table with a preying-mantis X-ray source machine hovering over it. The radiologist came in, and asked, “What happened to your wrist?” (See Q&A 25 above.) Without any comment, she grabbed my left wrist and tried to turn my palm flat down on the table. I shouted, and simultaneously stood up to allow my elbow to rotate the hand. You see, there are two pins in the lower part of my wrist that prevent the normal rotation (that I will get back again), like when you turn a doorknob. It’s painful for me or any other external force to try to rotate it, and if that wasn’t the only thing, I would have felt my wrist bones rubbing against each other. But she had failed to realize that I have only a half cast, and the stapled region is protected only by gauze and an Ace bandage, so her grasp was was right onto the staples. She may have apologized, but I didn’t notice. After two X-rays of the left hand, I said, “What about the right hand?” She looked at me funny, and went out to check Dr. P’s order form. She returned with a disgruntled look on her face, and with no comment, X-rayed my right hand. When Beth and I got the films a few minutes later, there were none of the left hand. Darn. That would have been much more interesting.

The Return

We were all sitting around the dining room table, and Katie came from the back yard where she had been cleaning up the debris around the accident site. Something grey dangled from her hand. “Look what I found”, she said. It was the dreaded watch, and not only did it appear to be intact, but it wasn’t anything like the watch of my imagination. Being digital, it had no face. Talk about false memories! The watch didn’t stay around long enough for us to find out if it beeped. Silently, Beth consigned it to the deeps of the waste bin.

rakkity

Last Saturday, I had a disastrous 6-game racquetball match with Dominic (5-1 Dom). And I really want a return match, but it will be a while before I can have a chance to get back at him. You see, I have an arm problem.

After the games, I drove home tiredly to continue where I had left off my on-going hacking at the 40-foot weeds in our back yard. One of these “weeds” is a big pine tree with a long branch that used to overhang our kitchen window and back door, and I had long wanted to get rid of that lousy branch. So I pushed up my 20-ft ladder against the inner part of the branch and climbed up 8 or 10 feet, chain saw in hand, and started sawing through. No problems. I figured this would be my last cut of the morning, and I’d go have lunch. The branch cut off smoothly, fell away, and then there was an abrupt upswing of the inner part of the branch, the ladder fell forward, and I fell backward.

There were two mistakes on my part here — 1) I had no one spotting me (Beth was out shopping) and 2) I should have put the ladder against something more solid than the branch. Oh well, “should haves” don’t count in the real world.

I landed on my butt, and felt a sharp pain in my left wrist. I stood up and looked down at my arm, and shouted, “I just broke my wrist!” (Those of you who hate gory details can skip to the next paragraph. Mike can continue reading.) My left arm hung down straight, but it took a sudden shift sideways just above my hand. “Now that’s serious”, I said to myself. There was blood dripping from somewhere, but I couldn’t see from where. “It must be a compound fracture, with a bone sticking out underneath”, but I didn’t want to
look. I staggered to the back door and punched 9-1-1 into the phone. Sitting on the kitchen chair, I heard the 911 guy answer, and noticed that I was dripping blood onto our nice hardwood floor.

Apparently I was still in shock, because the pain hadn’t reached my brain yet. Weakly, I gasped, “I’ve broken my wrist” into the receiver. The emergency man was very professional, getting my name and address, asking whether the paramedics should come to the front door or the back. He had me stay on the line, and assured me that an ambulance was on its way. The pain was now increasing, and I must have been panting, because the 911 man told me to breathe slowly, and keep my head down.

In less than 10 minutes, there was some activity outside. Just as a paramedic came up the front lawn, Beth also came inside, not yet seeing my jagged wrist. She said, “An ambulance seems to have come to one of our neighbors…” Simultaneously, she noticed my wrist, the blood, the disarray, and the paramedic coming through the front door.

A few minutes later I was being rolled out to the ambulance. The paramedics were taking no chances on my back, and had tied me down and immobilized against a hard plastic ribbed board. Beth asked if she could come along, but they told her to follow separately. So, for the first time I saw the inside of an ambulance, The paramedic who rode in the back with me was pleasant and professional. I told him the last time I had been in in Prince Georges Hospital was in 1984 when my daughter Katie had been born–a more joyous occasion, and certainly not at the trauma center.

