A lazy day here in Gold Canyon. It’s hot. The golf course outside looks busy in spite of the heat and the time of year. I thought all the snowbirds would have left by now, but I still see a lot of Alberta license plates on the road here.
Today I left the air-conditioned comfort of my house three times. The first was late this morning when I (finally!) went to the Superstition Ranch Farmers Market in Apache Junction. In previous years this would have been one of our FIRST stops once we got here. And actually Tim and Alex DID go here a couple of weeks ago when they were here. The fruit and vegetables are so cheap here that you can’t afford NOT to eat a lot of it. Well, my $10 worth is probably too much for me to eat. Seriously! Nine fresh Arizona-grown grapefruits for 99 cents? Big ripe mangos for 50 cents each. Same for vine-ripened beefsteak tomatoes. Bananas for 39 cents a pound. Crazy cheap, but when am I gonna eat this?
When I got home I made myself the usual big sandwich, but added a couple of slices of tomato to the avocado, cheese, and ham. WAY too much food for a guy that really should be going for a long walk or a bike ride. Hmm… what am I doing?
I thought I would go to Mountain Brook for a ‘quick’ round of golf late in the afternoon — if I went late enough surely I would have the course to myself and could zip through 18 holes in under 3 hours. Big mistake! I drove my cart out to the first tee and GOT IN LINE! An elderly husband and wife were taking their sweet time rolling the ball off the tee box and down the fairway. And once they were safely out of range (100 yards down the fairway), two old gomers drove their cart right past mine up to the forward tees and hobbled out onto the tee box with their Big Bertha drivers and dribbled a couple of balls out onto the course. Oh boy! This is not going to be any fun at all. I actually waited around on the tee until the old codgers were out of sight, around the bend. I teed up a couple of balls and proceeded to whack them into the scrub that lined the left side of the fairway. Ha! I’m a fine one to talk! I should have JOINED the old-timers instead of pacing around impatiently on the tee box. Oh well. I might as well ‘practice’. So I played FOUR balls down to the first green. I spent at least 10 minutes just practising my putting, waiting for the gang ahead to move along far enough for me to hit a drive at the next hole. By the time I got to the green on hole #2 it was clear to me that things would only get more bogged down. I gathered my golf balls from the green and drove back to the clubhouse. Went in to complain and ask for a ‘rain’ check. Packed up. I thought I might go the Gold Canyon course where I have a ‘pass’ for the driving range. But the driving range CLOSED at 4 o’clock and it was an hour past that by now. So I went home.
Since I’d eaten a late lunch, and not exactly a ‘small’ lunch, I decided to wait until after 7 o’clock before going out to Wahoo’s for Friday night pizza. By then the crowd that gathers there every evening should have had their fill of karaoke and be heading home for an early ‘night-night’. Well lucky for me the ‘entertainment’, and I use that term loosely, was still going strong when I sat down at a table and ordered a Kiltlifter. Tonight’s musical trivia game was “which TV theme song do you think I’m trying to play” and I don’t know what was more obnoxious — the old guy on stage showing off all the ‘cool’ effects he could add to the drum track with his Casio keyboard or the drunk old ladies in the audience who hollered out every old TV western theme song they could think of EXCEPT the one that the Casio guy was trying to play. I guess no one was FORCING me to sit there — so I’m probably even more of a loser than the people I’m mocking!
I was thinking I should order a medium pizza so I could have leftovers for Saturday lunch. Dumb idea! Nothing ‘medium’ about the pizza here! I had three slices and was STUFFED. I took home enough leftovers for at least two more huge meals. So what am I supposed to do now? Sit in front of the TV all weekend watching the Masters and eating cold pizza? That’s not what I came here for. (Like my mom would say, ‘that you can do at home, too!’) I am an idiot!