Author: Rudy

Whoa! we’re not used to this! The alarm woke me up this morning — seven o’clock — hurry, hurry, hurry. We’ve got dentist appointments today. Gotta be at the dentist by 8.

We cashed in on the “$39 New Patient Special” today. Dental checkup, including X-rays and cleaning. Right here in Gold Canyon. In fact, the dentist’s offices look out over the No.4 green at Mountain Brook Golf Course. So I watched the regular mens league guys (with their own private pimped-up golf carts — that’s how I knew they were regulars) putt while I waited for the bad news from the dentist. More caps, more fillings for Sue. Well, SOMEONE has to pay for all those photography, hunting, and fishing trips to Northern Manitoba that are pictured on all the walls in the office! In fact, Mr Dentist spent more time showing me maps and photos from his trip to the Northwest Territories on his big Samsung phone than he did looking at my crooked teeth.

After all the hubbub and rushing to get TO the dentist, we had a LONG morning to ourselves. Time to sit on that nice patio furniture and read a bit. And then lunch, also on the patio. More reading. Cloudy but quite warm here today. Sue kept warning that it would be too hot to walk nine holes on the golf course this afternoon. I kept reassuring her that we’d be okay.

At 3:30 we headed back to Mountain Brook. We checked in, and went to putt for a while until we were called to the tee. Kaboom! I blasted my first shot 30 yards past the 150 marker. Kaboom! Pitching wedge to within a few feet of the pin. Settled for a par. (Don’t worry, I won’t describe EVERY shot I took.)

We had to wait for the groups ahead of us for a long time at each hole — too long. So after Sue parred the second hole and the line-up at Hole 3 looked too long for a couple of golfers eager to play through, I called the pro shop. I explained to Kurt that there was no one on the eighth green and no one on the ninth hole — could we jump to number nine? “Have at ‘er,” he says. Nice.

We both played well. From the ninth green we wheeled our pull carts across the road to the tenth tees. No one ahead, no one behind us. A beautiful afternoon for golf. We finally caught up with a group on the 14th hole. But we managed to finish before 6:30 — still plenty of light to see the ball — well, the way I was blasting my drives I could only guess at the last 100 yards of ball flight, but since they were all going long and straight… (Insert “Eigenlob stinkt” comment from my mom and dad here.)

How do you top something like that? Well, you barbecue hotdogs! After supper I watched the CBC National while Sue cleaned up the kitchen. Then we watched some more Netflix documentaries. First, “The Overnighters”, a long and depressing story of a Lutheran pastor who helps provide shelter to the hundreds (thousands?) of drifters who come to Williston, in western North Dakota, looking for work in the oil boom. Sue and I had driven through this area a couple of years ago on our way back from Palm Desert.

I skimmed through a couple of scenes from that Muscle Shoals movie for Sue — she’d not watched it yet. So that was at least a little uplifting. We started watching another documentary about a musician, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, but put that on pause when we couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore, around midnight. We’ll continue tomorrow.

The weather here is hot. And it’s going to be hot for the foreseeable future. So what are we going to do about it? We’ll do our ‘exercise’ activity BEFORE the hottest part of the day. (And I know the Steinbach forecast is for a high of 17 next Sunday — I just don’t think forecasts are any more useful — or accurate — than horoscopes.)

We went for our long talked-about bike ride 9:30ish. First, a LONG stop at the Wells-Fargo bank where Sue put in more money (what else is new?). Then ‘our loop’, with a ride past our old haunts at Las Animas Trail — yep, the big red truck is on the driveway at Jill’s house — whew! at least they’re using their house — makes us feel a bit better. We cycled around 30kms and came home just in time for lunch. Well, just in time for ‘MY’ lunch — Sue thought we should wait a bit until she was hungry too.

