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Parking Changes Coming to Wichita

Posted on August 26, 2024 by Ching under Community.

I’m taking a break from catching up this super behind blog to talk about the parking changes that are coming to downtown Wichita in 2025. A few weeks ago someone posted about the parking changes because the changes that were being implemented on January 1 were extending beyond just downtown. It was also impacting Delano district. Delano is where the Senior Services of Wichita and Seneca Park (across the street) is located. They were concerned about how the parking changes would impact parking in the area and how this would create a hardship for seniors, not just financially but also because we all know that many seniors are technologically-changed.

When I saw that there were a couple of meetings at Senior Services and one of them was at 5 PM on a Thursday, I decided to attend that one. I had to reschedule a waxing appointment to do so but I had to know what was going on. I stole the photos below from the Senior Services Facebook page and they are from the Monday morning meeting. They’re better than my photo from Thursday so I decided to use theirs instead.

Assistant City Manager Troy Anderson came to address the group, which mostly consisted of people who are very upset about the parking changes. As you would expect, the people in the community in favor of the changes or those who are indifferent, didn’t really feel a need to attend. I fall under the indifferent category and mostly attended out of curiosity.

In all other cities that Brian and I have visited, we’ve had to pay for parking in the downtown areas, so I am neither surprised nor against the idea of paying for parking. It seemed to me that the parking rates/fees would be reasonable and that the monies collected would go toward maintenance and upkeep of parking and would benefit the immediate area overall so I don’t mind having to pay. As a consumer my main concern was whether it would be convenient, e.g. will there be an app and multiple options to pay for parking because if it’s a pain in the neck then, no matter how cheap it is, people will be discouraged from going to the area just because they won’t want to mess with parking.

As a pickleball player, another concern I had is of the impact to parking around Seneca Park. It’s currently free to park all around the park and also along the street in front of Senior Services. None of the information I had seen showed that this area would be affected by the parking changes but I wanted to know for sure.

Anyway, let’s share some background information first. Here’s a parking report presented by Health ICT back in 2018.

Troy also mentioned this video about the high cost of free parking which supports the notion of moving towards charging for parking in certain areas of the city. Having traveled to other places where paid parking is now the norm, I completely understand why the city wants to move in this direction; however, it’s been really nice having free parking available in our city.

At the meeting at Senior Services on Thursday, we got to see a sample parking payment kiosk and we got to see the maps of impacted areas.

The map above depicts the area that they’re looking to implement paid parking starting on January 1. The picture below is a closer look at Delano. It looks like paid parking will be mostly along Douglas and there might be some paid parking along Walnut, Handley, Osage, Oak, and Sycamore also (but I’m not quite sure what all the color-coding actually means).

It looks like the area around Seneca Park will be largely unaffected; however, I am worried that people who don’t want to pay for parking along Douglas and Walnut will end up parking on the street along Seneca Park and walk to wherever they’re going thus, making parking more limited for pickleball players who frequent the park. It’s possible but we don’t really know for sure what will happen and how people will behave until they implement the changes. I do know there are quite a few people who are vehemently against the idea and they were quite vocal at the meeting I attended last week.

There is another meeting happening tonight at Nortons Brewing Co. If you are at all interested in the changes that are coming, I highly recommend attending.

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Christie Pink in Wichita

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.

This post is dedicated to my friend Christie Pink who I first met over three years ago when Erica Case (then Lopez/Davis) played in the Middle States regional pickleball tournament. I think, at the time, this was my first every regional tournament experience.

That tournament was in May 2021 and then I saw her again in January 2022 when I traveled to St. Louis for the Dink In the New Year pickleball tournament with Tiffany and Donnie Lesperance. I played women’s doubles with Tiffany and mixed doubles with Devon Fuller. We arrived a day before the tournament and we ended up connecting with Christie and her crew at Missouri Pickleball Club.

My next notable Christie sighting was at the Minto US Open in April 2022. It was my very first US Open experience.

I got to play against Christie again in the 2022 Middle States Regional, and I think we’ve been at the same tournaments a few more times during the two years that I was playing a ton of tournaments. She was a skill level above me in women’s so, except for that first year, I hadn’t really had to face off against her in women’s but I tended to “play up” a division in mixed so I was more likely to run into her there.

Fast forward a couple of years later, she ends up going to Wichita on a business trip and reaches out to me out of the blue. She was so gracious to let Tiff, Donnie, and I play with her and her friends at MPC all those years ago so this was my turn to return the favor. She arrived on Sunday and, to make the most of her visit last month, I arranged for a couple of play sessions for us.

Our first stop was Chicken N Pickle for mixed doubles with Ramon Lozano and Ryan Kellenbarger.

I purposely chose Ramon because they had met before at the 2022 Middle States Regional. He was my partner when we played against Christie and her partner in that tournament, and so I figured they would remember each other. I invited Ryan because I needed someone who would be fun and balance Ramon.

Our next stop was open play at the Pickle Club from 5 to 7 PM with Susie Ternes and Greta Siemens. Neither of them had met Christie before but I thought they would be a good fit, and they both just happened to be available. Schedules can be difficult to coordinate sometimes.

A couple of weeks ago, when Christie was back on another work trip, her visit coincided with PickleCon, PPA Kansas City Open, OKC Picklemania so the folks that I got to play with us on her first visit were all out of town but the nice thing about Wichita is that we have an abundance of fun pickleball players so it’s pretty easy to put together a great group.

