Post(card)s from Paris

Two falls ago, I spent an evening rummaging through my grandma's attic in the Bay Area. It's filled with all sorts of interesting trinkets - mostly from my grandparents' lives growing up and raising a family in Southwest Montana.

After hours of digging, I came upon a roll of four or five worn-down posters. When I unwrapped them I discovered beautiful water colors (prints, not originals...this isn't an "I'm rich, bitches!" story...) depicting a French cafe, the Moulin Rouge, the Eiffel Tower and a beautiful garden. As cheesy as it all sounds, I thought they were beautiful. And though my grandma's love for "Parie" burns on, her possessions have outgrown her fragile home in San Jose.

So I took the posters back to my dorm room in Seattle and piled booked on top of them to begin to flatten them out. A few days later they were on my walls. Since moving to a house last summer, they've traveled with me and have permanently staked their claim as my bedroom decor. I had found the needle in the haystack.

Though not as fancy, Troy's post(cards) from Paris are of similar origin. No, Troy was not discovered in some obscure attic of an 80-year-old woman, but he did take the round-about way to get to where he is today.

Life gives us all second chances and unique opportunities. When Troy first inquired to intern at Tennis Magazine, the timing wasn't right and the match between what he was studying and what the magazine was looking for just didn't mesh. But when Troy pursued the opportunity a second time, things fell into place and he found himself sitting in a New York City office doing odd jobs for editors and creating brilliant depictions of the Holy Mother Mary (Pierce).

(Troy Venechanos illustration.)

Troy is one of those people you meet in life that you know will have impact on everyone he comes in contact with. He dreams of working for the ATP or the WTA and has an odd fascination with Daniela Hantuchova, the Williams sisters and a French boy named Richard Gasquet.

So it shouldn't be surprising that Troy himself is in Paris this fall, "studying" abroad and creating his own postcards of the City of Love. He's been kind enough to provide us with post(cards) from Madrid and Lyon already, and this week he is at the Paris Masters Series stalking Richard...I mean being a 'journalist', all because the cards were lined up just right.

Over the next few days, look for posts from Troy including tremendous pictures and hopefully some raw video. For now, here's the link to my latest Sportingo post (about Hantuchova and Murray) and a link to the ongoing Bhutto crisis in Pakistan.