I called Mountain Brook to see if I could get a tee time — not today, how about tomorrow at 3:45? Okay, book it. I was waiting for Sue to finish her second load of laundry so I started up the Netflix — and began watching this cool documentary about the singer Paul Williams. Wow! It’s a pretty good movie! (I sang a Paul Williams song to Sue at our wedding — and I remember buying his albums and seeing him on TV — and in the movie “Phantom of the Paradise”) and it even has stuff about WINNIPEG in it (see the first 5 minutes of the documentary just to check that out — it’s called “Paul Williams Still Alive”). Well, anyway, we watched about half of it and then I got this idea that we shouldn’t be sitting around inside all day, and why don’t we go check out a couple of golf courses with the word ‘Queen’ in the name. So that’s what we did.

We got into the bake-oven that is our van sitting on our driving, and headed down to Queen Valley Golf Course. It’s about 35 minutes southeast of our place. We pulled into the parking lot — all full — and went into the clubhouse. Any chance the two of us can golf here this aft? Nope, all booked. How much would it cost to golf here? $38 each, but you need to call ahead. Well, actually, we’ve golfed here a few years ago — the front nine is outright DANGEROUS, with fairways lined up parallel to each other — you can get your teeth knocked out by golfers on the next hole! Okay, we’re outta here.

I punched in ‘Golf Courses -> Queen’ into our Honda GPS. Queen Creek Golf Course is 35 minutes from here. Let’s go check it out.

Which we did. And the nice man in the clubhouse didn’t laugh us back into our car. I’ll book the two of you at the 3:30 price, but you can get on right after these women who are lined up at the first tee. Cool! Well, let’s have a cool Amber Bock draft while we wait for the tee.

We get paired up with Paul, a single guy who is walking with a pull-cart. And we stand at the first tee and wait for the group ahead. And wait. And wait. And then we see a cart and golfer coming down TOWARDS us on the first fairway — he’s missed the ninth fairway and is playing AT us on the first. He lines up his shot. He swings. Sue, who is standing on the tee, squints into the sun to see if she can see his ball coming in our direction. She can’t see it. The guy we’re golfing with throws his golf ball so it lands right at Sue’s feet. She JUMPS! Hey, that guy almost hit me! She’s pissed off! Paul and I are killing ourselves laughing. All good.

Well, not ALL good. We wait FOREVER at the second tee. These ladies in the groups ahead of us are TERRIBLE and S – L – O – W. Sue is getting very upset. We should go ask for our money back! Calm down. It’ll be alright. But we are NOT really golfing — after one hour we are still waiting at the second tee! But once we get moving things seem to be going a bit better. The course has no bunkers, but quite a lot of water. And those water magnets get me at the second hole. Finally, after we’ve played the first five holes, the course marshall comes around and invites us to follow her to the 10th tee — we’ll play the back nine first and not have to wait at every hole. Which we do.

And that makes all the difference! Now we’re golfing! Hardly any wait for the next hour and a half! Not only that, I’m hitting the ball well — nearly 300 yards on one par 5 hole — and I finish the back nine with a couple of birdies and a score of 40. Yes! We’ll come back here again.

We went home and had happy hour while Sue prepared supper. I barbecued chicken to go with the scalloped potatoes, corn, and brussel sprouts Sue made. What a nice evening tonight! Looks like all our neighbours are barbecuing in their backyards too.

After supper we finished the Netflix movie about Paul Williams that we started before we went golfing. Good show! And we followed that up with another documentary about a washed-up musician from the eighties: Harry Nilsson. That was okay too.

By now it was almost eleven o’clock — time to watch the Daily Show. And we’d better get to bed early — we have an early appointment with the dentist tomorrow.

After breakfast (scrambled eggs) we decided that today might be a day for a bike ride, but if so, we’d need get going either before or after the middle of the day — because the weather forecast was for HOT. Actually, that’s the forecast for the next couple of weeks.

