A beautiful day at the Jubilee

It’s day 4.  Those who hate the golfing portion probably should not bother read this because this was pretty much a get up, move slowly, and play golf day.  Okay, for those of you who think this is worth noting, there WAS shopping, but, of course, I can’t say for what or whom.  Let me just say, Butch’s girlfriends will be very happy. :) #jk

And, to start the blog off right, Boswell has to commit to paper the genius of Dr. Butch Dodson.  As we headed home from shopping we passed the movie theatre, which is playing Captain America.  I said “hey, we could go tonight and have a male bonding experience over the movie.” JP says (I quote), “I’m down with that” – you know, the boy from the hood coming out.  But Butch says “Nah, I figure going to a movie is like sleeping in the same house.  No one says anything in either one.”

Also, as we walked down an early hole, he asked if there was some cough-cough (not what he said) stories on the way home. I said yes, don’t you remember?  “I remembered, but I wanted confirmation.”  Hmmmm…

I slept some…here’s my Fitbit for sleep this week.

Awesome.  I actually slept Tuesday night, but the Fitbit (that tracks such things, maybe without much accuracy), was charging and not on me).  Wrote the blog for yestereday, then hustled to eat my breakfast, get dressed, and go.  Butch was antsy.

And then we get to the golf center and the car park is full.  The kid in the neon green jacket told us we could park in the grassy area up the road.  We did and hustled to the tee.

Elly, at the tee, told us we were 3rd in line.

The other three got trolleys: in America we call them a pull cart.  JP was about to walk away and they grabbed him because they were lined up without handles.  He says, “Oh, you’ve got to get a handle on it” (a classic “dad joke”) and Elly actually laughed.  I said not to encourage him.  She said it was the kind of dumb joke she might make.

As you can see from the pictures, we got someone else to take the first tee photo.  He was from Pittsburgh – he had on a John Carroll University jacket.  He said his son went there.  They’d played Carnoustie Tuesday and were playing the Old Course tomorrow.  And they were following us.  Lucky them.

The day was amazing! It wasn’t much warmer, but the real feel must have been a lot warmer as you can see at one point JP and Mike are in short sleeves.  JP was wearing long underwear under both top and bottom!

It was sunny and at the start there really was almost no wind – maybe the 3 mph JP saw on his app.  And it never got anywhere near as tough as it was Monday, let alone Tuesday.   We discussed how lucky we’d gotten and decided that someone above was looking out for us and we thought we knew his name.
JP & I are proud of the new St. Andrews logo navy and orange hats.  It may actually be embarrassing how much time we spent picking “the right one.”  Initially, I wanted a neon orange one, and I wanted cotton (they have about any material, etc.).

Golf stories begin: The Jubilee course was built in 1897 as the Ladies and Youth course.  But these days it’s not much difference in difficulty from the New course, played Tuesday.

No one had a good scoring day.  I will say on my part I felt I hit the ball significantly better and got squat out of it.  I didn’t chip close and I don’t know (I don’t want to know) how many 3-putts I had.  Several.

It started with the opening drives, that were good, for the most part.  Butch hit this screamer down the left side of the fairway and I thought I saw a bunker in his path.

IN the pictures you will see his ball in the bunker, then him with it, then the next shot from it, then the next, then the next. :).  They really ARE penal bunkers.

I also played out of several.  You can see the one I am right up against the wall! Bugger.  I got it out and only lost a stroke, but still.

Today’s match ended up with JP and I with 7 points, Butch and Mike with 6.  It’s about as evenly handicapped as we can make it.

And, since it’s my blog, I will now whine a bit.  On the first par five I hit a drive to the right towards some gorse (which Butch kept calling “grouse” – JP told him today “grouse is a bird, gorse is a shrub.”)

