Can you play tennis with a BASEr?

I used to play a lot of tennis. Weekends... after school... entire summers were spent riding my bike to the courts a few miles away, tennis bag over my shoulder, red thermos from Pizza Hut full of Gatorade draped over the handlebars, sweltering heat making me soak through my shirt before I even stepped on the court. Hours of sets, practicing serves, chasing balls, winning and losing...

Tennis was a passion.

So imagine my happiness when I got a great new tennis racket for Christmas this past year. A Dunlop, super lightweight, custom-strung, mostly white with angular swaths of black. It says "hey, I'm good-natured, nothing flashy, nothing overly aggressive, fun... but like the yang to the yin, I will use these perfectly tensioned strings to bury you if I need to."

It says "I like to have fun with tennis, but I take it seriously enough to have a decent racket."

It says "Would you please get me out of my bag that's been hanging on the doorknob since December 26th and do something with me?!?"

I'm going to blame the weather. I'm going to blame the lack of readily available inside courts. I'm going to blame lots of work, volunteer stuff... time in general, or the lack thereof. But the truth is, I'm running out of things to blame.

'Tis time to play ball.

I haven't played in a couple of years. Truth be told, it's been a good fifteen years since I've played with any regularity. It's been harder than I would have thought to find a tennis partner or two or five. A couple of people have stepped up, but for this reason or that it just hasn't come together (go back a couple paragraphs to read why).

So, to motivate myself and expand the pool of possible players, I decided to ask on this site: wanna play some tennis?

What does this have to do with young people? Well, not much - if I don't play pretty soon. I am slowly making my way towards "Old Timer" status, as in the bottom left of the picture (click to enlarge if you need to). Back in the day, I may have fancied myself the guy in the upper right, hit the ball as hard as the guy in the middle, sometimes ended up flailing around like our friend in the lower right, and fortunately never ended up like the woman upper left (although I did hit myself in the eye with the racket the day before school pictures).

So let's play. Shoot me an email, leave a comment, or come to a BASE event and we can talk. If enough people want to do it, maybe we can put together a round-robin tournament or something.

If not, maybe I'll just hop on my bike and go practice some serves. I'm sure I'll need it.