Milestone Birthday Pickleball

St. Lucia

Earlier this month my husband joined me in crossing into a new decade of life. As I thought about how I would like to celebrate him on this occasion, I began to look at pickleball vacations. We have done several of these in the past, so I was looking for something that would be different from the other experiences. I came across one that was headed to St. Lucia, and I was immediately interested in it. At this point in our lives we are trying to go to destinations where we haven't traveled before, and St. Lucia fit the bill. The fact that it was being held at a Sandals with ten dedicated pickleball courts had me looking further into the details.

Elite Pickleball Retreats was offering three plus days of pickleball, with the instruction being done by three professional coaches. Their curriculum was combining skill training with drills, coached game play, film review, yoga, instruction on mastering your mindset, tips from a senior pro pickleball player, and game strategy. It was the most comprehensive pickleball training series that I have come across.

When I registered the two of us to attend, I made it clear that this was a surprise for my husband's birthday. I requested that all correspondence come only to me, and I was assured that would be the case. Jim only knew that he was going on a trip that would require his passport, and to pack for warm weather. I knew once we got to the airport he would see that we were going to St. Lucia, but he wouldn't know we were going to a Sandals or that a pickleball event was involved. Since I knew the resort had pickleball courts, I would have told him to pack his pickleball gear.

Well, a week before the event an email from the organizer went to Jim, and not to me. So much for my surprise! I guess he was surprised, just earlier than I anticipated. As it ends up, he has followed the YouTube channel of one of the coaches for several years, so he was excited to get to meet him in person.

When I booked the trip in January there was no shortage of TSA agents. Nor was there a war going on that involved the United States. So we weren't quite sure what to expect as we traveled outside the U.S. Our flight out was at 6:15 in the morning. We had an Uber pick us up at 4:00 and we were at the airport and through TSA by 4:25. Everything went smoothly at both the Charlotte airport as well as the one in Miami, where we had a connecting flight to St. Lucia. We were the only flight in at that time, so going through customs there was a breeze. We had a short wait in the Sandals lounge before taking their shuttle to the resort. Our shuttle contained only people who would be in our pickleball group, which was fun.

view from our room

There are actually three Sandals Resorts on St. Lucia, and we stayed at the Regency La Toc. It took a little over an hour to get from the airport to this resort. The roads were okay, but there was traffic to be dealt with by the driver. Once there, check in took a little longer than expected, but our room was ready. We were on the 7th floor of a seven story building, and had a wonderful ocean view. The room was huge, airy, and most importantly did not smell like mildew. The air conditioner worked very well.

The first night we all got together for a welcome dinner, and it was nice to get to know some of the participants before we began with the clinic the next morning. As it turned out, all of the other participants were from New Jersey, where the coaches have pickleball facilities. We were the only ones who learned of the retreat online. That was a little off-putting at first, but we were able to work around it. I would say most of the attendees were in their 30s-40s. There were maybe 3 couples in their 50s-60s, but Jim and I were definitely the only ones who were 70. But we didn't let that slow us down!

We learned a lot over three full days of the retreat. I tried to write down as many of the drills and tips that I could remember. But pickleball, like many things in life, is something that you have to do over and over again to commit it to your muscle memory. I hope I can put at least a few of the things I learned into practice.

I added two extra nights to our trip so that we would have some time to actually experience the resort. On Sunday we took a shuttle bus to one of the other Sandals resorts, the Grande. It is situated on a narrow strand of land that has the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other, which makes it quite unique. We enjoyed being able to see what that resort has to offer.

Monday we stayed at our resort and finally were able to lounge by the pool and also walked the beach and stuck our feet into the ocean for the first time. It was chilly! We had dinner at the Italian restaurant, which is at the top of a hill and offers beautiful sunset views. It was a fantastic way to spend our last night on St. Lucia.

Tuesday morning we had breakfast before putting our luggage out at 9:00. We had to be out of our room by 10:00, and got the airport shuttle at 10:30. Getting through customs and security at the airport was easy, and our flight to Miami went off without a hitch. The Miami airport was quite busy, and there was no TSA pre-check lane due to the shortage of TSA agents right now. That ate up quite a bit of our 1 1/2 hour layover, but we had just enough time to grab a quick bite in the American lounge before boarding our flight back to Charlotte. We got back to our house around 11:30 p.m. It was another long day of travel, and a reminder to try and take vacations where we can get a direct flight out of Charlotte.

The vacation was great, and Jim was very appreciative of his "surprise" present, but it is really wonderful to be home!

Step It Up!

One of my New Year's goals was to join the line dancing group here in my community. I used to know quite a few of the popular line dances when I worked full-time. A group of us would go to one of the country-western bars in St. Louis and tear up the floor. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but we definitely left a few marks on the floor.

One year we hosted a college student from Japan, and a few of us took our students to a country-western bar. They got out on the floor and were having a great time until a couple of the local men made a scene. They thought the students were making fun of them. Once we explained they were here going to school and had never seen line dancing before, the men backed off and in fact helped the students learn a few dances. 

But it's been a long time since those dancing days, and I have forgotten more than I ever learned. Except the Electric Slide, which is super easy. I decided to go to the first session in January, thinking there would be other new people joining. Nope - just me. The line dance group here meets once a week for an hour, and most of the women (with a couple men thrown in for good measure) have been going to the class for years. So it is a little intimidating to come in as a newbie.

The resident instructor invites new people to come a half hour early to refresh, so I thought that would work well. However, I soon found out that most of the members show up early just to get an extra half hour of dance in. That means there is not much opportunity for individual instruction. I almost quit after the first session. I was so lost. But people encouraged me to come back, so I did. I've gone every week, unless I have a conflict. 

It has been really helpful to me to look and see if any of the dances we are doing have a tutorial on YouTube. Then I can practice the steps before I go the next week. The problem is she rarely does the same dances two weeks in a row. But I practice anyway just in case one of them shows up. I'm getting way more comfortable, and really enjoy going each week.

In addition to that some friends of ours here asked four other couples if they would like to learn Social Swing. So every Sunday night Jim and I have been learning that style of dance. We learn two new dance moves each week, and I think we are up to 14 different ones now. Physically we are just not able to do all the moves, so we are picking and choosing which ones work for us. It has been a lot of fun, and we are hoping to show off some of our moves on our next vacation.

Trolling Around

Big Pete

Yesterday my husband caught up to me again, age-wise. To celebrate we went to see MJ The Musical Sunday after going out to dinner. But on the actual b-day we decided to go hunting for a troll in Charlotte. We had been reading about Big Pete with the big feet since he was unveiled in November of 2025. One of artist Thomas Dambo's "Trolls of America", Big Pete is the only one in Charlotte.

Dambo's dream is to have at least one troll in each state. They are made of recycled wood and other materials, and are built by local community members and placed in nature. Dambo is an artist who was born and lives in Denmark, and since 2014 he has become internationally known for his large trolls.

Big Pete is one of the larger trolls, measuring 65 feet in length. His feet are 7 feet tall! There was no one there when we visited, making it easy to get pictures of him with no one in the way. We did want a couple photos with one of us in it for scale though. That is when you can truly appreciate how large this art piece is.

Seeing Big Pete has whetted our appetite to see some of the other trolls. North Carolina has an additional five trolls in Raleigh, and another one in High Point. I sense a road trip in our future.