Sprucing up "Miss Pam"...

I don't know if that's the right term, but I didn't think "plywooding up "Miss Pam" would sound right. Anyway, I took the boat to the lake last week and put it in, just to check it out and make sure it would run. I got the battery all charged up, and off I went. Started up on the first crank.

One thing I like about this boat is I can handle it by myself. I see guys struggle getting their big bass boats in and out of the lake. I have one that I can get in and out in a couple of minutes. When Pam is with me, it takes even less time than that because she ties it up when I dump it off the trailer.

Something that has annoyed me for a couple of years, however, is all the stuff lying around on the deck when I'm trying to fish. I also didn't like all that stuff in the back of the boat because when I was in it by myself, it had a pretty big angle when we were moving through the no wake areas. So, I decided to do something about it. I built a seat/storage area mid-ship to store the battery, the gas can and my "stuff" box.

It all came out rather nicely if I do say so myself. One 4x8 piece of plywood and an afternoon of cutting and putting it together produced a pretty nice addition.

I did flunk "Hinges 101" and had to ask my neighbor, Jim, to come over and give me an idea on how to put them on so the top of the box could best be used as a seat without posing a problem.

Additionally, I put two dividers in the box to add support for seating and to keep things in their proper place. We can take the "stuff" box out of the center and put a cooler for pop and water for a longer fishing day, or keep the bait out of the sun.

Oh, one other thing. On the back of the boat, I have a little thing which holds the motor up during transportation so the bottom won't hit anything and possibly break a prop blade. Like it? Well there's another one just like it at the bottom of the ramp area at the lake. Yep -- I forgot to take it off the last time I took the boat over. Backed the boat down, started to pull the trailer out and the little gizmo was gone. I tried to find it, but failed. Just in case you were wondering -- $29.95, cold legs, and wet shoes and shorts are the going rate for stupidity these days.

This is what you do on a rainy afternoon in retirement land, just in case you were wondering.

"Noah was a brave man to sail in a wooden boat with two termites."

Hooah

There are days when I’m closer to shooting my weight than my age...

That's kinda how it was on our last day of our "Man Trip." Things started out well, with beautiful sky, sunshine and no wind. The weather prognosticators called for rain and cold temperatures as a cold front came in later in the afternoon. But if those guys in North Carolina are anything like my friend Jamie from Channel 7 in Dayton, who says the sky is falling every time it rains, I figured we had at least a 50-50 chance of fair and warmer.

Wrong. Those guys down there must have had more training or practice, because they were just about spot-on in their timing. We got off the first tee about noonish and had 3 or 4 holes in the nice weather. And it's a good thing the weather was nice, because my game had already packed its bags and was headed for home. I don't know why I can't play well on courses with that kind of grass in the fairways. I played really badly on a course like this one last year, and it was the same this year. Chuck told me after we had been playing for a while that this course had filed for bankruptcy and was trying to get back in action. It looked like it had been in trouble -- the fairways were chunky with large areas of bare ground, and the traps looked like they hadn't been worked for over a year. They had rain ruts running through them and not much more than a 1/4 inch of what was passing for sand and small gravel. Had we known this before hand, we certainly wouldn't have played it. But it was a Nicklaus course -- it should be good.

It's really frustrating to top and chunk the ball around the first 5 or 6 holes -- it doesn't give you much room for hope. On these kinds of days, I usually take solace in the weather and scenery, but that was quickly becoming a distraction.

Somewhere around the 8th or 9th hole, it started to rain and get cold. You know, the kind of short, menacing rain that is kinda like a 2-minute warning. Well, in golf, it's a 2-hole warning, 'cause in two holes it was really coming down, very windy and downright cold. We had a good time watching the Old Sergeant Major trying to hit this shot. Notice the ball about 3 feet to his left. Pretty much all of us had scores that looked more like a zip code than golf scores (4-5-9-3-9).

Of course, every round has a highlight, and this was no different. As we were coming down one fairway, rain pelting us, winds jostling the cards, and temperatures lower than our scores, there was some guy out on his patio, drinking a beer, who yelled down to us, "Are you guys from Canada?" I guess we must have looked like it, all decked out in our rain gear, playing in weather most self-respecting locals would have given up on long ago. Well, we laughed about that for the next few holes and every time we screwed up a shot, someone would make cracks about the shooter being a Canadian or something, or calling them a "hoser, eh!"

At one point, it got so bad we were taking shelter just about anywhere we could find it!

So that was the end of our golfing for this trip. Now, you may think we didn't have any fun at all on this one. But you'd be wrong. There's something about old friends, relatives and Army buddies getting away to do something, retell old stories, eat foods you normally wouldn't eat at home (or be allowed to eat), get up early or late -- whichever was your preference, hit some good shots, hit some bad shots, hit some more bad shots, and then drive home - recounting your exploits and talking politics. You know how it is -- and it doesn't get much better.

Trips like these reinforce that old Phyiils Diller line:

The reason the pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can't see him laughing.

Hooah

I've been playing the game so long that my handicap is in Roman numerals ...

OK. Now that you've gotten past all the gory details about my health, details which my wife says would have been better left out of the last entry, it's time to recount our golf trials and tribulations.

We selected two courses to play on this trip: The Reynolds course at Tanglewood, and Salem Glen County Club. The Reynolds Course is a Dye course, so I knew it would feature tight fairways and lots of traps and elevation changes. The Salem Glen club was a Nicklaus course, so I knew it would be long, with multi-layered greens, lots of traps and water. But as we kept saying all the way down, bring 'em on. This entry will deal with the Reynolds Course because the other one is a whole story in itself!!
I first saw the Reynolds course when our son and daughter-in-law had their wedding reception at the Manor House on the Park Grounds. This place is really a very nice layout, and when we saw it that first time, I promised myself that I would come back and play it some time. The overall design is really challenging, but it sure is a pretty layout, and I think I play golf sometimes more for the walk in a beautiful nature setting than for a good score. Of course, there are those who would say since I can't score well and spend most of my time in the fringe areas, I had better like nature. They're just jealous -- anyone can hit it down the middle! How boring is that?!?

