Who We Are

Thank you for tuning in. I'm Greg. I'm Mike. And we are the Pickleballers Next Door. We are for the Joes and not the pros. Your court, our court. Thanks for tuning in to Pickleballers Next Door. Today we're going to talk about who we are and why we are taking this journey with the Pickleball podcast. Absolutely. I mean, this is, uh, this is more, this isn't about fame, money, any of that. I mean, this was something that's in, and I think there's lots of stories about pickleball. Um, and I have one of them too. I think we both do, but we want to know who you, when you're listening to our podcasts, what we're about and who we are. Yeah. So go ahead, Mike. Let's, let's hear what you have to say. Well, I have a lot to say. Do we have that long? Oh yeah, we do. We have all the time. We have all the time of the world. It's how long people want to listen to us. Right. So anyway, I'm going to start, it started about three years ago when I got into pickleball. Um, wild and crazy story, right? I go back and I mean, my wife were traveling and, and we'd see these people playing this game and I just like, what are they doing? But it looked fun. You know, it's kind of intriguing. California, Florida, I think so. And then, well, they built actually courts here in Westminster, Colorado. And me and my wife would walk our dogs on the weekend and I, you know, and it seemed like this tight niche group of people, which it kind of is, right? I mean, but in the end of the, I told my wife I was going to make a shirt saying, can I play and get a paddle? And a long story short, came around, didn't never played there. I eventually did go play there. But, uh, there was a, a new story about a guy that drew on some courts. It was a marker, permanent marker that wanted to play pickleball. I told my wife, go ahead. I saw that story when I was in Alaska. That is not funny. Yep. This was big news. Pickleball. It finally was out on the news. And of course, if it's on the news, you got to believe everything, right? Um, so I said, I looked around and I told my wife, I said, there's got to be pickleball courts. Well, sure enough, I found this place in Westminster, Colorado called the pickleball food pub and they gave a free lesson. Well, long story short to my wife, I gotta go do this. So that night it happened to be the same day that I could go do this free class, did a pickleball. I did one. That's all this took was one. This didn't take 10. It's an addiction. Oh, it's a addiction. Um, next thing I know, um, I love my wife and uh, now she does not play pickleball because this was something that we were going to do together. Um, and she'll tell you, ask her about pickleball. I'm going to have to ask her about it. Don't, don't, don't get it to you. I'll get in trouble again. This is like a non-ending, uh, trouble. I might be sleeping in the garage again. But anyway, long story short, I started playing pickleball seven days a week. I own my own construction company for the last 40 years. And uh, so I, I, everybody's asking, they could hear the noise. Like you could hear this ting ting. Where are you at? I saw him in a meeting. I'm busy. I was finding pickleball anywhere I could find pickleball because once you become, once you get this urge, it doesn't matter. And some reason you think you level up really fast. Like you, you get really good super fast. Like, like I was a six Oh player when in a week after I played, right? Yeah, I'm sure. As I find out later is I'm barely hitting four Oh, uh, that I'm getting, I'm still, I'm getting killed. It takes time. And you know, and then I, it, it, it seems so simple of a sport, but there's a lot to it. So anyway, I don't want to get too deep into that. So I'm burned out of life. I'm tired, 40 years of doing something. And I find this new community, like friends, all of a sudden, like I just have this brand new friends everywhere I go playing pickleball. So the community, the people that you get together with was just great. I mean, it was awesome. Um, and I have not stopped ever since I have went and went and went and went. And so it just gave me a purpose of life. I'm burned out. I got, I got a beautiful wife. I got five lovely children, four grandkids and whoever, you know, tons of other family and, and all I did is work and work and work. And so, uh, I thought there has to be, you know, there has to be more than to life and pickleball gave me the life. Um, always pretty, pretty good shape. I've always worked out and stuff, but I'm in the best shape of my life. I'm telling you, it took me from working out gym to another whole fitness. I feel like I'm 30 years old. I'm almost 60. I feel awesome. I mean, it's incredible. Uh, the, my legs, my body, I mean, I mean my mind, my mental focus. So if I could do, if this could do this for me, what could it do for other people? And as I got into this and hearing other stories, it's, I mean, mine's a, a very light story compared. This has changed some huge life since pickleball. No, it definitely has. I mean, it's not just, you know, it's not just a sport. You hit a little plastic ball is I like to tell people what it does for me is I get to exit life for a short term for now it's a short term. I call three to four hours, but the short term an hour, um, I will go all day. I mean, me and you just went to a long ago. We went to a big pickleball pickle con. Um, I think that was seven hours, eight hours a day. Yeah. I didn't even feel like