Post-break, back at home

Wow, an entire month has passed since my last post. All I can say is that the end of the APA summer session has dovetailed perfectly with a two-week jaunt I just made through Europe. Most of my trip was spent with Yvonne in Warsaw, Poland, where she is from. But before our rendezvous in Warsaw I had traveled solo to spend a few days in Perpignan, France to check out a photography festival.

Needless to say, pool has been on the back burner the past two weeks. The only bar pool table that I saw my whole trip was in Perpignan. Unfortunately, there was what appeared to be a large stack of lumber on top of the table. Once I got to Warsaw I had a lot more time on my hands. One night Yvonne and her sister, Joanna, and I went to check out "Blue Club Billiards" (above). Basically it's a pool hall combined with a bowling alley in the basement of the library building at the University of Warsaw. As Yvonne and Joanna were getting us some drinks I racked all the balls in the triangle and moved the head ball over to the side of the rack several inches and set myself up behind the string for a straight pool break shot. I nailed it and got a nice scattering of the pile. The only other memorable shot I made was during a game of league rules 8 ball, me vs them, in which I gave myself the handicap of double banking into my last pocket. On the far left side of the photo you can see that I had come really close in an earlier shot, leaving my 8 ball hanging in its pocket. At some point soon after this photo was taken I made a sweet two-rails-around-the-table kick shot (approximately from where the purple 4 ball is in the photo) and pocketed the 8, albeit on a double kiss.

On my last day of the trip we went to Warsaw's equivalent of the Empire State Building, the Palace of Culture and Science. Inside, there was an exhibition on Albert Einstein that had some cool physics displays. My eye immediately went toward one in particular, a model of Newton's Cradle that utilized cue balls instead of the usual steel marbles. It's the image that will stay in my head this week as I try to get myself back into the game before league play resumes next Monday.