Back Again

I've been spending most of my time at the cottage I mentioned a few posts ago, and I can't post from there, so the world has had a respite from my nonsense. While I was loafing around fishing and working on my golf game, the Midwest flooded, the corn crop has been trashed, Tim Russert has died, and the Supreme Court has evidenced some modicum of sanity and bitch-slapped the Bush administration on Habeas Corpus at Gitmo.

Boo, boo^2, boo-hoo, and YAY!

The cottage was great, aside from the 10 days of periodic deluge. Thankfully, I'm on a hill on a lake and the house is built over a crawl-space, so it didn't flood.

A couple of pics of the place:


That's the actual cottage. Not much to look at, but considering I'm only paying as couple of hundred bucks a month (with 18 holes of golf a day), I'm not going to complain about a little peeling paint or an uneven floor. This is the view toward the lake:

The lawn was a bit shaggy that day, because the days and days of rain made it impossible to get a mower out there and cut the grass. And this is the view on the other side of the house:


The club house and first tee of the golf course.

Life ain't half bad.

Getting Schooled by My Dad

As I explained in the last post, I was brought up on a golf course. My dad started me on the game when I was about 6. He's a mechanical engineer, and a very intelligent and curious man. He loves to learn everything at an atomic level. As such, when he learned to golf, he took lessons and made sure he knew exactly what to do in every situation: how to place his feet, how to open or close the club face, etc.

He did his best to impart this knowledge to me. I retained some, but lost a lot.

So yesterday I went golfing with him for the first time since I was in my twenties. He was golfing for the first time in 15+ years. As is the tradition at our golf resort, we didn't technically keep score. But I watched him and guestimated his score.

And I was damned impressed.

Many guys my age use these huge, balloon-sized drivers so that they can swing really hard and still hit the ball straight. I've never used one, partly because I can't generate a lot of club-head speed (due to some past surgeries), and partly because I think that it's kind of cheating. Be that as it may, my father hits a low-profile driver, smaller than my own, I think.

I have 36 years on this man. I've been golfing during the last 15 years. But I only out-drove him over 9 holes by an average of about 5 yards. WTF. And he hit it at least as straight as I did. This guy was on fire, and right out of the chute after a decade-plus-long absence from the game. Watching him hit was frankly amazing. He putted me straight into the ground

I used to chafe at his constant attempts to correct my swing. Now I'm thinking I should hire him as an instuctor.