wonder what kind of shark it was

If they actually caught a shark... which is what their grandmother said when I called today. The children are in Savannah for the next week, and they went fishing at the pier on Tybee this afternoon. There are a lot of sharks out at Tybee (not to mention trace amounts of tritium from the Savannah River plutonium plant contamination - plus there's the lost nuclear bomb (sans core) that fell off an Air Force plane a few decades ago during a training mission... but its buried in sand and supposedly if it blew up it wouldn't blow up anyone real good because a) there's no nuclear core (they're pretty sure about that, just like BP was pretty sure its disaster plan would save walruses and such) and b) they think the bomb is buried in lots of sand in deep enough water you'd have to be far dumber than a recently caught shark to accidentally set the damn thing off) but its the harmless variety that pretty much leave humans alone because its much more fun to chomp bait that a human is dangling in front of them.

If they really did catch a shark, it was probably something like a nurse shark. I've seen 6'ers caught at Tybee. It is amazing how damned surprised the shark looks, too, something along the lines of "Oh f*** I can't believe I was that stupid. And now I'm stupid dead."

I will be baching it Wed and Thursday night as The Blonde is off to Portland for some work related crap. She's going to be stuck in classes about 12 hours a day, and unfortunately, the co-worker she's going with is a super conscientious Japanese woman who won't entertain the thought of that Portland might be far more entertaining if they blew off the stupid classes and just went and partayed. So that means I'll likely do a little bike riding or something. I've got to start cleaning Hotel Blonde with the children arriving in 12 days... the guest bedroom needs to be made up, I've got to think of what food I'm going to feed them (since they are convinced that the food pyramid is basically the outline of a slice of pizza).

(I suppose I could do some new You Tube guitar videos. I'm kind of mildly surprised that Punk Rock Greensleeves is over 1,100 views now. Although that's a miniscule amount of views, its probably far more views than the average You Tube video gets).

Its kind of nice to decompress this evening. I was going batshit crazy with work and the possibility I was going to have to drop everything and fly for a court appointment in a certain unnamed Southern state later this week, but, it appears that cloud has blown off over the Atlantic somewhere. With the dissolution of that cloud, I can actually work at a normal pace tomorrow and not be freaked out (I worked over the weekend to get stuff done just in case... stress stress stress but man I'm much more productive on my Mac Book Pro than I was a on PC. The OS is much more efficient).

Well, me thinks its time to put the Mac Book away and practice guitar. Or go to sleep, as I should get up in the morning and once again do a very poor imitation of a runner.

all is well

Considering that I'm on PDT, and the sun has not come up yet, yes, its a weird time to post, and I've been tossing and turning all night. Part of this I can blame on consuming an entire Hot Italian pizza last night; the ingredients - unlike the crap that mass produced pizza like you get at Costco - are actually fresh and we are so used to eating crap as a civilization (let's face it, unless you work *really* hard at it, its extremely difficult to eat right in fructose-drenched America - hey, rather than use that land to grow flax seed or something we can actually power our cars with, instead we grow corn and then make (literally) tons of sweetener out of what we can't use, and then impregnate every type of food imaginable with it, so our entire culture can grow fat, have our arteries, hearts, livers, and God knows what else explode with disease so the process of subsidizing the sweetener bankrupts our entire Treasury several times over) that my system goes into a delightful state of shock every time I eat one. This was a seasonal pizza - its not listed on the menu (I think, I've just provided the link and our server told us last night that this was a new pizza that they were about to put on the menu) - that had no cheese but their spicy tomato sauce, fresh heirloom tomato slices... and mussels and shrimp. Yes, it was delicious.

Anyway, tossing and turning (and listening to Merp slap around a lamp power cord half the night, as she loves to demand a middle-of-the-night snack - the cats prefer to be fed when its dark, which, of course, makes sense because they're nocturnal - party all night, sleep all day - she knows that sooner or later you'll get sick of listening to the lamp cord drag against the floor and will get up and use those amazing opposable thumbs to open the magic can), I fell asleep for a few minutes...

To wake up in my old bunk bed in my old room. It was dark, about the same time in the morning as it is now, and my stereo went off, oddly, blasting Ozzy's "Crazy Train" (I'm not that big of an Ozzy fan, but the song is one of the best rock riffs ever. Randy Rhoads did raise the bar in how much technique you need to play rock guitar in writing that song riff)... I was a little worried that it would wake my parents up, but it wasn't that loud, and I let the song play until the end and then hit the power button on the stereo. House was still dark, so I got out of bed and went downstairs.

I knew that my father was dead, and not in the house, but I was a little surprised to find my mother stretched out in the same "Lazy Boy chair spot" in the house that Dad occupied for years (she bought a new recliner after his death and often slept in it as her back bothered her because the cancer was eating it and her internal organs up - she even slept there when he was alive (he'd sleep upstairs in his bed) because I think she had the cancer a long, long time).