it. Yeah. Didn't even, yeah. I didn't even think twice. So, uh, but long story short is it's this exit. As I start to get to know other people, we get to leave our life. Not that we want to leave our life. Just want to exit the traffic, the chaos, the phone calls, the TV, the, the everything. So you get to go out for a minute and hit a ball back and forth with a few people and get some smiles. Not, I'm going to say every game I've had my moments where I knew you're going to say it, but, um, you get your moments in this that you want to, you get more competitive, right? You want to move up. And so there can be some games that aren't as fun as others should be. 90% of the time I just have fun. And the more I play with people, the more fun I have. So anyway, that's, that's my journey. It's changed, gave me life. And I know I talked to so many people now and part of this podcast is to reach out to lots of other people that's in the same journey. This is their exit. This is the time that they can attend to whatever's happened in their life, where they're at in their life. They can, they can move on and they can have something that gives, have some. So how about you big man? Let's go. Well, um, I was in Alaska. We were there for, from January to May. Um, and I hyperextended my left elbow snowboarding. Um, that does not sound good. It was not fun. I was a big gym rat, um, but I could no longer push and pull. So there was no weights going on. Um, so at the, it was called the Alaska club. It was a gym in, uh, Alaska obviously. Um, and I needed to do something. So I decided cardio, but I hate the treadmill. I hate the bike. So at the, at the front desk, you can borrow a racket and a racket ball. And I just went into the racquetball courts and I played by myself, ran around. I don't know how to play racquetball. I sucked at it. Did you win? I won when the ball hit me in the face. I knew I won, but on the way there, there was a basketball gym and I heard this plop, plop, plop, plop. And I'm like, huh, I wonder what that is. So I stopped in the doorway and I watched for a little bit and then I moved on. And as I'm walking down the hall, this lady came running out and was like, Hey, do you want to play with us? And I was like, Hmm, maybe tomorrow I'm, you know, I'm already have my mindset on doing this and stuff. And, uh, she kind of showed me the paddles and how it works and stuff like that. And I went the next day and I played, um, that day I went out and I bought a really cheap paddle at target and I'm like, all right, I'm going to play. And so, uh, shoot, maybe a week into it. I was playing two times a week. Three weeks later, I'm playing four times a week. Here it comes. Four weeks later, I'm playing like five times a week. And I'm like, all right, this is a lot of fun. And I'm like, addicted now. And so I leave Alaska. We go to St. Louis cause so my wife is a trout, was a travel nurse. She still is a nurse, but not doing travel assignments. Um, I ended up in St. Louis and little did I know that St. Louis has a huge pickleball community that there's a lot of really good players. I can't wait to go there. We're talking about it. I, I earned my stripes in St. Louis. There's no doubt about that. I got way better while I was there. Um, that's where I started my Instagram pickle or die. Um, my wife pushed me to do it. You didn't push me to do it, told me that I probably should, and that I should really do it if I'm going to do it. And I did. And I ended up where I'm at on Instagram because of her. Um, I love it. So playing in St. Louis, I'm getting better. I'm getting better. I'm getting better. Um, I go out to one of the parks that I play at and who do I run into? Uh, a dude that I played with in Alaska. Oh, that is crazy. So we're talking about small communities. I ended up playing with the guy that I played with in Alaska. Um, so we leave a lot. We leave St. Louis. We ended up in Connecticut. So I've played in Connecticut. I've played all over the country. Um, and it's, and it's just, it just, the addiction keeps getting stronger. Right. The addiction keeps getting stronger. Now I'm playing like six days a week, seven days a week, multiple hours a day. Um, and I'm having a great time. Right. Um, from there we moved back to Colorado. I start meeting people. I start working at third shot pickleball. Is that where our eyes like, that's where our eyes locked and we became a thing. Best friends. We just became best friends with, yeah. And there's, you know, so now I meet Mike at third shot pickleball. He asked, Hey, you want to do a podcast with me? I mean, I don't even think it was one second. And I was like, uh, fuck. Yeah. And so this is my journey has just been meeting people and meeting people and just talking to people and having a good time. And some of the best things have come from it. When you get to meet this guy, it's hard to let him go. I mean, like I said, when I traveled a few places that we've traveled together, every, and he's like a movie star and pickleball, but he can not love this guy. He's awesome. He's incredible. He's a lot of fun. I mean, and he's a big guy. You're not going to miss him. Well, thanks Mike. I appreciate that. I'll say the bad things off there. Thanks. I appreciate that too. So, but yeah, when we come back, we're going to tell you why we started a podcast and where we want it to go. I love it. I just want to say thank you to a sweet sip for supporting the podcast. A sweet sip is a