Inside, after the emergency docs had had a good look at the trauma, I finally got some pain meds. Lots of repeated questions–name, address, age, all requested by at least 5 different people. One doc did some subtraction after I told my age and date of birth, and said, “You’re one year older than that, aren’t you?” Maybe he was testing my mental capacity, which, admittedly, was only at the 20-30% level, but I pointed out that my birthday was yet to come this year, and, “I never count my birthdays in advance.”

Somewhere, long before surgery, one of the docs had re-aligned my wrist bones, so they were now in a straight line. I never even noticed! The surgeon looked at it and remarked, “Someone must have re-aligned your wrist.” (Don’t these guys talk to each other?)

After X-rays, the trauma surgeon told me (and Beth, who, thankfully had arrived) that it was a bad break, and he’d have to use a Titanium plate, and screw some of the bones together. Beth followed me and my gurney through the corridors to the surgery room, where she kissed me goodbye. A few breaths later, I was in dreamland.

I woke up in the recovery room, and was re-assured that the surgery had gone smoothly. Beth helped push my gurney up to my room, which was shared by someone with much worse problems. There was loud moaning and groaning from behind the curtains. At one point while Beth and I were talking quietly, the guy behind the curtains started a telephone conversation. We overheard something like, “…the guy shot me in the elbow, and shattered my forearm”. Beth and I looked at each other. “I guess that puts things into some kind of perspective, doesn’t it”, I thought.

After an uncomfortable night, and an unpleasant breakfast, Beth came in and used her considerable skills to get all the forms signed by appropriate doctors and speed up my departure. (Thank you again, Beth!) I wished my roommate a speedy recovery, and headed out the exit.

Now I’m home, coping with one-handed buttoning, one-handed bottle opening, and the hardest thing of all–one-handed shoe tying. Next Monday a local doctor will have a look at the wrist, and send me to a physical therapist. Maybe I should dig out those many Mark Jenkins stories from old Outside magazines, and recall some of his pointers on how to handle physical therapy and recovery from broken bones. Or I could go back to the hospital and compare notes with my roommate with the bullet-shattered arm. No, I don’t think so.

Rakkity

The next part of our trip to Spain–Toledo to Ciudad Real to Cordoba
After this will come Chapter IV: Sevilla and Italica.

After visiting Flo Saturday night, Diane and I walked across the street to the
Ninety Nine for dinner.

Begin here for new photos and integrated pics with rakkity’s travelogue across the pond. At the bottom of the page is a link to Chapter II – new pics, a new story.

It’s 4:30 AM and I am on my way home. Given the hour I lose, I hope to be in Acton by 11 PM.

Chapter I

Some pictures to go with this may be found at:

Pick and choose as you like.

3/18/05 Viernes, Dia zero: Iberia bound
When Papacita Ed & Mamacita Beth set off on their trip to visit NiÃ’a Katie in Sevilla, for her Junior-year semester abroad, they got a more promising start than NiÃ’a did back in Februario, when she faced blowing snow and closed airports. Now there were only warm breezes from the south to speed us on over Delaware Bay on the sunset flight from Baltimore to Newark. Flt #4791 turned out to be a smaller plane than Mamacita likes–she hates prop planes– but at least this was a small jet and the air was smooth. Papacita, however, loves small planes, and enjoyed the views while perusing “Breathing the Blogosphere” by James Patrick Kelly: 40 recommended weblogs. (No the millerblog wasn’t there).

3/19/05 Sabado, Dia uno

Adventure #1 started in the hour of landing in Lisbon. Mamacita, her lovely hermana Kathy and I (papacita, your dutiful scribe) had groggily worked our way thru the airport customs, picking up the bags and heading towards the main lobby. I was in the lead and glanced at the Customs-Declaration-only area we didn’t have to pass through as I headed for the opaque glass exit doors. Exiting that sector, while pushing my two rolling bags, I assumed that Mamacita & Hermana were following, but as the one-way doors closed irrevocably, I found myself in the main terminal, in the midst of Portuguese fast food, and ex-passengers fleeing from the never-never land of Customs into the light and air of Portugal. I stood there, looking back at the opaque sliding doors, wondering where my companions were. Going back was a “n„o-n„o”, as two uniformed guards informed me. In fact, waiting close to the doors was also a “n„o-n„o”. So I moved a few m away by the wall and waited and waited.

