Double header, or let's play two!

 Shirley and I invited our friend, and Shirley's frequent playing partner, Tracie Jeffries, from Valdese, down to spend the night at our Lexington home on Wednesday night, June 30, in anticipation of her accompanying us for July 1st play.

On Wednesday night, Shirley and Tracie played four close games of singles (head-to-head) on our backyard terrain as a warm-up for Thursday's upcoming trip. As a courtesy, I won't discuss here the results of the four games, but here's a visual aid clue:

Then on Thursday morning, I drove the two of them--still on speaking terms after Wednesday night--to Tanger Gardens in Greensboro for regular weekly play.

Tracie shoots

New players!

Preston coaching

We played until noon and then Tracie, Shirley, Preston, and I made the short drive up Holden Road to the intersection with Spring Garden Street to Fat Dogs Bar and Grille for lunch and libations. The food was good as always, but the service was a little bit slower than usual which put us behind for part two of our petanque day.

We drove east on I40 from Greebsboro to Raleigh, NC. We arrived at Wine Authorities around 2:30 PM for our first look at the new Raleigh petanque venue that Bob Robertson and Kaye Taliana have constructed behind the business. You just walk through the store and up the stairs out into the back alleyway and you'll find a welcoming terrain that they've somehow managed to wedge into a very small place. 

Actually, the terrain itself is plenty long an wide enough for two lanes-- it's just that there's very little wasted space around the terrain. There is, however, room enough for two nice benches that Bob constructed and one (soon to be two?) VERY nice scoreboard that Bob designed and built.

Anyway, they say a picture's worth a thousand words, so here are some pictures:

Bob and Kaye's hard work, along with excellent cooperation from the Wine Authorities' management, has given us an excellent place to meet and play in Raleigh. We won't be able to get down that way very often because of the distance for us, but we'll certainly try to support their special events and encourage anyone in the area to support the effort to make Raleigh petanque succesful

Oh, and buy some wine! Shirley picked up four bottles on her way out.

Our Greensboro-Raleigh double header was a lot of fun. We got back to Lexington around 6:30, just in time to take Tracie uptown for supper at BAR-B-Q Center . As well as delicious pork Lexington-style barbecue, they're locally famous for their banana splits. Here's how we closed out our day:

--Gary