a golf day at last

the perfect storm of happenchance. after 28 straight days running i knew i needed a day off and after getting to sleep pretty late and waking up with a morning heart rate of 50/51 i knew it had to be today. and then a phone call asking me if i wanted to play golf despite the weather? what could i say but yes!

and so my driving range friend chris - the cancer geneticist from austrailia - picked me up in a rented renault clio and off we went to the kirtlington golf course, about 10 miles from my house, but an eternity away without a car.

27 degrees when we left my house and a high of 44 degrees by the time we got to the 15th hole. ever feel like you owned the golf course? a few other people were out
there somewhere, but we had nobody in front or behind us. and the two of us played on. even warmed up a bit after a few holes. the warm soup we had just before we started long forgotten in a search for warm winter golf gloves. and easy to say now that it was not too bad, but for a few holes i wondered what we were doing out there.

a very pretty course out in the country with some trees and some water and many bunkers everywhere. lots of long holes into the wind, but every hole different and an interesting challenge of how to play it.

i could easily feel the rust, but it was just nice to be on a golf course again. chris is the perfect partner for this. he would fit in perfectly with the character of my thursday golf friends at home with one minor exception. there are no mulligans and you play it as it lies. good by me and i learned to love the 7 i took on one hole as i momentarily forgot how to keep the ball in play. message to self- have to start fades down the left side and not down the right side as they tend to fade out of bounds that way.

all in all i managed six pars and an assortment of various looking bogies to stay in the 80's and finish happy. could tell how out of practice some of my game is, though amazingly i putted great despite not having hit a putt in almost three months. not so the 45 yard pitch shot. but still, we played and had fun and all with one ball- a titlelist so lo btw. for reference sake the par threes were -159 uphill; 188 into the wind; 204-marsh would have love this one(i hit driver also); and 165 uphill into the wind again. note-the course starts with a 500 yard par 5; always a good way to warm up in 27 degrees huh?

anyway- no run today and no early grocery store trip. still a very nice day. and home to a letter from my mom and a bank staement from bb&t. like in viet nam, all mail is good mail.

and onto the wisconsin primary results. will miss brambleton on thursday.sorry, believe me.