Meanwhile behind the “n„o-n„o” doors, our poor Hermana was desperately looking for her jacket, maybe it had been left on the plane or the luggage concourses, but no luck, no jacket.

Finally, about when I had concluded that mamacita & hermana had been dragooned by the Customs-declaration people, and the agencia were searching every seam of every garment, they emerged, somewhat downcast, from the opaque door. So we walked out to find a taxi to the hotel and NiÒa. A quick ride thru the avenidas to the Orion Eden in the PraÁa Dos Restauradores (The Plaza of the Two Restaurants?), and we strolled into the lobby, finding NiÒa Katie waiting for us. She had ridden 6 hours on the midnite bus from Sevilla, navigated the Metro to get to the hotel, and looked (through our sleep-deprived eyes) refreshed and relaxed.

We found that our suite had a kitchenette, a living room with pull-out couch (2 beds) & bedroom with bath. We all blew Z’s for a couple of hours. After waking, we tried unsuccessfully to get cash at an ATM, and then had lunch. Luckily Hermana Kathy had the foresight to bring euros from the estados unidos.

Following our invaluable Rick Steve’s guide book, we went to the funicular around the corner and rode up into the Barrio Alto (high city) to see the views of the lower city (Baixa) and the opposing hill (the Alfama). Again following Rick’s advice, took the train to the Torre do Belem, a castle in a mixed Gothic-Manuelite style on the river, but it had closed a little early, this being almost the beginning of Semana Santa (about which lots more later).

Back into town by taxi, we searched fruitlessly for the trolley that takes visitors up the hill to the castle on the Alfama, and ended up taking a taxi. The Alfama is one of the oldest districts of Lisbon, which was mostly devastated by the 1755 earthquake. We found lots of fabulous views down into the now-darkening city. The twilight makes Lisboa look less ramshackl„o and more romantic„o.

We toddled down into the Centro, and found a hidden restaurant on the 6th floor of a nondescript downtown bldg. Recommended by amigo Rick, The Cimmarr„o is a Brazilian restaurante with a special 6.00 euro deal. 4 kinds of meat, hot rice & beans, and a complete buffet of cold salad dishes. Their vinho do Casa was terrific, costing only 8 euros/bottle.

3/20/05 Domingo, Dia Dos

Adventure #2: Somewhere between the hotel and The Cimmarr„o, mamacita lost her wallet. After discovering that, she spent some time burning up the international phone lines to cancel our credit cards and her driver’s license. Luckily she didn’t lose her ATM card, which was not in her wallet. We had now to depend on Hermana and NiÃ’a to pay all our bills!

In the early morning we found the Metro in PraÁa Rossio, after reading the
base of the obelisk in Dos Restauradores, we learned that “Restauradores” means “Restoration” of the Portuguese kingship and departure of the Spanish in 1640. The Lisbon Metro is magnificent. Decorated tiles cover the walls of all the stations. The floors are all marble and spotless, the trains are frequent and rapido. We rode to EstaÁ„o Oriente to pick up our rental car, where it turned out that the sole agent of Avis had gone to the airport for an unexplained reason. We waited for his return while munching on fruit from the “Hiper Mercado”. On his return, Beth showed the agent our rental agreement. “But this is for March 21. That is tomorrow.” Oh well, so we’re a day off. We shifted gears mentally, and revised plans. We would take the train to Belem, a riverside suburb with many Muse„os, parks, monuments and a castle. The castle, unfortunately closed before we got there, but it’s small and compact, so we got to see it from 3 sides. Up the river, there was the Ponte Vasco de Gama, which looks a lot like the Golden Gate Bridge. The reason it does, is that San Francisco’s bridge was designed by the same engineer who planned the Ponte V. de G. Behind it on a high hill is a famous looking monument which resembles the statue of Christ in Rio de Janiero. The locals proudly assert that the Lisbon statue is bigger.

