Gripit & Ripit

Two Man Match Play - 2007

2007-06-01T12:12:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago I golfed in the first round of the Two-Man Match Play tournament held by the Brookview Men's Golf Association (www.bmga.org). My playing partner Tom and I won this event last year and decided to take a shot at defending our title.

We had a rough start to the day, quickly dropping four holes in the first five. However, as the saying goes, there was a lot of golf left to play. We held at four down and won the ninth hole, heading to the back nine only three down. We quickly brought the match back to even and then went one up. Unfortunately, that one hole lead didn't last and we headed for eighteen all squared up.

Before we teed off, the ranger told us that three groups in front of us already had finished with a tie and had started off on number ten in sudden death playoffs. I wanted to avoid having that extra pressure, so I felt like we needed to win this last hole outright. I also felt that I was the one who needed to win it, because I was the only player receiving a stroke on this hole, due to my generous handicap.

I was nervous before I even stepped up to the tee box. Number eighteen has water on both the left and right side of the tee box and the start of the fairway. I hit a fade out over the left water that came back on to the fairway quite nicely. For a moment though, I thought I was going to drop into the retaining wall rocks or at the very least skip across the cart path. My second shot was nice and straight...straight into the rough on the right side of the fairway about 110 yards out. My third shot was even uglier as I hit the turf behind the ball and fell short of the green by ten yards. My fourth shot was terrible as I left the ball fifteen feet short of the hole and about four feet above it. I thought I was done. This definitely looked like a two-putt. Tom told me to just get it close and then we would tie. That's when I found out our opponents were both putting for a five. If I sank the putt my score would be five, net four, and we would win. I took a look at the slope again, thought I had a good idea of the ball path, and then I made the putt. The ball followed the exact path I thought it would and dropped in for the win. Sweet.

Our second round is planned for June 10. Stay tuned for the results.

Finding the Time to Post

2007-05-31T11:04:00.000-05:00

Wow! It's been six months since I posted last. So much for that early New Years Resolution back in December.

I am not making any promises this time around about how frequently I will post. Hopefully I will be able to live up to the old saying that 'Actions speak louder than words.'

The Treadmill Arrives

2006-12-19T08:07:00.000-06:00

The delivery guys finally arrived at 10:40am on Saturday. Ten minutes after the end of the supposed delivery window. Working on only 4 hours sleep in the last 30, actually kept me from being too surly with them. I was just too tired. I do have to give them credit though, they got the treadmill up the 60 degree vertical climb that is our stairs. Once up and in place, they were able to finish assembly in no time and they were outta there by 11am.

This treadmill looks like a beast in our small space upstairs. They always look so much smaller in the wide open spaces at the store don't they?

I have used it twice since we got it. I really want to get in better shape before the next golf season. Having never used one before, I experienced a bit of disorientation after getting off of it. It felt like the floor should still be moving. Quite odd.

I'm getting too old for this sh@#!

2006-12-16T12:53:00.000-06:00

Last night I went out to celebrate my friend Aaron's birthday. He just turned 30 and his wife, Kelly, had planned a big, secret shindig. The plan was to have everyone meet at the Redstone American Grill in Eden Prairie for dinner at 7:45pm. Then after dinner we would all jump in a limo for a bit of bar hopping. As always, the plan sounded good.

The first hitch in my plans for the night came just after I left the house. My ever tolerant wife, Sue, called me to let me know that the treadmill we had purchased last weekend would be delivered between 8:30am and 10:30am Saturday morning. Damn, I had thought they told us we could choose AM or PM for delivery, but apparently not. With my luck these guys would show up at 8:30 on the dot.

When I arrived at Redstone, I met up with some of the others that had been invited. When Aaron arrived, he was quite surprised. He had been expecting to just have dinner with Kelly.
The cast of characters for the night included: Aaron & Kelly (of course); Mike, Mark, Tyson, Scott, and Quan (and his wife Tao) from Aaron's work; Jessica, Hillary, Todd, and Craig (friends of Kelly); and of course myself.

Before dinner started Aaron opened the gift I had picked up for him. I warned him not to take it too seriously, it was chosen as a bit of a joke. However he liked it and told me he was going to actually put it up in his office. We'll see.

At 9:45 the limo was good to go and we all piled in, with the exception of Todd and Craig. This was the second surprise of the night for Aaron, as we hadn't said anything during dinner about the rest of the evenings plans. As soon as the limo started rolling, Scott broke out a bottle of Jose Cuervo for shots, everyone had one except for me. This is attributable to my complete distaste for tequila following an incident from my freshman year in college. That's all I am going to say about that.

First stop for the night was Chino Latino in Uptown for a round of mojitos. The place was packed! A lot of people like Chino, Sue especially, but I am just not fond of it. I am really not into anyplace that has roasted guinea pig on the menu I guess. After we were done at Chino, Tyson bailed for the night, which was a bit of a shock. I thought he would be in for a night of diehard imbibing, but I guess not. From there, we headed to Cuzzy's. Quite the contrast from Chino, crowd wise. By this time though everyone in the party was pretty well bagged, except for Mark and myself...the two oldest guys in the group. We had a round of kamikaze's that were especially good. I also had a Stoli raspberry with cranberry juice which I found to be quite tasty.
We waited at Cuzzy's for the arrival of Anwar (another of Aaron's coworkers) who had just gotten back from Cleveland and joined the party straight from the airport.

Our next stop was Mario's Keller at the Gasthof in Northeast Minneapolis. At this point it was about 12:30am and I was now about two miles from home. I was thinking about the delivery in the morning and contemplated calling it a night. I should have called a cab and gone home, but I thought this would be our last stop and so I stuck it out. In the Keller, most of the group, the women especially went, dancing. Aaron was given a "Boot" of beer that was ungodly huge to drink.

From Mario's we headed back downtown to some dance club, I didn't quite hear the name. Spent another half hour there and then called it a night. We waited for Hillary's boyfriend to come and pick her up, then we headed back to Cuzzy's so Anwar could pick up his car. Finally, we headed back to Eden Prairie. Most of the group had planned on staying at a hotel near Redstone. Having only had two drinks early in the night, I was completely sober and drove home. I crawled into bed at 4:00am and set my alarm for 8:00am. My last thoughts for the night were, "Those damn delivery guys better get here right away so I can go back to bed" and "I'm getting too old for this sh@#!".

Pre-New Year's Resolution

2006-12-15T10:42:00.000-06:00

As the holiday season is fast approaching and people are beginning to think about their New Year's resolutions, I have decided to jump the gun and make an immediate resolution.

In an effort to FINALLY establish this blog, I resolve to post something once a week, no matter how trivial, juvenile or completely inane it may be. Let the stupidity begin!