very delicious CBD drink, non-alcoholic for great flavors. It helps me take the edge off when I'm going to play in a pickleball tournament. If you want to get some, check them out at drinkasweetsip.com. Oh, welcome back. So we were talking about our stories in pickleball where we've been, where we've been, what we've been through, why we're in it, why we're in it. And now we are going to discuss why we're doing this podcast. So we have figured out that, let's say 90% would probably be a pretty good, right? Close, close number to the people that play pickleball, rec tournaments or otherwise, whatever that just don't really care about hearing a lot about the pros. Yeah. When I say PPA, they're like, what do you have to do? So like a lot of people don't care to hear about the pros, what they ate and how they're training. And you know, this shot is so awesome. Look at this. And you know, I'd say what 90% of the other pickleball podcasts out there do paddle reviews. And we are not going to do that either. Yeah. We're not about the pros where you were just about the everyday Joe, the guy that's on the court that shows up every day that gets, as you heard in our story, the addiction is real. You think you're going to play once or you it's fun. It's nothing. Something happens to you when you get involved in pickleball. And so you don't stop. And so we're going to travel around the country, talk to people, play with people and do podcasts about the people who we played with in those cities, States, countries. So traveling around the country, playing pickleball at different courts, doing court reviews, talking to the people. Yeah. So I know what those people like, where they like to go. What do they like to eat? Maybe we don't know what they want to eat. Maybe they like pizza. What paddle do they like? What paddle do they like? And you know, what pedal do they not like? What, what etiquette do they like? What, what do they have on their court that they hate that they want to change? And how do we change that? You know, uh, what, what's your paddle, what's your open play paddle stack look like? How does, how would you change that? You know, let's, I'll, I'll want to dive into this stuff and talk to the people and see if we can come up with some solutions for them. Well, and everywhere is a little different, right? There's a little different play everywhere you go and you can test that. Yes. You've traveled a lot more than me playing pickleball. It's a little different every row, the etiquette, the, which side you serve on. Right, right. Not the big thing. It's always the thing. It's always the thing. And, uh, so these are the fun things that we want to hear. You're going to be for that moment. We want you. And if you've heard other, other podcasts that we have, excuse me, that you get to, uh, we want to hear your opinion. Yeah. We want to hear what's the best thing you've heard on the court. Like what's the funniest thing you've heard someone say on the court. What's the dumbest or stupidest thing you've seen happen on the court? You know, but also we want suggestions from you. So where do you want us to go? Where do you, where do you want to see us play? Where do you want to meet us to play? You know, um, email us. My emails is Greg at pickleballers, nextdoor.com and Mike is Mike. He's Mike at pickleballers.com. Pickleballers nextdoor.com. Email us. We have an Instagram pickleballer pickleballers next door. Hit us up there. We'll travel to you. If you, uh, you know, give us a story that we'd like to come see you. We'll come travel to you and find out where you are and play with you and, uh, have some fun. Yeah. And from what everything, from what it looks like, our podcasts are dropping every Thursday, every Thursday morning, by the time you're up, they're going to be on ready to go for you to listen to. So please tune in coming. Yeah. Well, listen to us and, you know, give us your opinions. Um, we also do some call-ins, you know, where you call in and we'll talk to you, but, uh, this is just about having fun. We're bringing a larger pickleball community together. We want, we want, we want to hear what you have to say. We want, we want the pickleball community to be even more inclusive than it already is. So if you're a five Oh, and you're in a paddle stack, which typically doesn't happen anyways, but you end up with a three Oh, you just kind of suck it up. You play with them. You work on some things, you reel it in and you move on. Right. You don't have to be stuck there. You don't have to be stuck there. And if you're new and you want to hear some things about what some of the terminology is, we'll hear some of that on our show. Um, you know, we're always learning. They're changing the rules. You know, there's always something changing, always something changing. So a lot's going to happen and we hope to be here in the, in the, in the front of it for you. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, any suggestions that you have hit us up on Instagram, hit us up on our, with our emails and you know, we'll, we'll come to you. We'll figure something out. We'll, we're going to have a bunch of competitions too and fun things going on. So there'll always be something happening. Yeah. Anyway. Hi, Greg. I love it. Yep. Mike, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to where this is going to go. Oh yeah. I can't wait. All right, man. Thanks. Thanks for tuning in guys. Bye-bye. See you next time.