Anyway, I find my ball with a stick across it, move the stick, and pull out a 3-iron just to hit a punch out and down the fairway.  I knew there was gorse stump in front of me, but didn’t think I would hit it.  Well, I hit the shot and yelled f**k!!!@#$%^&*().  The shot was great, right down the middle and hot.  But I slammed the club face into a root of the gorse and the club hit it and recoiled, doing the vibration up the arm thing.  I massaged, and came home and iced.  It doesn’t hurt now.  I was figuring out how much more golf there was to be played this week – I thought I’d done an “Ian.” (who broke a bone in his hand while at the golf academy when he hit a shot from behind a tree, hit the tree hard and…)

You see the number of “ball in sand” photos.  Did you know that the original bunkers were put into a golf course by sheep laying down in bad weather?  There was some suggestion that the association explained my affinity.  You figure it out.

At one point we were far enough behind the 3 women ahead of us that we were told to pick it up, which we did enough so the guy from Pittsburgh and his group fell behind us by a hole.

We enjoyed the day, if not the golf.  It was amazing.

Non-golf fans, you can come back now.  I walked to the van while the others walked their trolleys to the starter’s kiosk.  There’s a photo on 18 that shows the grassy carpark – I hope it shows our white van on the left edge.  :) (with my contact prescription in, on purpose, I can see long but can’t read – I need a pair of cheaters like Butch has).

Picture link: https://picasaweb.google.com/105397618648885302074/6283896947287978449?authkey=Gv1sRgCO2D2Ke_2pXBWQ

We found a parking place (remember yesterday?) near the pub, but it was one of those “we need to get out before you pull in there” spots.  I got in there with JP’s direction. He then tells me to be sure the roll up the windows.  It was warm out.  Why? “So the guy who comes to get in that car doesn’t pee in the van because he’s pissed off” (pun intended).  Scoffing, I did.

We had nachos (in pictures) and talked to Sheena about where to get a bargain golf stuff (JP is buying for customers), where to get fresh salmon, and other tips on shopping.  She kept saying “go up the hill a block, turn right and it’s right there”…Butch said “we can walk.”  I said, maybe, but I didn’t need more steps (I have over 19,000 today, after 13,500 yesterday).  He said he’d find us if we were around where we ate dinner Monday night.

Sheena told us some fascinating trivia (?): there's no official logo for the courses at Saint Andrews (Mike was trying to explain how the natives pronounce it - NOT like paint).  Because the Old Course and six others are owned by the town, so like your local muni, they won't settle on one.  So, different units have one.  The Trust, which runs the courses, has the one you see on JP & my hats today -- crossed golf clubs with a figure of St. Andrew?  But every shop can have their own variation; it is good to look and see which you like most.

We went across the street and bought stuff, including, on JP's suggestion, all 4 of us getting those bag tags with a Bubba inspired inscription.

I got to the fishmonger’s at 520, and they already were putting away the fresh fish.  But she went and got a slab of it and cut me off 4 big steaks.  Which you can see.  It was 17GBP/KG!!!  I also showed up at another shop just as it closed. ON a roll!  Then to the grocery store (brand name Tescos) and then Starbucks, then home.

(Might be golf stuff?) We are playing tomorrow at Carnoustie, across St. Andrews Bay – supposedly 5 miles.  I think when I put it in Google maps, it started w 12 as the crow flies.  Carnoustie, like the Old Course, hosts the British Open, or The Open, so it is top stuff.  And the course is purportedly among the hardest in the world.  It has a slope rating of 148 (for non-golf-speakers, that’s the degree of difficulty of a golf course), where today’s was 126.  And Tuesday’s was 126.  And our scores haven’t been stellar.

We have discussed some what to do to finish.  There was brief discussion of getting into the lottery to play the Old Course again Saturday.  But there’s some desire to play the scenic beauty of that course out on the southern water.  And we’ve discussed double-dipping Saturday and going on down to Crail to try it.  We’ll see if our bodies and wallets can handle it.

Knock wood, we can not have asked for a better week.  None of us know what day it is, which might be an operational definition of a good vacation.  At some point soon we’ll realize that it is about over, but that’s a bit away.

They waited the next version of “who’s better at euchre” till I wrote this.  I will update later. [update: punk kids won, 2 games to 1.  They were kind enough to point out the best we could do for the week was tie if we won the next two nights :)]