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Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area

beginner cardio tennis clinic — the Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet) and the flag of Ethiopia combined by the model into a single photoreal composition. The green, yellow and red horizontal tricolour fills the frame in broad side-lit folds with the blue disc and its gold pentagram and rays sitting proud at the centre, and the black and red bag is composed into the arrangement so its long line runs with the fold of the yellow band and the disc reads as the centre of the whole picture, with no lettering anywhere in the frame.
beginner cardio tennis clinic — the Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet) photographed on Mount Tossa above Dessie, Ethiopia. Low near the ground looking up the ridge, the long green-brown flank of Tossa rising behind with masts on the skyline and the city just visible in the bowl below through a gap in the grass. First light on a cold highland morning, mist still sitting in the valley and the sun raking sideways across the slope: three boys driving goats uphill through the frame at a jog, a woman climbing steadily with a bundle of eucalyptus on her back, two runners in tracksuits going past on the dirt road, breath visible. The bag sits closed on a flat shelf of rock in the near foreground, nobody wearing it or touching it.
beginner cardio tennis clinic — the Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet) photographed at Enda Medhane Alem Church in Dessie, Ethiopia. Eye level and straight on across the walled compound, the church in its ring of old trees with painted figures visible through the open door. Bright hard midday sun on a feast day, shadow pooled tight under the trees: a dense crowd of worshippers in white shawls standing and kneeling right across the compound, a deacon moving through them with a censer trailing smoke, a woman kissing the doorframe, sandals piled in drifts at the threshold. The bag stands upright on a low stone bench off to the left in the middle distance, and the crowd flows straight past it.
beginner cardio tennis clinic — the Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet) photographed at Lake Hayq north of Dessie, Ethiopia. Elevated and wide from the slope above the shore so the whole 23 square kilometre lake, its reed beds and the monastery trees on the far point fill the frame. Blue hour after sunset, the water holding the last cold light and lamps starting up in the shoreline village: fishermen poling a low boat in from the middle, two more men hauling a net up the shingle, boys swimming in the shallows and being shouted at, cattle being walked home along the waterline. The bag sits small and far off on the timber rail of a jetty at the right edge, on its own.
beginner cardio tennis clinic — the Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet) photographed at Boru Meda outside Dessie, Ethiopia. Close and intimate at the edge of the broad upland plain, shallow depth so the grass heads in the foreground are sharp and the church compound out on the plain sits soft behind, the Wollo ridges beyond. Late afternoon under a heavy grey sky with rain already falling on the far side of the plain: a herdsman running his cattle in ahead of the weather, two women hurrying along the path with shawls up over their heads, a priest closing the compound gate, swifts working low over the grass. The bag rests on a fence post in mid-frame with the first drops darkening it, untouched.
beginner cardio tennis clinic — the Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet) and the flag of Ethiopia combined by the model into a single photoreal composition. The green, yellow and red horizontal tricolour fills the frame in broad side-lit folds with the blue disc and its gold pentagram and rays sitting proud at the centre, and the black and red bag is composed into the arrangement so its long line runs with the fold of the yellow band and the disc reads as the centre of the whole picture, with no lettering anywhere in the frame.

Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet)

Dessie, Ethiopia  ·  Bags > 10+

Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet)

<p>This is twelve racquets of freight rig with no slack in the loadout — padded wall to wall, an orange lining you can find things in, a through-tunnel for wet kit, detachable straps. Dessie goes on the manifest before the invoice does: 2,470 metres, a ridge over the town, a crater lake north. Plan accordingly.</p>

↓   Tour Dessie, Ethiopia

Four stops before the checkout

Dessie, Ethiopia
01
beginner cardio tennis clinic — the Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet) photographed on Mount Tossa above Dessie, Ethiopia. Low near the ground looking up the ridge, the long green-brown flank of Tossa rising behind with masts on the skyline and the city just visible in the bowl below through a gap in the grass. First light on a cold highland morning, mist still sitting in the valley and the sun raking sideways across the slope: three boys driving goats uphill through the frame at a jog, a woman climbing steadily with a bundle of eucalyptus on her back, two runners in tracksuits going past on the dirt road, breath visible. The bag sits closed on a flat shelf of rock in the near foreground, nobody wearing it or touching it.
Stop one

Tossa Mountain

Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet): Dessie lies in a long narrow valley on the eastern escarpment of the Ethiopian highlands, and Tossa is its eastern wall — the kind of mountain that decides what time the sun comes up for you. Emperor Yohannes IV founded the city here in 1882, and tradition says he chose the spot after seeing a comet. That position made it the natural staging point between the northern highlands and the Afar lowlands, which is why it became the administrative centre of Wollo and stayed so through the twentieth century. Back home we had a hill you could see the whole town from. Thirty metres. I loved it anyway.

02
beginner cardio tennis clinic — the Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet) photographed at Enda Medhane Alem Church in Dessie, Ethiopia. Eye level and straight on across the walled compound, the church in its ring of old trees with painted figures visible through the open door. Bright hard midday sun on a feast day, shadow pooled tight under the trees: a dense crowd of worshippers in white shawls standing and kneeling right across the compound, a deacon moving through them with a censer trailing smoke, a woman kissing the doorframe, sandals piled in drifts at the threshold. The bag stands upright on a low stone bench off to the left in the middle distance, and the crowd flows straight past it.
Stop two

Enda Medhane Alem Church

Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet): Negus Mikael built this church while Dessie was his base, and portraits of him and his son are painted inside — the sort of thing my uncle would have done to the front room if my aunt had ever allowed it. Mikael ran Wollo: he married a daughter of Emperor Menelik II in 1892, which tied his province into the imperial house, and in 1915 his son Lij Iyasu crowned him Negus. The concentric plan with its outer gallery is the standard Ethiopian Orthodox round-church form. Round buildings always get me. Nobody is ever left standing alone in a corner.

03
beginner cardio tennis clinic — the Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet) photographed at Lake Hayq north of Dessie, Ethiopia. Elevated and wide from the slope above the shore so the whole 23 square kilometre lake, its reed beds and the monastery trees on the far point fill the frame. Blue hour after sunset, the water holding the last cold light and lamps starting up in the shoreline village: fishermen poling a low boat in from the middle, two more men hauling a net up the shingle, boys swimming in the shallows and being shouted at, cattle being walked home along the waterline. The bag sits small and far off on the timber rail of a jetty at the right edge, on its own.
Stop three

Dessie Museum

Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet): This was the residence of Dejazmach Yoseph Birru, and it now holds the material record of Wollo and of Dessie's years as a seat of power: the rule of Ras Mikael and his son Lij Iyasu; the Italian occupation of 1935 to 1941, when Dessie was a garrison town on the road south to Addis Ababa; and the last phase of the Ethiopian civil war, when the EPRDF took the city in 1990. It remained a major administrative centre until 1995. Somebody's family furniture is in here doing serious historical work. Mine is in a shed nine thousand kilometres away, doing nothing, and I think about it often.

04
beginner cardio tennis clinic — the Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet) photographed at Boru Meda outside Dessie, Ethiopia. Close and intimate at the edge of the broad upland plain, shallow depth so the grass heads in the foreground are sharp and the church compound out on the plain sits soft behind, the Wollo ridges beyond. Late afternoon under a heavy grey sky with rain already falling on the far side of the plain: a herdsman running his cattle in ahead of the weather, two women hurrying along the path with shawls up over their heads, a priest closing the compound gate, swifts working low over the grass. The bag rests on a fence post in mid-frame with the first drops darkening it, untouched.
Stop four

Lake Hayq and the Istifanos Monastery

Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet): Lake Hayq: 23 square kilometres, 88 metres deep, sitting 2,030 metres above a sea it will never meet. Istifanos Monastery was founded in the middle of the thirteenth century by Iyasus Mo'a, on what was then an island. He was central to the restoration of the Solomonic dynasty under Yekuno Amlak, and his students carried Ethiopian monasticism outward — one of them, Tekle Haymanot, went on to found Debre Libanos. The monastery still keeps an important collection of early manuscripts. Old books beside still water. That is the exact smell of my grandfather's house, and I was not ready for it today.

The Dessie, Ethiopia track

Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet)

Written for this world alone.

<p>Dessie is a highland city at 2,470 metres, strung along a valley in South Wollo about 400 kilometres north of Addis Ababa, and getting anywhere from it involves carrying things up something. That is the job this bag was built for.

The Ace Station 12 Pack holds up to twelve racquets, and the main compartment is fully padded end to end and lined in a bright high-visibility fabric, which sounds cosmetic until you are hunting for a dampener in a dark bag at dusk and find it in four seconds.</p>
<p>The layout is honest and uncomplicated.

Multiple accessory pockets take the small things that otherwise migrate to the bottom — grips, strings, keys, tape. A vented end tunnel takes wet kit and post-match shoes and keeps them away from your frames, which matters more than people admit in a town where the mornings are cool, the afternoons turn over fast and the rains arrive with real conviction.

The padded ergonomic backpack straps are both adjustable and fully removable, so it carries as a two-strap pack up a hill and reverts to a plain shoulder bag when you would rather not look like an expedition.

Black and red.</p>
<p>You will use it everywhere from the climb up Tossa above the town to a court down in Kombolcha, and by the way it is exactly the right shape for the other Ethiopian ritual that eats an afternoon: the coffee ceremony, green beans roasted in front of you, the jebena on the coals, three rounds and no acceptable way to leave after the first.

Twelve racquets and a vented tunnel means you can turn up, get roped in, and still have dry shoes when somebody finally suggests hitting.</p>
<p>Prokennex Ace Station Tennis Bag (12 Racquet)</p>

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