When you play and teach tennis, unexpected adventures may arise.
Some people would label such an adventure as a work trip. For me, its the ability to experience the world through play. Hard to call such a thing work. Although, don’t get fooled. There is much effort involved in tennis at this level. Lazy people need not apply. Try pickleball instead 😛
Jk! I’m not one of the tennis players that hates pickleball. Anything that gets you moving and playing is okay with me.
For two weeks I was fortunate to travel to Puerto Rico for two tennis tournaments with a Canadian junior. It was her first ITF junior event, and she got some points, which was quite an achievement since she is 13, and the range is 13-18 years old in these events. Many of the players are 16, and some people go years before winning even a round. But as any good tennis player thinks, it could have been better.
I have never been to Puerto Rico before, so obviously it was a no brainer to go.
Although I must say the ideas that were implanted in my mind about Puerto Rico from wherever they got picked up over the years, did not paint it as the beautiful place that it actually is. This is just another example of why direct experience is so vital instead of living through assumptions. This is especially true in the spiritual domain, but I wont talk much about that in this post. If you want more on that, read some of my other posts or checkout my book.
Since this was a tennis trip, there was a lot of training. Regular people can’t imagine how many hours serious players spend on and of court emersed in tennis. Have you ever complained of being too hot in the summer while even doing a low energy activity? Well, try hitting tennis balls on a concrete court in 30 Celsius with no shade for 3 hours or more at high intensity. Non athletes don’t realize that the body is super malleable and it’s limits can be stretched to degrees you can’t even fathom. All you need is to be fully emersed in what you love to do, and what is possible can be stretched to infinite proportions. This is also true with the mind.
Obviously, much of the time of this trip was spent on tennis courts, but we also got to see some cool spots in Puerto Rico. We probably covered 1/4 of the island through all of our driving. We got to go to San Juan, Bayamon, El Yunque, Dorado, Barceloneta, and Cueva del Indio.
As in any adventure, some fun unexpected happenings occurred.
The first one was at the tennis club where the tournament was happening in Bayamon. After the first match, I heard my name being called from above and it turned out that a friend I used to teach with in Miami, was at the same tournament with some juniors from Washington. I haven’t seen him in 10 years, so it was a great surprise to chat a bit. (Yes, Canadians and Americans still like each other, if you have fallen too far off a cliff of hatred in one of the two lands)
The second neat surprise was that we got to checkout a rainforest!
I did no research before going to Puerto Rico as this trip was very last second, so I was really excited to hear that there was a rainforest and it was close enough for us to go. Hard to not have a good time there when you LOVE forests.
The third was swimming in the ocean. This was not a surprise, because I may have not known much about Puerto Rico, but I did know that its an island and as much as I love forests, playing on the beach and in the water is the most funnzies. Swimming, boogie boarding, skim boarding, yes please!
Now this last one, we all had a special connection with. We were staying on the first floor in an Airbnb and a stray kitty became our bestie. Not only was she coming to hang with us daily. She was sleeping with us in our rooms. I already have a Miami kitty, that I brought to Canada many years ago, but there was much deliberation if she should come back with us. We named her Rica, and ultimately decided that it was better off for her to stay and enjoy her freedom. It also helped that the Airbnb lady liked cats and said she would keep an eye on her.
If you read any of my posts previously, a lot of my adventures I have posted about where solo trips. Which I obviously enjoy. This one was with two other humans, and we had a really fun time!
When you haven’t fixed yourself to being a certain way, life will give you a lot of opportunities with all sorts of cool people. Don’t be a zombie, allow life to play with you in whatever ways it wants to in the moment.
Below are just some of the pictures of the beautiful place that is Puerto Rico
