Visit with Friends in Venice, Lee County Sr, Games, Pickleball with Friends in Englewood

On the morning of February 7thth we left Tanglewood for the Lee County Senior Games at the Wa-Ke-Hatchee Rec Center in Ft.Myers. It was less than a two hour drive but we decided to go down the night before. We have friends, Dieter (and Helen) Kedrovitsch, who live in Venice. This is a picture of the two of them looking cool and relaxed...We got to their house early afternnon and had a great afternoon just catching up on what's been going on. We had not seen them since last summer. Helen recently lost her brother and had just returned from Pennsylvania a few days earlier. We went to dinner that night at Bob Evans. We all like that family style cooking. We called it a night pretty early because we had to get up the next day and head for Ft Myers.

There was a pretty good group from Tanglewood headed for these games. Rich would play with Al Goldberg in the men's doubles and with Linda Kramer in the mixed doubles and would play in the Singles competition for the first time. Little Jimmy Maynard, Chuck Keller, Gloria (Spanky) Soltes and Gail Brown would also compete in this event.

Here is Rich and Linda playing in one of their mixed doubles matches. Rich and Linda tood the Gold Medal!!
Here is Linda again, playing in the woman's doubles with partner Judy Goldberg. The two ladies took the Gold Medal !!! Here is Jimmy and Gail. They took the Gold Medal in the mixed 70-74 age group.
I missed the beginning of Rich's singles match. This was one of the first events where they did not have fruit or something for the competitors to eat. Rich never eats breakfast, so he needed something for energy.......I took a trip to the local Publix store to get him some banana's and cheese twists!! But I got back in time to catch this picture. Rich took the Silver Medal !!

Here is Jimmy again, this time playing in the men's doubles with Chuck. They brought home the Bronze medal in the mens 70-74.

The men's doubles match was the last of day. Finally!!! It was a long day but Rich and Al finish the day with the Gold Medal!! Rich played a total of 16 games today;5 of them singles. Whew!

Everyone from Tanlgewood grabbed a medal that day before heading for home.

It was getting late in the afternoon, so we gave Dieter and Helen a call to let them know we were headed back. We were only about 35 minutes away. Rich took a shower and we all headed to Marco Polo for dinner. It was great spending time with them again. We stayed up and talked quite late that night. We would be leaving in the morning to meet our pickleball friends just down the road for a few games before we headed back to Tanglewood.

We met Bruce and Gena Whitehead, Jack Beck and some of the group that they play with on a regular basis at the Englewood Sports Complex. Marcel and Louise would be driving over from Sebring and meet us there.

The group was already there waiting for us, and had already put the tape down on the tennis courts. There's Gena playing in the picture to the right.

The next picture is of Rich and I with Jack Beck. Jack is the USAPA Ambassador in the Venice/Sarasota area.

After playing, Bruce and Gena has made plans for all of us for lunch. We drove about 20 down the road to a great little Marina/Restaurant right on the water. Great restaurant, good company, good food........another great day in Paradise.