A break from the heat

Light cloud cover this morning as we drove to the golf course — we took the car because we wanted to take our clubs home so we can go to one of the other courses here in Cape Town this week. We had a tee time for 8:17. We were paired up with a couple of young university boys from Stellenbosch. The 20-year-old was a big strapping rugby player; his 23-year-old brother was smaller, but could out-drive the athlete. I finally figured out that the ‘yardage’ on the golf courses here are not ‘yards’ — they are meters. No wonder I was consistently short with my shots. But that made it all the more impressive to watch these two guys hit their drives! On the 16th par 4 the tees were 300 meters from the middle of the green. We’d already witnessed each of the guys drive the green a couple of times — on this hole Heinrich didn’t wait for the foursome ahead to walk off the green and put his 301 meter tee shot just past the hole. The group ahead were not overly impressed, but I sure was!

We got back to our apartment around 1 o’clock. Some of the roads around the big soccer stadium were cordoned off so we had to drive the long way around to get home. As we ate our lunch we watched and listened to the throngs of fans driving past our building on their way to the big Sunday afternoon soccer game. Lots of singing, cheering, honking, and ‘vuvuzelaying‘. Sue read all afternoon and finished her book, ‘Cool Water’. I had a nap.

At around 5 we had a short FaceTime with our kids — they were just sitting down for bacon and eggs. Then we headed out for supper. And we took our sweaters with us! That is a first since we arrived here. It was actually cooling off a bit! We went to Hudson’s, a very busy hamburger restaurant a few blocks from our place. Pretty good. We stopped for gelato on the way home.

Back at home I hooked up my computer to the TV and we watched the movie “Sicario”. Pretty good. It was eleven o’clock when we finished the movie. I turned off the TV. I heard some dripping noises coming from the open window — hey, it’s drizzling. Then I found a video stream online of the first of 2 NFL playoff games on the computer. By 11:30 it was actually raining pretty hard outside! The farmers and the golf courses around here will be VERY happy with that. And it will nicely wash the streets and sidewalks clean.

It was 1:30AM when the backup quarterback for the Denver Broncos (Peyton Manning) finally took his team to the Superbowl, beating Tom Brady’s Patriots in a close game — worth staying up late to watch!

News of the day: Tim’s sister Carrie had a baby girl!