Golf Day 1: Cullen Skink & other new stuff

 Hi Avid Readers,

It is Monday morning here; "early."  I wasn't blogging last night, though I had plenty of material. :)

FYI: if you want a pictorial supplement for the blog, go to Instagram & noblegolfer76.  That's Dbrolaw's account and he has a bunch of pics up from the first couple days (and now will feel the pressure to continue throughout the trip :))

With respect to Nairn GC (not Nairn Dunbar where are clubs WERE NOT on Saturday 😂), I'm opening with a cast of characters pic --

From the left: Vlad, Z, KG, Gilligan, Db, B, RR & G-man. The Skipper didn't make the photo (jk, Sean).

I said over time each character would do something to distinguish themselves, so here you go -- The first Z story 😂:

Everyone went to bed pretty early Saturday night.  Several around 9.  Vlad crashed in his clothes immediately after we got back for the Castle Tavern around 8 😂.  No one really paid attention to when Z went to bed, but around then (I'm sure there'll be hyper corrections from those shooting for accuracy here :)).  Sunday morning starting at around 630, people started wandering into the kitchen, making coffee, talking.  It got to be 8, and Z wasn't down yet.  G-man went up and knocked on his door. Nothing.  We said we were leaving at ~1015.  No Z.  We kinda wondered.  And, then, just to be the D***W** he's trying to be on this trip (said with love 💗), Db calls him. 😂  He picks up and he says, "Hey, we're leaving for the course in 5 minutes" and hangs up.  They said "he'll be done in no time."  And, sure enough, in less than 5 minutes, he was down in the 'fit you see above . 😂😂😂  He took it pretty well when we said "just kidding." 😂

Nairn is half hour east of where we are staying.  As you can see from the Instagram posts, it has a great archive room, which we all got a tour of.  Their claim to fame in golf circles is they hosted the Walker Cup in 1999.  It's a high, high quality course and we all loved it.  For golf enthusiasts, it goes "out" with the Moray Firth on your right, then comes back inland with parallel fairways coming "in."  The classic links pattern, like the Old Course.  Except it had two front nine "switch backs."  The short par 3 4th goes back toward the clubhouse, and so does the par 3 (I don't remember it) 8th, and there's some back and forth with 9, 10 & 11, before heading home.  At 13 you make a hard right up a hill, which is more daunting as it's the first real elevation change on the course -- "inland."  You then come back down on a very scenic par 3, before continuing toward the clubhouse. 

Final bit of golf: the wind blew in our face all the way out.  I told RR that I was tired of it and he said "what wind?"  He's already a Scot. :). It wasn't much.  But playing downwind back was a bit better. 

The story I have to get down is that my caddie, Sam, and I had a geographic discussion.  We were talking local golf courses and I said "I hear Fortrose is good."  He said yes.  I said "it's over there, right?"  pointing to our right, across the Moray Firth.  He said "no, it's back over there" and pointed pretty much the opposite way.  Okay, my Scottish geography sucks.  Then we wear talking about him living in Inverness and I said, "that way" -- ahead of us as we went out -- and he said "no, back that way" and pointed back at the clubhouse and followed with "Forres and Elgin are that way."  I was going to argue the point (not that I'm like that, and it turns out I'm not :)), but figured he lived here.  But I spent time trying to figure out how the firth could be to our right (north), and he claimed we were heading east.  🤷  This became clearer as the jets came in to land at Inverness Airport -- heading in the direction we were going.  When I told RR this in our post-round convo (we played in separate groups), he said "it's that way...how the f*** do you get that wrong? The planes are kinda a big clue."  Right.  Good one, Sam.  (He wasn't much of a talker and never asked me what I did for a living, family, etc, just where I was from, which he turned into "I have an aunt in Charlotte.")

We started the day with brunch at the club.  Their restaurant had been recommended and I took advantage of that to be the dinner organizer and having us eat there (everyone is assigned a day to have dinner place ready -- avoiding the hour-long "where are we going" and a mediocre choice.  Five of us had their full breakfast -- it's a Db go-to.

The rectange in the center was Lorne sausage; having eaten some of it, I still can't tell you what it is. :) Under the toast is a potato scone.  I would have loved to had the real thing, but I'm sure we'll get one. RR pointed out that it was a heart-healthy plate :)

Eggs benedict for everyone else.

It was good, but service was too slow for several of the party.  I got a chuckle when I said that my water was the best orange juice I had ever had -- someone said they pulped the shit out of it.  LOL.  (she eventually brought it and didn't charge for it)

After golf we settled in for drinks and the young'uns spent time "watching" the NFL for Fantasy Football results.  Youths! 

It is worth noting that the betting part took at least half an hour to calculate -- I think they called EF Hutton.  After day one, RR and Vlad are in the lead; I played with KG and sucked and we are in last.  We are switching partners every day. 

We decided we were too tired to go find another place to eat, so we ate at the club again.  The "weird" thing on the menu (not weird in this part of Scotland, it was on Saturday's menu, too) was something called Cullen Skink.   G-man ordered and wanted him to taste it, but I gave up on that and ordered it anyway.   I will let you look it up, but here's a picture.   It's quite good (if you like that sort of thing), with a smokiness they love here. 

The highlight of the post-round socializing was B finding out that the 4 Texans are playing Royal County Down (I hadn't been able to book it; KG tried last week and they had ONE tee time that the 4 took; it means some intense golf -- we'll prob do that later, but some claim it's the best course in the world).  I said, "Didn't you read your texts?"  and he says, "I don't read all that!" kind of indignant.  It got a great laugh.  "If I want to know something, I just call [Gilligan]"...this became one of the tag lines for the evening "Well, we can't text B..."  and there were occasions when we might have.  

And, now, the nightcap:

We get back to the house and KG wants to play euchre (if you know, you know, if not, it's a card game that is nearly inexplicable), and we end up with KG and I taking on B and RR, who have done a lot of chatting.  :). They didn't know each other and are IU fans, Hoosiers, of an age.  

KG and I get out of the gate early -- I think it was 6-0 before they scored -- and RR got madder and madder.  He was infamous for this in college -- he can bring the intensity.  

When we got to 9 -- "in the barn" -- KG and I leaned into the intensity by doing a NSFW team hand gesture.  RR said "no! he have to put on the cow's ears" (this notion proves that Hoosiers spend too much time at farms and have too much imagination), saying, you have to put the one scorecard behind each ear (you use the 4 and the 6 to keep the count up to 10).  KG did (surprisingly -- though there had been some serious alcohol consumption [vacation, etc, etc] and we all laughed so hard...RR got a picture.  It's a good picture but I'm respecting KG's desire not to have it published 😂

We won the game and went on to the second.  We got the lead and RR got hotter and hotter.  Every trick we won he spat "F***!" (KG said this morning he used the F bomb more in that game than he'd used it in a month and that was saying something :).  But B kept saying "We've got this."  And they came back.  They got to 9-6 and RR put on the cow ears (ROFL, ROFL, LOL).   

We then swept the next hand to make it 9-8.  I think B dealt, but in the end it got passed to me and I made it clubs.  I had 3 to the left and two diamonds.  With every trick came another "F!" 😂

And we got every trick!!!!  😂😂😂. RR took this calmly.  By slamming his last card on the table, saying F! F! F! (I don't know how many) and stomping out of the room -- cow's ears flying to the floor.  😂😂😂.

He'll be jonesing for a rematch. :)

And that's enough.  I have to actually do some things today to have blog material.  :)

Hope you enjoyed.  Slan leat