Well, my calendar popped up with an alert that at 10am I should watch the Live Coverage from today’s Apple Event. So that’s what I did for 2 hours this morning. More details about the upcoming release of Apple Watch. Prices too. So really, not all that much ‘new’ — I’d seen most of the videos for the watch before. It’s highly unlikely I’ll ever get one of those watches — I don’t wear a watch (or a ring) and I’m not going to start now. Except you never know — it IS an Apple product…

After the Apple event I read my big book for an hour before lunch. After lunch I read some more. At around 3pm I went across the road to the driving range. When I got back at 4:30 we had ‘happy hour’ before going for a quick brisk walk just before sunset (when the temperature was beginning to cool down a bit).

I’d “discovered” this morning that actually there are SIXTEEN episodes of ‘Suits’ in Season 4 — so actually yesterday when we watched episode 10 it was NOT the last one. Oh, oh. So found and downloaded the final six in the series, and tonight we watched those. One before supper, and then a marathon of five 45-minute episodes tonight. We finally finished for real just before 11pm. Just enough time to watch a bit of the CBC News before going to bed.

Some of our electronic clocks automatically adjust the time. They needn’t have. There is no Daylight Savings Time in Arizona. So I actually had to put our alarm clock and the clock in the van into a different timezone today, just to make them show the correct time.

We had French toast today while we watched Fareed on CNN. We switched to golf on the Golf Channel after that. I went to the driving range for a while, and when I got home it was time for lunch. And then we headed into Mesa. First we went to Van’s Golf shop to look at putters. We looked, but didn’t buy. Then we went across Hwy #60 to the Superstition Springs Golf Club. We’d been there once before. This morning I got an email blast from them, advertising cheap golf, so I’d booked us a 3 o’clock tee time for $25 each. We got there a little early and were able to head to the first tee early, just the two of us. Cool! Well, actually we had to wait for the foursome ahead. At every hole. So we only got about 14 holes in before it got too dark to continue.

We were on the ninth hole when my phone started buzzing. It was Alex and Max, FaceTiming us. Max got to see us golfing, and chasing some ducks and geese around on the course. That was great.

We stopped at a Fry’s grocery store to pick up bread and eggs before heading home. Lots of traffic on the #60 again — it had been a slow crawl out of Gold Canyon on the way TO the course, and there was a long stream of headlights coming from the Renaissance Festival again when we were on our way home. When we got home I barbecued a couple of cheeseburgers and Sue made a salad. We watched the last 2 episodes of “Suits” — at least THAT’S an accomplishment!

Well, that extra hour of sleep that we may or may not have had last night doesn’t mean we’re going to bed any later than usual today.

Saturday morning. Oh, all you faithful readers, you know what that means — bacon and eggs! Speaking of faithful readers, I can’t wait to stop writing this drivel! I started this when we first headed south, partly as a way to document what we are doing FOR OURSELVES and partly as a way to stay in touch with family. And I know that others are reading this, and sometimes it’s fun to write for that audience too. I also know that I need to do this every day, and that if I miss a day I will soon miss several days and then I’ll stop doing this altogether. (It’s a bit like my stint on the treadmill was — either do it daily or don’t even start.) But really! MOST of the time we don’t DO anything. Reading about how lazy we are, or how great the weather is, or how bad my golfing is, has got to be the most UNINTERESTING reading in the world! Pain and suffering makes for interesting reading; living the good life in a sunshiny country club does not.

Now that we are on our own here, I’m once again playing music from my humungous iTunes library all day every day. Today’s ‘genius playlist’ is based on Steve Earle’s “Remember Me”. What a great playlist! Speaking of Steve Earle, if you really want to read good writing, listen to Steve Earle’s music. He’s been in jail for heroin possession, and he just divorced his seventh wife. Hello! Talk about pain and suffering! And he’s got a new album out, Terrapin, and it’s a blues album, and it’s good. Steve Earle can tell a GREAT story in a 3-minute song.

While Sue read I worked on my computer. Sue was feeling a bit better today, although not a hundred percent yet. So for lunch she made noodle soup and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. That’s what we have when one of us feels poorly. Yum! almost makes you wanna be sick.

