Racquetball, finally ...

So it has been years since I have last played racquetball. Literally. I have not played since I left San Diego, but while I lived there I was playing 2 or 3 times a week. And since I moved to New York, I have been looking for for a place to play ... but had not been able to find one until recently, when I found the one New York Sports Club in the city with racquetball courts ... which happens to be in Brooklyn, right by the Belt Parkway. This is a bit far from me (not in terms of distance but in terms of time, this being New York driving 13 miles takes 45 minutes), but not too far to go for racquetball.

So last Saturday I drove through Brooklyn to pick up Koffman, and then we headed down to the Belt. The NYSC was pretty big actually, and a bit nicer than the one we have in the Bronx, and most importantly, it did have 5 racquetball courts. Oddly, the racquetball courts were not fully enclosed, there was some netting instead of plastic on the upper back wall. This wasn't such a big deal, although we did end up spending a bit of time waving at the people upstairs to pop our ball out of the netting.

So finally, after a relatively long warm-up, we got to the playing ... and the whupping. We were both pretty out of practice, and the games were a bit sloppy, but despite this, I pasted Koffman five games to none, no game particularly close. In Koffmans' defense, the games were a lot more competative than the score. And more importantly, Koffman had not played racquetball since the last millenium.

I love racquetball. I did not even know how much I had missed it.

So the games were fantastic and will need to be repeated. And soon. And after the 2 and 1/2 hours of racquetball, we were, as expected, righteously hungry ... we had planned on going to Di Faras, the incredible pizza place in Brooklyn. Because there is nothing as good a gorging on pizza after a serious workout. However, Dom, the owner of Di Faras, recently broke his hip and the place is currently closed down. So we went to another incredible pizza place nearby, called Spumoni Gardens. The place was a kind of chintzy Italian place with a separate oven area devoted only to pizza. That area was full of a half-dozen guys bustling around behind a long counter, yelling and serving some of the best thin-crust pizza I have ever eaten. We got a full pie, with sausage and mushrooms, and tided ourselves over while it was being made by splitting a piece of the ready made square pizza they had at the front. After about 15 minutes, the pie was ready and we settled in to eat.

By the time Aviva and her cousin showed up 45 minutes later, we were stuffed and there was only one piece left. They got some more of the square pizza, finished that, and we went next door for some fantastic homemade ice cream ... Koffman also got an eggplant hero to warm his nether regions. Sated and happy, we headed back to the Bronx, stopping off at the Fairway in Red Hook on the way to pick up the groceries for the week.