Boone-agedon 2013

May 7th, 2013 a day that will live in infamy...

Ok, maybe that is a little dramatic!  But to me that day will always be remembered as Boone-agedon 2013.  At the end of March, Jim (co-worker) and I got the BRILLIANT idea to organize a golf outing. It started when Groupon put out a pretty sweet deal for Honey Creek Golf Course in Boone.  Jim told his cousin to buy it and I got Dan (another co-worker) to do the same.  The original idea was for us all to take an afternoon off and go play.  I was little worried since the last time (and only time) I played Honey Creek I think I shot 329... well it may not have been that bad but it felt like it.  I remembered that the back 9 was brutal especially when you aren't playing well.  But I look forward to getting revenge on a course and wanted to get another crack at this one.  About a week later another Groupon came out for Cedar Pointe which is also in Boone.  This was most definitely a sign that we should take a whole day off and get 36 holes in.  So the plans were made based on everyone's schedules and May 7th was going to be the day.  We picked May because we wanted to make sure that it was warm enough to enjoy our day.  Of course, God and Mother Nature wanted to put a little worry in our minds and decided to dump 9 or 10 inches of snow on Central Iowa less than a week before our Golf day!!  What is that about??  Luckily a few relatively warm and windy days later we were ready to go.

The morning had arrived and the plans were set.  Jim, John and I were meeting at Target to ride up together and we were picking up DJ in Madrid on the way.  Jim thought that getting Chick-fil-a was more important than being on time, so he was about 7 minutes late and by the time we loaded all the clubs into my trunk we got on the road 10 minutes later than we planned on.  Luckily I was driving so we made quite a few of those minutes before we got to Madrid.  Once DJ was on board we were on our way to our first destination.

CEDAR POINTE
None of us had ever played this course.  The grounds crew was finishing mowing the greens on the front 9, so the guy in the clubhouse suggested going off the back first.  We didn't mind so off to #10 it was.  Since this group didn't want to just go out and play we decided to make the day more interesting.  The game of choice for the day was Wolf.  In Wolf one person tees off and then as each of the other guys tee off the first person gets to choose who his partner is for that hole based on their tee shot.  But once the next person tees off you can't go back and pick a previous shot.  So each hole you can have a different partner.  I will say this now and I know this from all my experience with golf.  I should never ever play for money even if it is just a dollar a hole.  I tend to get worked up and put more pressure on myself and never play well.  But that was the name of the game so I played along.  Pretty uneventful start as I bogeyed the first and parred the second. Then I pulled my tee shot out of bounds left on #3, next shot flirted with OB before hitting the next one back into a family's backyard.  After another drop and 3 topped 3 wood shots, I promptly fired a 4 iron into a pond right of the green.  Drop. Air mail the green with a lob wedge, then chip to about 6 inches which the guys let me pick up.  How kind of them right?!  So did you all count along as I was describing the hole, if you did you would have gotten to 13!  Yes, lucky #13, right Dad?  Washburn Rules took over so I took a 10.  In true Charley style I tossed that ball into the pond and moved on to the next hole.  And by moved on I mean walked from the green to the next tee to compose myself.  It worked because I parred the next two holes.  The rest of the round  wasn't the greatest but not too horrible.  That is until we got to #14; a 160 yard par 3, easy enough right? Not for me!  Top an 8 iron into a ravine, hit another into the ravine, hit one into the trees, hit one off a tree, hit one fat, hit one thin, pick up my ball and start the walk to the next tee box.  Washburn 10 again.  But like the last time I turned around and parred the next two holes.  By morning's end the strokes had definitely added up and I wasn't looking forward to facing Honey Creek in the afternoon.  But after a quick stop at Subway and checking in with the office, we were off for the 2nd 18 of the day.

HONEY CREEK
We got to the course, paid with our Groupons and took the carts to my car to get our clubs.  As we were loading up, a group of three older gentlemen pulled up and very quickly loaded up their carts and headed for the 1st tee.  We thought nothing of it since we assumed that they had the tee time before us and there was only 3 of them and 4 of us.  Plus it was all of our experience that older guys don't tend to get take much time to play.  However the unfortunate thing was that loading their carts and getting to the tee box was by far the fastest these guys moved the whole time they were on the course.  So we waited long periods of time for each shot, pulled up to every tee box before they were finished teeing off, and the whole course started to stack up behind us.  So none of us could really get into a good rhythm so we plugged through the front 9.  Luckily the gentlemen only played 9 holes and we got back to business as usual on the back side.  Aside from the slow guys in front, and Jim and I giving DJ the business for sandbagging us into giving him WAY more strokes then we should have, there was not much exciting about our afternoon round.  I didn't haven't any terrible holes but also I didn't have any really great holes.  Just played my game and continued to seem to lose hole after hole with whatever partner I had.  The only good thing is a got a slight bit of revenge on Honey Creek.  I shot a respectable round especially considering how difficult the back 9 can be.  But I held my own with a 43 on the much tougher back 9 and managed to stay under 90 fof the whole round.  That was probably pretty close to a 20 stroke improvement to the first time I played the course!  Gotta find those positives!

At the end of the day the weather was amazing, I worked on my tan, and had a great time with some good friends.  And to top it off it was a day away from the office which is always welcome especially if it is replaced with fun activities and good friends.  I guess besides the poor golf I played in the morning, the only bad part about the day was saying good bye to $12 dollars at the end of the day!  But that is what I get for playing for money.  I don't think I have ever actually won money on the course.  Maybe there is a lesson to be learned here...

VHD Viewpoint #5: My OCD tendencies conflict with my VHD.  When I eat Skittles I separate them into "colors". But I only ever have 3 piles when I do it - Yellow, Green, and Red.  This is odd to me since I normally can't tell the difference between green and red.  People tell me that there are also Orange and Purple Skittles but I have never seen them.  I have had nice friends separate my Skittles for me and they seem to always get 5 piles though.