Skateboarding Grandma cracks up

I never thought it would happen in our neighborhood but a couple of days ago, Brooke Lamson, Grandmother of two broke a foot bone in a skateboarding kerfuffle.  Having fun with her grandson Gabe and playing with the O'Brian twins she fell and landed on her left 5th metatarsal.  It has been a few days now and it isn't going well.  If you've ever had to use crutches, you know it's inconvenient.  It's also not so easy.  How can one carry something when the hands are required to push on the crutch grips?  How does one manage coupons?  Brooke doesn't want to use a fanny pack but something like it will probably be necessary.

Walking is slow.  Steps are difficult.  This  is supposed to be done for 6-8 weeks!  There goes tennis.  Robin (Brooke's sister) gave some tips. Robin had broken her ankle a couple of times. One tip is to get a chair that rolls and use that to get around when you are on the main floor of the house.  Robin also has a walker that she offered for use.  

We used one of the motorized chairs at Meijer yesterday.  That's not bad.  At least it has some speed.  Just as with a car, it's better NOT to back-up with them.  A few items in aisle 10 needed re shelving after we tried that. Once we adapt, I'm sure things will go more smoothly.


Oops, gotta go, Brooke wants tea!

RainyMood.com: Rain makes everything better.

RainyMood.com: Rain makes everything better.

Ball Machine - For Rent

It took more than expected to get the new ball machine ready and fully equipped.  The guy I bought it from on ebay, for some reason had used pictures of a different model machine.  Mine was one step up from the one pictured so it comes with a remote control for controlling the feed (start/stop) or the "sweep" (start/stop).  He said he never had the remote, so I had to buy one. That was an extra $65 when you include the $15 shipping.  The other thing of importance when getting a tennis ball machine, is consideration of the balls to use.  After researching this I found the only choice that made sense was to get Tretorn Micro X tennis balls.  They are pressureless so they don't go flat.  They have a well designed cover and will probably last for at least three seasons.  They each have 700 million air bubbles trapped in some kind of foam.  I bought the 72 ball case.
Today was the first day I tried out the machine.  It was nice and sunny with a pretty strong breeze.  I sat up the machine, it's a Silent Partner unlike my other partner.  I just guessed at what the controls should be set to.  You can control the ball speed, ball height, spin, feed rate (time between shots) and whether you want the shots to come to more or less the same spot or shoot randomly around the court.  I noticed the first two balls had more velocity than the rest.  I guess the battery loses just a little power and then seems pretty steady.  The feed rate was too slow, so I adjusted that and it was too fast then.  It took a while but I saw the balls had a slight back-spin even though I'm pretty sure I had it set to slight top spin.
I hit all 72 balls with forehand and I was terrible.  I reloaded and sat for a few minutes to let my heart-beat slow a little.  Everything was fine, so I hit a few volleys then backed up and hit backhands.  They were not quite as terrible as the forehands but pretty bad.  
I think I'll be improving quite a bit this Summer and getting a fun workout with my Silent Partner. I will let some of the tennis kids rent the machine and possibly they could work around here in exchange for practice time.  I wonder if kids these days would even be interested in that.  They may just pay the cash.