It was HOT here today (oh boy, now he’s going to talk about the nice weather again!). I called Mountain Brook Golf Club and booked a 3:45 tee time — hoping it might have cooled off a bit by then. But it was still quite warm when we pulled into the parking lot. And as Sue went in to pay I put together our pull carts and loaded our clubs. Oh no! I forgot my driver and all my hybrids in the garage after my last visit to the driving range. What now? Okay, I’ll golf with what I’ve brought. So no nice long drives today, right? Wrong. I reverted to my old fairway wood and was pleasantly surprised when I smacked that ball almost as far as I can hit my driver. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that cool when I dinged the ball off the roof of a house on the eighth hole, but I quickly pounded a second ball straight down the fairway and was careful NOT to look at the homeowner as I made my way down to the green.

After golf we decided to (finally!) check out the Fairway Grille, out on Highway 60. We’d not been there yet this winter — and every time we go by the parking lot is packed. So we waited for a break in the parade of cars coming back from the Renaissance Festival just down the road and then crawled the quarter mile to the restaurant. Parking lot was full again. Upon entering the crowded restaurant we were immediately bathed in the overwhelming aroma of deep-fried everything. The restaurant reminded me of the Hitching Post and the smell reminded me of the good old Pioneer Inn in Steinbach. We got a table for two. All around us, enormous old people were overflowing their chairs while stuffing their faces with the broasted chicken and fried fish dinner special. We ordered a couple of draft beers. (I could go on about the joys of American “Lite” beer here, but this is already too long an entry.) I ordered the fish, Sue had sweet potato fries. The big fat guy sitting behind his laptop in the corner was entertaining the crowd by singing along with Waylon and Willie karaoke soundtracks. How is this considered ‘live’ music? At one point he was singing a chorus that sounded like “I don’t want to get older” — I was considering helping him achieve that! The highlight was when a drunk Mexican guy got up and started dancing along with the soundtrack for a couple of songs. While the huge people all around us were chomping on their greasy drumsticks and texting their grandchildren all about it, Sue picked at her fries. Not that good. Neither was the fish fry, but I gave it my best shot. When we were done we had to get out of that parking lot, back onto the 60, to get back home. I edged the van into the solid lanes of traffic kind of like how we crossed the motorcycle-clogged roads in Vietnam years ago — just close your eyes and start moving into the traffic and the sea of cars will part for you. Made it.

Back at home, we opened all the doors and cranked up the ceiling fan to help cool down the place (and to air out our greasy clothes). The internet was working again — and we made one more push to finish watching the final season of ‘Suits’. We didn’t quite finish — I think we have 3 episodes left. By eleven o’clock we were in bed. Thank goodness we won’t lose any sleep to Daylight Savings Time like people at home will — they don’t do that here in Arizona.

Well, Sue is still on the road to recovery. She doesn’t feel like eating, she doesn’t trust herself to go for a ride, we don’t even go for a walk. It was a quiet Friday at home today.

I worked on some web stuff all morning. Sue copied all the numbers from our ‘budget’ app on our phone and ipad into her little scribbler and added things up with her calculator. Huh? That just hurts a computer guy like me to see that. After lunch Sue went to sit at the pool and read. I forgot to mention that she finished reading her massive book yesterday — “The Time In Between” by Maria Duenas. So now she’s on to her next bookclub book. My big book sits here on the coffee table, undisturbed. I spent a couple of hours going through our Danube photos, deleting about a quarter of them. Then I went to the driving range and hit balls for an hour. Wow, I’m sure getting a lot of distance on my drives — or maybe it was that huge tailwind I had today.

When we got home I made a couple of G&Ts and Sue cut up some sausage and cheese and we had happy hour while we watched a few episodes of ‘Suits’. Then at around 6pm the wind let up and we decided to go up our hill to watch the sunset. Good move.

