"Man Trip" 2017 -- what can I say ? What a trip!

Yes, Man Trip 2017 was quite an outing.  All the things that make for a good trip were there -- 12 good guys who all get along with each other, great weather (despite the predictions the week before the trip), very nice courses (more about that later), good food (more about that later), nice hotel facilities (they throw in a hospitality room for us for free), and some pretty good scores (yep -- more about that later too).  Can't really ask for much more than that.

First of all, let me present to you the guys who went on the trip:

Pretty good looking group of old golfers.  Each of them adds a unique flavor to the mix.  They are funny, they all enjoy the game and play pretty well, and when they don't they are not dip sticks about it.Nobody gets excited about their score.  It's just fun to get out and be with the guys.

I have found over the years that the measure of how well the golf is being played relates directly to how many pictures were taken of the players on the course. 

Believe it or not, these were the only ones I took during the whole trip.  I guess I was having too much fun playing and talking.  When my game is going "OK to Well", I get in a zone and pretty soon the holes just zip by.  I also find myself really enjoying the scenery, especially on new courses. Although I like my home courses, I really like to travel and play different courses with unknown-to-know challenges.   And I am not talking about only playing wimpy courses when we are on the road.  The scores might be good, but there was no challenge, and those rounds do not improve your overall game.

Oh, yeah, speaking of improving one's game -- my brother-in-law, Chuck must have really been out practicing prior to the trip.  On the second day out, he hit a hole-in-one on a par-3.  Fortunately, Dave had his phone with him so he could take a picture of the event.  Way to go Chuck! 

 That is his first ace.  He is in his 70s.  Not bad.  I Googled the odds of an average golfer having a hole in one:  "Actuaries at such companies have calculated the chance of an average golfer making a hole in one at  approximately 12,500 to 1, and the odds of a tour professional at 2,500 to 1."

Following each of the day's golf, we focused on having a pretty nice dinner and a relaxing evening.  No trip to the Winston-Salem area would be complete without chow at Little Richard's Bar-B-Q.  The food is really good and they treat you right, even if we are Yankees and we don't all drink sweet tea with our hush puppies.  Dave tried to bail us out by ordering half sweet and half unsweetened tea which they had obviously heard of before.  And some of us ordered our beers two at a time (saved on the waitress running back and forth so many times). They had heard of that too and it was highly encouraged!  On the second day, we went to a nice dinner club, just down from the motel.  They were having three specials that night:  a shrimp dish, a blackened salmon dish, and an oyster entree.  Some had the shrimp, I had the blackened salmon (very good), but nobody wanted to try the oysters.  One of our guys ordered up some Ouzo after dinner and passed it around.  Oompah!

And then, came the dinner on the third night...our steak cook-out.  The menu consisted of char-coaled steaks, baked potatoes with all the fixings, salads, french bread, wine, beer, and cherry and apple poes for dessert..  Sounds good, right.  Well, that doesn't tell all the story.

I go shopping that afternoon and buy all the fixings.  I managed to get the motel to do the baked potatoes for us (they included the sour cream and butter too) (That place is very accommodating and really is a great place for golf groups like ours.).  We also bought a small charcoal grill and cooked the steaks out back of the motel near the pool.

What this picture doesn't show is how windy it was that day.  It seems that one of the guys was standing by one of the doors to the motel, holding it open and a big gust of wind came along and blew a bunch of smoke into the motel which, in turn, set off all the smoke alarms.  All the fire alarms went off, the doors all shut and the fire department was alerted.  Fortunately, the front desk was able to get the big trucks stopped before they got to the motel, but one of the little ones was already there.

This falls into the category of "No harm, no foul."  the fireman just asked us to move the grill out farther away from the motel which we gladly did.  It was all pretty exciting and gave us a lot to talk about for a couple of days.  The motel manager said that this happens several times a year when people cook out.  Maybe they should have a designated area where patrons can do this.

This was the final outcome for the evening.  They look like they are having a good time don't they.  Again, thanks to the motel for the room and taking such good care of us.

So ---- that one is under our belts.  Looking forward to the next one, hoping everyone is still around and able to go.

Every one of hundreds of thousands of cities has a special course, unique tourist attractions, some claim to fame, and generally it is worth going there, if only once, to see these things.  But it is so much better when you have friends with you, and you might only be there to watch the sun go down.

Hooah