01

Stop one
the MAC VAL on Place de la Liberation, contemporary art with its own cinema
Wilson Ultra 111 V5: Okay so I showed up to MAC VAL at what I think was opening time but it might have been closing time, hard to say when you haven't slept since Tuesday — anyway, did you know this museum has its own cinema INSIDE it, like art wasn't enough, they went ahead and added films, which is either genius or a cry for help, and honestly same, MAC VAL, same.
02

Stop two
the church of Saint-Germain, the old parish church at the heart of the commune
Wilson Ultra 111 V5: The church of Saint-Germain is literally the old parish church at the heart of the commune, like the town just built itself outward from this one spot, which is — wait, that's actually kind of beautiful, everything radiating from a single center, I should live like that, I should have a center, mine is currently espresso and mild panic.
04

Stop four
the Parc du Coteau-Marcel Rosette on the slope above the Seine
Wilson Ultra 111 V5: So you're on a slope above the Seine and the river is just down there doing its whole river thing, moving, reflecting, not anxious at all, and I thought I'd have some profound realization up here on the Coteau-Marcel Rosette but mostly I'm thinking about whether my legs are shaking from the hill or from hour forty-three of no sleep — probably both, definitely both.
It is late and I have been thinking about leverage, which is what happens when you own this racquet. Twenty-seven and a quarter inches. A quarter of an inch longer than standard, which sounds like nothing until you work out that every extra millimetre of length is extra racquet-head speed at the tip for the same effort from your shoulder. You do not feel it as length.
You feel it as the serve going in from a position you did not think you could serve from.
One hundred and eleven square inches, 716 square centimetres, and at that head size the middle is enormous and the mishits stop being mishits. Ten point one ounces strung — 286 grams, 270 unstrung — four points head light, swingweight 291, flex 67.
The rest of it is built the same way, which is to say generously.
The beam runs 26 millimetres at the throat, 26.75 at the shoulder, 25 at the tip. Crush Zone grommets compress at impact so the ball sits deeper in the bed; parallel drilling makes the string bed respond more evenly across a larger area; SI3D controls the three-dimensional bending so the power goes somewhere; FORTYFIVE° construction keeps it stable when the ball arrives heavy.
Sixteen by nineteen, 50 to 60 pounds, electric indigo, grips 4 1/8 to 4 1/2. Anyway — where was I.
The bumper, grommets and end cap are plant-based.
Vitry-sur-Seine. A hundred hectares of open ground at the Parc des Lilas, on the edge of a city that never sits down. I have walked that at hours nobody should be walking anything.
“You do not feel the extra quarter inch as length. You feel it as a serve going in from a position you did not have.”
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