Sue made a stir-fry for supper. No ‘Friday Night Pizza’ tonight — Sue took inventory of our fridge today. Holy cow! we have enough meat stockpiled in there to last us until mid-June! And no more visitors until we leave at the end of this month. We had a FaceTime call with the kids and a Skype call with the parents. At around 7:30 we were all settled back at our stations, ready for another marathon night of ‘Suits’. Oh, oh, what’s with that spinning beachball on our AppleTV? No internet. Shoot! Can’t watch ‘Suits’ tonight. Can’t even watch any of the queued up shows on “my list” on Netflix. Whoa! Can’t even check to see if anyone wants to be ‘friends’ with us on ‘our’ Facebook. What can we do? I unplugged all devices, restarted, and restarted again, all to no avail. Hmmm… I guess we’ll have to watch curling on TV. We did that for a while, finally switched to Anthony Bourdain on CNN. Sue took one of those Gravol pills and went to bed. I woke up on the couch at midnight and dragged my weary ass there too. All this doing nothing all day plumb tuckers a guy out.

After breakfast my financial advisor had me do a bit of housekeeping with our banking. And since it seems that I’m also in charge of remembering all the usernames and passwords for the online banking sites she sometimes likes to visit, I spent quite some time reorganizing the bookmarks on her iPad browser and resetting various passwords. So that basically shot the morning.

After lunch I took the van into Apache Junction for service. I had to get rid of that ‘Service Engine’ warning light. I noticed that there was a big strip of goop on the windshield, and some eggshell next to the van — either someone is trying to send us a message or one of those excited birds lost part of her load as she flew over our driveway. In any case, it was time to take the van to the carwash. Twice. The first time through didn’t wash the baked-on egg off the van. Neither did the second go round. So, after hitting a thousand balls at the driving range I parked on the driveway, got a big pail of warm soapy water, and ‘scoured’ that crap off the windshield and the top of the van.

So it took no time at all to have wasted away a whole day and read NOT ONE WORD in the big book I’m reading or CAPTION ONE PHOTO in my Danube photos project. Good thing I’m retired and have all the time in the world.

Sue got supper going (even though she’s not at all hungry — that flu bug isn’t quite done with her yet) and we watched a few more episodes of ‘Suits’. Quite a few more episodes. We took a break to watch the CBC News but then got right back to it. We’ve got 8 episodes left — and then we can switch to one of the other series on our list. It’s becoming quite clear that we will not finish all the books, tv shows, movies, golf games, hikes, excursions, etc that we thought we’d get to during this winter. Less than a month to go. Gotta get busy.

And just like that, it’s time to say goodbye. We’re about to be abandoned here in G.C.

I got up and made a coffee. JP was up for a while already. I poured my coffee into my handy travel mug and Jim and I took his Honda out to the car wash across the road for a rinse before breakfast. Breakfast for me, not for JP. Jim and Bonny left us this morning at 9:30. They were heading out to the Good Wife Trailer Park to go for breakfast with half the Grace Church from Steinbach (they’ll see the other half when they get to Palm Springs later this afternoon). Sue, who had a better night than last night but was still a little nervous about eating, cut up some fruit and made toast.

I listened to some music and Sue read. I was going to work on sorting out our Danube photos but then I got another idea. The sun was shining and the forecast was for slightly warmer temperatures. I hadn’t golfed since last Saturday — not even gone to the driving range. I sent Ed Peters a text asking if he was golfing today. Yep. Ed called the Gold Canyon golf course and changed his tee time to 12:15 for the two of us. So I aborted my plans and hurried out to the course. Sue was happy to stay home and play with her iPad and recuperate.

I had a hotdog at the course and took a few swings on the driving range — and then we were off. Sidewinder course. Just the two of us. We’ll hit from the blue tees. We had to wait a few minutes for the group ahead, but overall, the pace of play was today was right on. Unfortunately for me, the 4 or 5 long straight drives I took on the driving range did NOT translate to good shots on the course (but what else is new!). Ed had golfed this course yesterday as well, but today would be his last round until sometime this spring or summer back in Manitoba — he and Val are leaving Gold Canyon tomorrow.

