Two years have flown by since my last post...and, sad to say, the workshop has still not been set up for use. I have an old full-size lathe now, and some great other tools, and someday I am going to set up everything the way that I want it and start turning stuff again - at least pens, maybe larger stuff.
While this blog was set up to document the trials and tribulations of a beginning woodturner, I actually have two other hobbies to which the word "woodpusher" could apply.
CHESS
I have been a chess player for 30 years. With the exception of a two-year break while living in Chicago (more on that in a minute), chess has been a part of my life since I learned the moves at the (relatively late) age of nine.
There are several blogs out there about chess, and many people are documenting the learning process and even the teaching process. I do not have a lot to add to what exists already. I have reached a plateau in the chess world that I am happy with, and though there is a lot of online play and the very occasional OTB (over the board) game with friends, I am no longer actively attempting to learn how to improve my chess game. Continuing to play at the level I have achieved is fine with me.
POOL (BILLIARDS)
One day in 1994, I awoke in my one-room apartment in downtown Chicago and, for the first time since learning the moves, I did not feel like playing or studying chess. It felt very strange, but my brain must have felt like it had found a surrogate source to feed its strategy and planning needs - I had recently begun to take up pool. Several bars in the area of my apartment had pool tables, and I would become the strange regular patron who did not drink or smoke but would go into all of the bars regularly to shoot pool. I am sure that the wait staff did not appreciate the lack of alcohol in my drinking habits, but I was not going to learn much about how to improve at pool while drunk.
I played pool in bar leagues for a couple of years, and later when I moved out to the outskirts of the city I became a regular at a couple of pool halls there. The main difference that I had to get used to was that the pool halls had 9-foot tables (regulation size) while the bars that I was used to playing in had 7-foot bar tables. Learning to play well on the larger tables took a bit of doing, but I gradually got used to it.
I love playing pool, and even when I started up with chess again (one day, about two years later, I woke up and felt like playing again) I decided to keep playing pool. I played for about four years pretty regularly, and even did well in several tournaments. I also got to play pool in the pool hall used in the Color of Money (place called Chris's in Chicago - one of the few pool halls I played in that opened at 9 am).
What finally put a (temporary) end to my pool career was cigarette smoke. For some reason, people used to feel that they could not shoot pool without smoking cigarettes, and the air in the pool halls got really smoky at times. I tried for a while to patronize the only non-smoking pool hall that I could find, but it was 45 minutes' drive away and I was not able to go that often. Soon it closed, as smokers had too many alternatives. The only way that non-smoking pool halls would prosper, it seemed, was if they all went non-smoking at the same time. At the time that I left Chicago, that seemed far-fetched.
In 1999 I moved to New Hampshire, and played occasionally on the pool tables in the rec hall of my apartment complex. There was a guy that I met who loved to play straight pool (one of my favorite games now) and we would play matches once a week or so. The tables were not great, though, which took away from the experience a bit.
Seven years passed, during which time I got married, bought a house, and moved to the seacoast area of New Hampshire. During that time, I did not play more than the occasional game of pool. I still had my two pool cues that I bought when I was in Chicago, and kept them safe in a nice sturdy case, but they very rarely came out of hiding.
I plan to make the next few posts a retrospective of some of my stories from my Chicago years and my first tournament in New Hampshire. After that, I will get into my attempts to actively improve my pool game. I am now taking lessons again, for the first time in about 15 years, and the process has made me build my game once again from the ground up.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment