Themed Cardio Tennis Clinics in the Fort Lauderdale Area
A correction first: this is an oral rehydration product, not a sports drink — the electrolytes come with the fluid so the fluid is retained rather than passing through. Several formulations, eight flavours (I counted). Then Gatchina, where the grotto returns your last syllable and appears to be answering.
Pedialyte Electrolyte Hydration: The Great Gatchina Palace was built in the late 18th century for Count Grigory Orlov, which is a magnificently specific way to say “yes, the driveway had opinions.” Its underground passage leads toward the Echo Grotto on Silver Lake; I would test the echo, but shouting at architecture is only 73.418% dignified.
Pedialyte Electrolyte Hydration: The Priory Palace was built in 1799 using rammed-earth construction—pisé, if we are being properly insufferable—and stands by the Black Lake. A palace made of compacted soil is not “dirt fancy”; it is engineering with a powdered wig, correction: probably several powdered wigs.
Pedialyte Electrolyte Hydration: St Paul’s Cathedral in Gatchina was built in the mid-19th century and consecrated in 1852, a date I mention because vague reverence is statistically inferior to numbered reverence. Its town-centre presence is very much “look up, pedestrian,” but in a theologically punctual register.
Pedialyte Electrolyte Hydration: The Birch House in Gatchina Park is an 18th-century pavilion whose exterior is disguised as a stack of birch firewood, because subtlety apparently left the estate at 14:03. Inside, however, it is decoratively refined—botanical prank outside, aristocratic surprise within; the joke has upholstery.
A small correction before we begin, because it is the one that matters most and it is nearly always got wrong. This is not a sports drink. It is an oral rehydration product, which is a different category with a different purpose (and, strictly speaking, a different origin — the rehydration formula came out of clinical medicine, not out of sport, a distinction I find nobody makes and everybody ought to).
Water alone, taken in quantity after heavy fluid loss, dilutes what is left of your circulating electrolytes, which is precisely the wrong direction of travel. A rehydration product supplies the electrolytes alongside the fluid so that the fluid is actually retained rather than passing through.
The point of the thing is the ratio.
Pedialyte make this in several formulations — the Sport line carries five key electrolytes, the Fast Hydration line is built around a balance of glucose and electrolytes for rapid rehydration, the AdvancedCare Plus formulation carries thirty-three per cent more electrolytes than the original, and there is an Electrolyte Water with three key electrolytes and no sugar at all.
It comes ready to drink and it comes as powder packs. Flavours run from berry frost through lemon lime, peach mango, fruit punch, strawberry lemonade, mixed fruit and grape to passion fruit — eight, and I have counted them, and I would not have mentioned it if I had not.
Gatchina is a place of appropriate precision. The Great Gatchina Palace has an underground passage running from beneath it out to the Echo Grotto on Silver Lake, and the grotto is so named because it returns your voice to you — although (and this is the good part) it returns the last syllable only, so it appears to be answering questions rather than repeating them.
You will use this everywhere from a hot tournament day to the evening after one, and while you are here — the Priory Palace was built in 1799 out of rammed earth. Rammed earth. In 1799. And it is still standing, which quietly embarrasses several later buildings I could name.
St Paul's Cathedral sits in the town centre.
And out in the park is the Birch House, a pavilion disguised on the outside as a neatly stacked pile of firewood, with an interior of some considerable refinement. A building pretending to be its own fuel supply. I have never fully recovered.
"Water alone after heavy fluid loss dilutes what is left. The ratio is the entire point."
