We both ordered tuna melt and a side salad. That’s one way to tell me and Mike the Hat are pals.

Another is he was up for lunch even though it was raining in Pasadena.

Ay-yi-yi, thought I. This weather is really impertinent. I also felt a long day stretching out ahead.

Thinking quickly, I suggested that we could just get lunch and see if the courts dried off.

Which they did! So not only did we get to chat’n’chew at the Brookside coffee shop where they give club-friendly service at a public golf course’s 19th hole, but we also got to affirm our friendship as an official off-the-court friendship. That is really great.

After lunch we sneaker-squeegee’d out a few damp patches, then romped + stomped.

I practiced a home-made tennis tip: on the backswing, get your racquet facing down, as in “down to the ground, down to the ground” from the beautiful Joan Atmatrading song “Down to Zero.”

The theory is the face-down racquet will help you hit the ball not up and out but instead just right.

It worked!

I’m thrilled, partly ‘cause of that and also because Mike is up to play yet again next week at another new court in Pasadena, where it smells fresh after the rain.

All this great vibe on Bob Dylan’s 83rd birthday!