While I had a seamless night and morning, Bernie caused a complaint from one of the neighbours because he was smoking by his car in the morning, so not a good thing for John. And so, Bernie made an early exit and after I helped John clean his apartment, pushing around a vacuum cleaner that must have been from the 60s, we followed him over to the courts. I got myself a sweet possie in the sun and did some work on my expenses, lapping up the warmth. Bernie joined me soon after, scoring me a banana from the player’s banquet.

There were social games going on around the courts, the tournament not getting going until 11:30am, so we were just hanging out. When Bernie got his laptop out, we moved over to the shade where there was a powerpoint and set up a bit of a technical center. I blogged while Bernie checked his Facebook status. He was happy to see that after I updated his cover photo with a shot I’d taken of him on the beach in Venice, he’d got 36 likes! I was making him more popular. I spent the rest of the morning making new friends, talking to anybody and everybody that came along. My best yarn was with Lonnie, a retiree probably in his 70s who worked for GM in Detroit for thirty years. We had so much to talk about!

John and I stayed on center court watching the action, which unfortunately wasn’t as good as yesterday, partly due to the high winds, but also due to the players. Rich was on court nearby so we wandered over to watch his progress and found that we could sit by center court and watch how both games were going. Unfortunately, Rich had a loss. He’d suffered because he had a worn out grip on his racquet, playing with a glove at one point trying to alleviate the slipperiness. Just as the game was coming to an end, John, Bernie and I decided it was lunch time. The boys didn’t have a solution, so I went out to the van and made wraps for all of us. Lucky for all of us, I had three cookies left, one for each of us, so it was obviously meant to be.

After lunch, we watched Nadal play Mackenroe on center court (we didn’t know the players’ names so we made it up based on their physique and their chosen racket arm, both being lefties). Nadal suffered from center court jitters and lost the first set poorly, despite trying a couple of different racquets (a good mechanic never blames his tools). Mackenroe had the most wonderful on-court demeanour, always saying thank you when retrieving balls from his partner and awarding Nadal whenever he hit a winning shot. I was rooting for a Nadal comeback in the second set, but John predicted against it. It looked like it might happen at one break of serve, but it was short lived. Nadal’s time in the tournament was done.

All that excitement over, John and I got in the van and drove over to the Salvo’s for some shopping. Every Wednesday is half-price for clothing so John was keen for some cheap t-shirts. I was a bit nervous about driving further than a mile with my backwards passenger seat which is in no way legal for carrying a passenger, but thankfully we escaped the law. I went in with John and Chester, hunting for a bargain and I found a couple of books for 99c each. The first was Bill Clinton’s autobiography (don’t judge me) and the second was “The Best American Travel Writing” from 2005. The first will teach me more about American politics and a man who I’m sure has had an interesting life, the second might give me some tips for my writing.

By the time we got back to the courts, it was blowing a howling gale and the rain that had been predicted seemed likely. Just as we walked out onto the deck, John’s previous doubles partner, Walt, was heading out for his doubles match. I grabbed us some chairs and we sauntered over to watch. The wind made the playing tough and our team struggled through, eventually losing the match. I whiled away the points chatting to Walt’s wife Marilyn who enjoys a travelling life with her husband in their semi-retirement, still bringing in some dough from their self-run company. The game was over in under an hour, which was good in a way because it meant all the players would make it back to the clubhouse in time for the banquet. It was past 5pm and they were the last players on the court

Cocktail hour had started at 4:30pm, but it was only half an hour. We missed that, but the food was still flowing by the time we got to the bar at around 5:30. I found Rich at the bar with another guy so me and John pulled up some stools and I went to the buffet to get us some plates of food. The spread was decent, but we were both happy we didn’t have to pay the $30 for a ticket since we scored free tickets. We both went back for seconds. Even better, they had free beer on tap! Ok, it was Bud Light, but I was chugging them down.

Rich introduced us to his friend Nick and the four of us talked tennis and travel and life over our dinner and beers. At around 6, Bernie got up and started doing a talk. It was going to be “Kara-jokie”, but it was a shortened version where he just told a few stories and plugged his book. He even spent about five minutes talking about me! He pointed me out in the crowd and said I was one of the most wonderful people he’s ever met (awwww!) and encouraged everyone in the room to come have a chat with me. My face obviously went very red. After his talk, I wouldn’t say I was inundated, but a few people came over to join in Nick, Rich’s and my conversation. We stayed at the bar a good hour, drinking more beer. After I came out of the bathroom, I was getting that sleepy feeling, then realised it was only 7pm! More beers! The bar was shutting at 8 and the whole place had cleared out (oldies like early dinner and early bed I guess) so there was only a few of us left. I got another beer before we got kicked out and we sat out on the patio to continue our banter.

I took Nick out to my van to show him my setup because it was a lifestyle he was interested in pursuing and he couldn’t have been more impressed. We got talking about music because we are both piano players, him a more accomplished one than me I’m sure. Eventually I had to cut our conversation short because I was busting for a pee. I joined up with John and Bernie again out on the patio. Within minutes of sitting down, I was feeling a bit drunk and tuned out of the conversation, tilting my head back in my chair, looking up at the stars. Amongst the clouds, my eye caught a plane going overhead and right next to it, was the International Space Station!! I was out of chair immediately pointing it out to John and Bernie. After them saying, “That’s just a plane!” I showed them the shining star moving across the sky at speed. Eventually they saw it and were just as awed as me. We watched it for the next thirty seconds or so until it disappeared behind the clouds. How lucky were we. Neither John or Bernie had seen it before, how special for us to share it.

I was reeling for ages after that, at our luck to see the ISS go over right when I decided to tilt my head up to the sky. I was so excited that I had to call Jon and tell him what happened. He was having the day off work so we got to talk for a long while about space and my decision to stick around for the rocket launch.

We remained out on the patio until the cleaners came around 9:30pm so thought it was time to leave. John and I lost Bernie at some point when he wandered off talking on his phone, so we got in my van and head over anyway. I sent Bernie a message to tell him we’d been off and while I was lying in bed, my eyes closing, I heard him pull up near me and walk over to John’s for his spot on the patio.