We had some good shots and some not as good. The temperature seemed to get warmer in the late afternoon; at least the cool wind let up a bit. The dreaded Hole #15 (which ‘features’ water with ‘ball magnets’ in it) once again reared its ugly head at me, and on the final hole I had to invoke the mercy rule (not marking more than a ’10’). But it will take more than that for Sidewinder to ‘beat me’ — I’ll be back.

When I got home from golfing Sue was skyping with Max. Ed Peters brought a ‘care package’ of assorted leftover libations to our place and said goodbye. And then it was time for Sue and me to get back into our routine. I queued up a few episodes of ‘Suits’ while Sue warmed up supper. We took our positions in front of the TV and watched a few episodes of Suits until 10 o’clock. Then we switched to PBS for a pretty good musical special and at eleven it was time for the CBC National. And that was it for Wednesday, March 4, here in Gold Canyon.

Well at least it wasn’t raining when we got up this morning. In fact, the sun was shining through the clouds. And while it certainly wasn’t warm outside, it wasn’t as cold as yesterday either.

We had breakfast with Jim and Bonny and discussed options for the day. We’d pretty much decided on a hike in the Boyce Thompson park but when Jim and I drove to Bashas to pick up bread and sandwich meat and saw the L-O-N-G lineup of busses heading east on the 60 — well, we changed our mind. Why sit in bumper to bumper traffic when we can just go for a little hike up Silly Mountain right here. So that’s what we did.

As long as the clouds didn’t hide the sun it was nice and warm outside. We made a quick circuit on our little ‘silly’ hill and then went back home for lunch. Sue was feeling really crappy (literally) and so she went for a nap after lunch. The rest of us sat around, eventually finding a spot in the sun in our backyard. We were going to go out for supper, but because Sue didn’t really feel well and not at all hungry, we decided to go pick something up and have supper here at the house. We were watching curling on TV and when that was over we changed our mind once again — Jim and Bonny and I would go across the road to the Hitching Post for supper while Sue would stay back and have another snooze. So that’s what we did.

Jim and Bonny had a chance to enjoy the fine ‘live’ entertainment offered nightly at the Hitching Post — a ‘real’ taste of life in Gold Canyon. When we’d finished our meal and the singer was finished singing along with Side A of his karaoke tape we headed back to our house (well, by ‘we’ I mean Jim, Bonny, and I — not the ‘singer’). We watched some more curling and at some point Sue came back out from her hibernation and joined us. Around 10:30 that was done and now the rest of us did like Sue and went to bed.

It’s a grey rainy Monday morning in Gold Canyon. Perfect for sleeping in. When I finally rolled out of bed at around eight o’clock and put the coffee on, Sue had already sorted the laundry into several big piles on the bedroom floor.

After reading the Steinbach news online just to make sure the universe was still unfolding as it should, it was time to start up the vacuum cleaner. While I dragged the Dirt Devil around Sue followed with the wet mop. It’s cleaning day at the Nikkel’s’ today. Well, why not? Can’t go golfing in this weather!

Once we had the house clean it was time to take care of our personal appearance — haircut time. Sue exchanged her maid outfit for comb and scissors and soon had me looking presentable.

After lunch Sue got busy in the kitchen, preparing tonight’s supper and baking a blackberry crisp. I stretched out on the couch and started reading the big book Ed H left here for us to read. I may have drifted off a bit as well.

At 4 o’clock our guests arrived. Jim and Bonny left Albuquerque this morning and drove “cross country” through Show-Low to get to our place. They are on their way to Palm Springs for a couple of weeks, and will stay with us for a few days before continuing on to California.

We had a little snack and sat around the table and talked for a while. Then Sue got supper going and we moved to the living room. After we’d eaten we tuned in the curling game on TSN and watched TV and visited. Sue served that crisp she’d made earlier with a scoop of ice cream.

A little after 10 we retired to bed.