Not to be left out, Karen Fox decided she would host her own PickleCon at the Pickle Club. LOL. Our group that day consisted of Chris Wilson, Mark Armstrong, Donnie Lesperance, Tami Racine, Kimberly Howe, Tiffany Lesperance, Karen Fox, and Janelle Lindeman.

Brian brought us some Wichita Brewing Co. pizzas and a cooler of bevvies so we ended up hanging out and having a little picnic afterward which was a nice end to the evening and play session.

The next day, Christie and I had a mixed doubles session at CNP with Dustin Herman and Noi Sourinthone. For dinner that night, Brian and I took Christie to Stearman Field in Benton (sounds far but it’s really not that far from Wichita) and then we drove out to the Keeper for the Plains for iconic Wichita photo ops.

It’s been such a pleasure entertaining Christie on these two visits. I can’t wait for her return trip!

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2024 Wichita Heart Walk

Posted on August 13, 2024 by Ching under Community.

I got invited to do the warm up for the Wichita Heart Walk this year. I remember doing the warm up for them over ten years ago so I was excited to do it again. There was a bit of miscommunication because the warm up wasn’t on the script. They had the walkers preemptively line up so we didn’t have a lot of participants but KAKE News’ Deb Farris and Jay Prater were good sports and did the warm up with me.

The best sport of all was Brian. He is the real MVP. He took me to the ballpark so I wouldn’t have to worry about finding parking. For his good deed, I took him to his favorite breakfast place. We had brunch at HomeGrown after.

Here are some pictures of our breakfast that day.

I think I got a little drunk on my breakfast beverage because I talked Brian into taking a photo of me with the Naftzger Park sign. I couldn’t help it because my outfit matched!

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2024 Picklepalooza

Posted on August 13, 2024 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.

Pictures from this year’s Picklepalooza charity event benefiting Senior Services of Wichita. This year we had me, Chris Wilson, and Jeff and Anita Harris (as usual), and we had some new participants — Margie Happy, Ian Bosmeier, and Michael and Tish Habbart. I didn’t get photos of everyone but I did get a few.

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Adaptable is My Middle Name

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Ching under Community, Family.

Several weeks ago, I was chatting with my friend Jenny Marcos. She’s the resident pickleball pro at Rose Creek Golf Club, a fancy schmancy country club in Edmond, Oklahoma. Anyway, I found out that she leads cardio pickleball on Saturday mornings. I’ve actually been asked to lead cardio pickleball before, but not having participated in one, I wasn’t really comfortable saying yes. I’ve attended cardio tennis at Genesis Health Clubs. I’m sure it’s similar but I really would rather not take on something, I know little about and have zero experience. When she told me about her class, I naturally asked if I could attend so I could learn more about it and perhaps take some notes so I can facilitate a similar class in the future.

We picked a Saturday in June which turned out to be the same Saturday that we were driving down to Oklahoma to have lunch with Brian’s parents. We were coming down to celebrate Brian’s 50th birthday and his mom and dad’s 51st wedding anniversary. Cardio pickle is at 9 AM in Edmond so I figured we could hit it on the way down to Oklahoma City, then meet for lunch, before driving back home to Wichita. Easy peazy.

The Friday before, I texted Jenny to confirm that cardio pickle is still on and to remind her that I’m coming. That’s when I found out that they actually canceled cardio pickle for that day because she, along with several others, were competing in the USSP tournament at Life Time that weekend. I immediately told Brian the good news — that we could sleep in on Saturday morning. He was actually not too thrilled about having to get up early and driving down first thing in the morning so we could make the 9 AM class but he was being a good sport about it.

Brian told his dad who asked if we still wanted to come down for lunch. He was worried that it was a long drive just to have lunch. To which Brian responded, “I’m sure Ching has some other plans that she hasn’t told me yet. She’ll probably bring it up over lunch. She’ll go, while we are here —”

Brian shared this conversation with me when he got home from work on Friday night. I was like, “Funny you said that. I was going to ask you if we could swing by the pickleball tournament to say hello to friends and watch some matches after lunch. But I wasn’t going to wait until we were there. I had planned to ask you tonight — like right now — because the restaurant is in the same area. We would literally be two minutes away.”

If there is one thing that you should know about me by now, it is that I always have a “Plan B.” I guess another good thing to note about me is that I’m really good at flexing. Famous coach John Wooden once said, “Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out.” This describes me to a tee. My life is not without hardships but somehow, whenever negative things happen (or things just don’t work out the way I’d hoped), I am really good at convincing myself that this is good thing. Finding the silver lining in any situation is one of my many talents.

It was June 8 (I know the blog is super far behind). We didn’t have to get up early. Instead, we had a nice leisurely drive down to Oklahoma City. We met Brian’s parents at the P.F. Chang’s and had a lovely lunch. BTW, while we were there, we saw that they were building a Fogo De Chao (which is probably open now) so our next celebratory lunch or dinner will probably be there. I love the whole Brazilian churascaria thing but I just can’t justify going unless it’s a special occasion.

After lunch we went to Life Time to cheer for our Wichita pals. Also go to see some Oklahoma friends who I hadn’t seen in a long time because I’ve been on a tournament sabbatical. But I realized that, just because I’m not playing, doesn’t mean that I can’t come watch and cheer for friends. It was wonderful to see everyone. I even got to see Gene Click who moved to Texas from Oklahoma about two years ago. He just happened to be there as well.