The biggest problem with the course this time was our timing -- they had just aerated the greens the week before so they were really bumpy and almost a guaranteed two put, if not more. One other thing I noticed was how "slick" the grass was. If we hit shots that were just a little right or left of being down the middle, the ball would take off on that slick grass and shoot out on tangents. We play badly enough without help from the slick grass. As you can see from the pictures, the tee boxes, fairways and greens were nice and green, and all the rough and fringe areas were still brown (dormant).

Now, let me recount one of our more memorable moments from this day's play. Dave M. had a real nice birdie on one of the par-3s. He hit his tee shot and it flew the green, but fortunately for him, there was a huge hill behind the green so his ball hit it and came rolling back down to just a few feet from being on the green. He then bladed his second shot, it shot across the green, hit a rock pile on the other side of the green, ricocheted back toward the hole and rolled right into the cup. Birdie for Dave!! And high-fives all around. Other than the fact that it was warm, fairly sunny, and we were with good company, Dave's birdie was pretty much the highlight of the round. There were a number of pars and the scores were pretty representative of our ability. But later that evening we all drank a round courtesy of Dave, and that made it special.

Oh, yeah, one other thing. When we finished our 18 hole round, we thought we would see if it was very expensive to play another 9 holes. The guy at the desk at the pro shop said "for you guys, it's free." What a deal. Our replay was much better scoring-wise for everyone, and 27 holes was a good way to start our trip.

The best kinds of friends are the ones you could play a round of golf with, never having to say a word about a lack of skill, and walk away feeling like that was the best round you've had.

Hooah

Locked away forever in the scar tissues of my mind...

That's the way I felt about this past winter, and pretty much how I felt about last year's golf outing, or as Dave M. calls it, our "Man Trip." We were now emerging from a very long, crappy winter, February was a real killer, and it was time to think about a newer, better trip. The snow drifts on McCartyville and Hoying Roads didn't finally melt until the first week in March. And then, you guessed it, we got another shot just to remind us who's in charge!

Well, you gotta get up pretty early in the late morning to fool me two times. Last year, we scheduled out trip for the third week in March. It was a beautiful sunny, 70-degree drive all the way down to North Carolina. Course, once we got there, the weather changed and we nearly froze the first day and got snowed on the second. Sooooooo, we moved this year's trip back a week later in the month figuring it was closer to April so it had to be warmer and sunnier this time.

This year's trip was going to be different, because we added Dave B., my old Command Sergeant Major, to the group, and everyone knows even the weather gods don't mess with the CSM! So we had another sunny drive to the Tar Heel State, got there and feasted on Little Richard's BBQ. But I hate to tell you, dear reader... the trip went "South" from there.

The golf escapades will be recounted in detail in the next entry, but here's a little teaser: this trip was like our last fishing trip -- the gals at the hotel desk said "next week will be better" and "you should have been here last week."

On top of it all, I think I got food poisoning or something like that, because I get sick Friday night and ended up loosing my fish dinner at just about the same time Ohio State got thumped in the NCAAs. OH, well...Sorry, Dave...Sorry, front lawn of the hotel!!!

One funny thing did happen while we were stopping at a well known travel plaza on the WVa. toll way. There were three young people panhandling people in the parking lot. Their stories ranged from the usual car breakdown, to they were traveling with Elvis and he dumped them here and he took all their money. In a way, it was pretty comical as we compared their stories while they were standing there. Of course, we stopped there on the way back, and there they were. The one young lady started to come up to my truck when she recognized us and turned around and ducked behind some other vehicles. Maybe she recognized the Sergeant Major. He can be that way!!

Robin Williams once said, "Spring is nature's way of saying, 'Let's party!'" I guess he never heard of this guy (me) who said: Being a golfer in North Carolina in early spring is like being a donkey caught in a hail storm -- you just have to stand there and take it...whatever "it" is!!

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.

Hooah

Something for Quinn...

On our golf outing last week, we came across this train at the Tanglewood Park complex. It is pretty cool, sitting out there in the middle of the golf/ park complex with its tender and a wagon on a couple of rails.

When I first saw it, I let my imagination run wild and thought of all sorts of things. It could have been used for something as simple as the Reynolds Tobacco people hauling their crops to a far away market. That would make sense since the Reynolds people built this park and the golf courses. However, on a more daring note, it could also have seen action in the Civil War; after all we're in North Carolina. I stood there and stared at it, waiting for some revelation to come to me so I would know why it was there, so I would have a reason to be standing there like a goof.

My mind works in strange ways, or so the other three guys in the group repeatedly told me. You see, I made the mistake of telling them that when we were coming down the side of that real big mountain on I-77 near Rocky Gap that overlooks the valleys north of Pilot Mountain, I would often think of the civil war and armies from both sides controlling the high ground, looking for the other guys on the valley floor, blasting away at them with their artillery pieces that would be scattered along the ridges and mountain tops. I got a lot of grief about that all weekend -- especially when I would launch one of my shots toward a woods or the rough. They would tell me things like "don't look too long or the artillery might come down on us" , or "don't get lost out there in the rough cause the bad guys might take you prisoner." I don't know how I was supposed to play golf under those conditions!!

So, anyway, I just thought the train was neat, and it kinda reminded me of "Thomas the Train" and I thought my grandson might like it.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. (Henry David Thoreau)

Hooah