The following day, we got our car and drove to Sentra, a picturesque town near the hilly coast north of Lisbon. Several kings (Manuel, Ferdinand, Carlos?) had lived there, and made their marks architecturally and botanically. The town is surrounded by a temperate rainforest, which is now a UN world-heritage area. The castle at the top of the hill above Sintra is full of (what else) ornate tiled walls, and the views are spectacular when there is no fog. (Unfortunately, there was fog.) The rooms had intricately carved woodwork and rooms stuffed to repletion with art deco furniture. Mamacita said that she was “really glad she was not a queen and forced to put up with such crowded extravagance.”

The forest park below the castle was filled with trees, ferns, and flowers
imported from tropical rainforests by the king and queen in the 1880s & ’90s. it reminded us of the UC botanical gardens in Berkeley, but Sentra’s botonico is far more extensive. We walked down the trails, a rainforest drizzle dripping down on us. wondering where exactly we were headed. At last we came to a road with a bus stop. According to a sign there, the last bus was due at 17:30, in just 10 minutes. We remarked on our perfect timing, but 17:30 came and went without a bus. Maybe we had missed it? So we began hiking up the road, and a km or so later reached the place we had first entered the forest. No bus came. “We’re doomed to walk all the way back to Sentra in the rain”, I thought. But soon the bus chugged up the road to us.

We got on, expecting to ride smoothly onwards, but the road was so slippery, the bus wheels just spun fecklessly. With many gesticulations, the driver had all the passengers move to the back of the bus, weighting the rear wheels so he could get traction. Standing there, we all mentally pushed the bus. We moved upwards slowly, and we could smell burning rubber of the tires. After endless slipping and sliding, we reached the top of the local hill. It was all down hill from there. But the driver popped out of the bus and disappeared. Perhaps he was picking up pieces of hot rubber from our trail and re-surfacing the tires? Or helping some poor driver who was slipping on the asphalt like us? We never did learn, but he returned eventually and we continued on down into town.

Back in picturesque Sintra on a steep, rainy sidestreet, we shared a great dinner with Portuguese Vinho Tinto, pizza, and penne shrimp in a restaurant tiled with marble and blue ceramic. We were surprised to be charged for bread, olives and butter, after they were placed on our table without our requesting them. But that, it turns out, is a common practice in Portuguese and Spanish restaurants, and we adapted, and we geared ourselves up for our next ciudad–Madrid.

–To Be Continued —
–rakkity

Part III The End
by Rakkity

The father-son games took on a serious character that infected outside life. Sometimes the weekly game of racquet-le-ball with the son and the game with the Dominator fell on consecutive days, and the tendons complained with a vengeance. Dancing across the court against the son one day, the father stretched too far, and stopped short with a sudden pain in his calf. He found himself unable to walk except with a mincing single-step, and a week passed before the over stretched limb mended and games could resume. Later, in a game against The Dom, in a battle that was fought to the penultimate service, he collapsed on the court in a collision with a wall that suddenly materialized in the wrong spot. Recovery from this took only a day, but brought on a sense of impending doom.

The father had a respite when The Dom went on a long journey to see his ancient Nanny in his Oz homeland, and, coincidentally, the son betook himself on a journey to explore the far corners of the kingdom with his friends. The father relaxed and recuperated by competing against the daughter, and was fresh for battle when the son returned six fortnights later at the end of summer.

The first autumn game against the son was a lopsided victory 15-0 for the father. From that the son learned, by his absence from the court, he had lost some of his “feel”, and this turned his mind to the science of the game. He began to go for the “kills”. But his wits were not quite up to the treachery of the father. In the son’s absence, the father had noticed that one of the daughter’s shirts wasthe identical blue of the playing ball, and it was difficult to see the ball in play when it passed in front of her. Eager to take all possible, even minuscule, advantages as they presented themselves, he acquired a vest of bright blue. In subsequent games against the son, he contrived to rotate after returns so that the ball would pass between his body and the line of sight of the son’s. The split-second disappearance of the ball caused a slight hesitation in some of the son’s shots, giving the old man a slight advantage, and an occasional point that might not otherwise have been his.

The father began to try the move-to-center ploy, in which after service, he would solidly occupy the center of the court, the most advantageous location for the return. He would not quite cause a “hinder” (the term for blocking a return). The scores became a little closer as the son adjusted to the these distractions and improved his smash and spin. Taller, and longer-limbed, the son simply stood behind the father and struck the ball by reaching over and around his obstructing father.

During another game, the son made a spectacular dive across the court, “killed” the ball a hands-breadth above the front wall, and made a spectacular collision with the side wall. The father said to the son, who was resting on the floor with a satisfied grin, “You may recall the former winner of the Outer Kingdom Games last year. Don Herbango Golongo-Gofargo. He won a game with the same kind of dive, except that he didn’t survive the collision with the wall.” His son was shocked. “you mean he died?” Well”, said his father, thinking that he could cool his son’s exuberance, “his body survived, but his mind is still locked in that dive. He lies on his bed with a smile, and when anyone speaks to him, he swings his arm wildly, rolls his eyes as if making a kill, drools a little, and falls back to his bed asleep.” The father noted with some satisfaction that the son’s next few dives were more cautious, but his memory was short, and soon he was colliding with the walls with abandon again. “So much for cooling exuberance”, thought the father.

The games went on much as before, the father winning systematically, exploiting what edges he could find. A close game ensued. The father’s brow dripped with sweat, and some drops of perspiration fell on the ball. During his serve, he noticed that the wet ball made an unusual spin on its bounce, baffling the son. He put that into his repertoire, not for general use, but for occasional crucial services. The sweat ball won now and again, and the son never seemed to notice the treachery.

The father’s desperation continued as the season’s weather cooled. One night on his way home, as he bounced his ball on the cold curbstones of the lane under the lamplights of the lane, he noted that the ball was gradually losing its bounce as it cooled in the frigid air. His thoughts turned to treachery and sleights of hand. The next game with his son was of a late frosty evening, and as the father walked to the game, he carried one very cold ball in a small open-weave basket by his side, with a second warm ball in a pocket by his belly. He carried both balls into the game court, the cool one concealed in his treacherous blue vest.

The father had won (as always) the previous game, so the son (as always) had the first serve. The father gave him the warm ball, which bounced its normal bounce, and the father had some fortune in sending it to a quick “kill”, which the son missed despite a desperate dive. The father reminded the son that Golongo-gofargo still lay in a coma. It was the father’s serve now, and with a flick of his wrist, he contrived to replace the warm ball with the cold one. His service smashed the ball into the corner, where it died with a feeble bounce. The son’s furious swing just barely grazed the ball. Before the son could recover and touch the ball, The father was already on his way to the the corner to retrieve it, “What was that?” the son cried. “Oh some new spin the Dominator taught me yesterday,” laughed the father, as he set the ball for another serve. This time it was to the other corner, and the ball died almost as before. The son managed a feeble return, which the father was able to kill. “Well, that’s two points anyway”, he thought, “but the ball is warming up now, so it’s a regular game from here on out.” The son was on his game that night, and lost only 12-14. The cold ball had been the margin.

The father was getting worried. He couldn’t use this trick again. He experimented with warming up the racquet strings, cooling them down, but nothing worked reliably. He studied the techniques of The Dominator that week, but he had mastered them all. The Dominator had little more to teach. Science and treachery seemed to be winding down.

Time moved on, and the season turned. The leaves were falling from the trees, spattering the ground with copper and gold, when the son made his great step forward. In a match that lasted two hours, the father won the first game, 15-10, and then the second game, 15-11. Sweat dripped from the brows of both players. The ball itself was drenched, and its spin was out of control. The father was breathing deeply, thinking deeply; the son was composed and alert, and breathing gently.

The final game went all the way to 14-14. The serve changed hands half a dozen times without a score. The rallies continued with a dozen returns, and still there was still no further score. The son served; his drop shot fell off the back wall, the father scooped it, returned it low to the front, the son dove and killed it a half a hands-breadth above the floor. The old father stood frozen, unable to move, while the son beamed with a toothy grin on his face.

Outside the nightingales sang. The church bells tolled the hour. The evening breeze rustled the leaves of the trees. Inside the court, the two players stood and looked at each other. The father smiled and put out his hand toward the son to shake, and said, “The king is dead, long live the king.”

–the end—…