She had gained weight, and when I came down and sat down beside her, to read, and turned on the lamp that was on that table (although the overhead light in the living room was on, so its not like any light was going to disturb her), I thought "man, for having cancer she looks good" but she stirred, opened and eye and sat up a bit.

I was kind of surprised, and I said "Mom, you're alive... you're both alive... you've died, and come back, its kind of like Jesus." (Note - no offense to anyone's religious beliefs, but I am not a believer in the Christian myth in general... of the various stories in the Bible, I find Moses far more compelling, and far more believable. It simply makes more sense to me... Moses' life is described more fully from Point A to Point B than Jesus' is, after Jesus arises from the dead, the entire story of his life is rushed to an end along the lines of "he walked among the people and performed many more miracles" and that's pretty much it... but who knows what's been omitted from the Bible and there are so many translations and bastardizations now - and political correctness (see King James version) probably the only way to appreciate it is to have the ability to read the scrolls in their original language, and that takes a wee bit of scholarly study that most people simply don't have the time (or access) to do).

Mom smiled and said "It was sweet for you to say that. But I still feel terrible, this cancer hurts."

"But, you're OK."

"Yes, I am. So is your father." (I'm paraphrasing at this point, because she really didn't say anything but I know on a visceral level that they're both OK. Although Dad has moved on to something else, whatever he is now in the multiverse. His data is still there in the 2-D matrix, its simply not being projected in this part of the 3-D representation of the 2-D matrix. This is assuming, of course, that the string theorists actually know what they're talking about, and its probably just as plausible as anything else).

That's when I woke up, and knew that I needed to write this down before it faded. I'm lying in bed, covered with goosebumps (this also happened when we were cleaning out the house in April a couple of times when I was in part of the house alone... there was the perfectly clear afternoon sitting in my old room and this loud, persistent knocking happened for a few seconds - then a couple of nights later, we were returning to the house, after dark, and the front porch light - which I'd left on when we drove off for dinner, as I knew it would be dark when we got back - was out - and then as I pulled into the driveway it popped right back on. When we got inside, the switch was all the way up, and the switch had no shorting issues. It wasn't a power surge, as the lamp lights I'd left on in the house and the side porch light were all on), and knew I'd better grab the computer and write this down before the dream faded... because the dream is real.

I had another one of these dreams a few months back, before we flew out, but didn't write it down, but I woke up from it crying, because I knew that my parents were alive and it was OK and so profoundly moving... the gist of that one was that we were cleaning out the house, and my mother was there (Dad again absent) and there was all this cool stuff that we were going through, but some of it was shifting shapes as we looked at it - into styles of stuff that I like (Mom and I have very different tastes), and Mom was smiling... and much younger than I remember her. There were other people milling about because it was the estate sale, including a black man with dreadlocks, whom I walked up to... and I knew it was Bob Marley and I told him so and he smiled... and then just sort of melted away.

I'm not crazy about reggae, either, and it was interesting that another person who is dead was there with my mother, but I think I remember going up there and telling him that he was there and she said "I know, and its OK. Just do what you need to do Scott. Its alright."

Dammit Mom. Every time I write about this, you make me cold, and these goosebumps are very annoying. You're enjoying yourself way too much.

They're alive.

Happy Father's Day everyone.

one year

Ago, today, my father passed.  I ran 5 klicks on Father's Day to celebrate his life. This morning, again, I ran 5 kilometers. Might add another 5 for measure tomorrow.

He died peacefully, in his sleep, and on his own terms.

I miss being able to call him and bitch about life in general, and he'd tell me everything would be fine.

Well, it has been fine. But I miss being able to call him.

surreality

Today I ran down to Madera for a meeting. Now, Madera is not exactly a hop skip and jump from Sacramento, its a 2 1/2 hour drive if you stick to the limit, don't hit a lot of traffic on I-5/CA 99 (you eventually have to cut over from I-5 in the Stockton vicinity or just take 99 all the way, but since 99 isn't Interstate standard you're better off to stick to "The 5" (a Californiacation is to drop the prefix for a road designation and just refer to it by number rather the entire designation - i.e., Interstate 5 becomes "The 5" (as if the road is a living creature, and considering how bad the traffic congestion can be in some parts of California, with all the poor bastards sardined in their cars and gridlock that's probably an appropriate term)) and forego the potty stops (which are usually oddly paired with getting a Giant Cheap Fountain Drink w/Humongous Straw at the convenience store/gas station you hit for the potty stop... liquid out, liquid in, universal equilibrium must be maintained).

The meeting itself wasn't that long, and I won't bore you with the details or the post-meeting details (which was actually longer than the meeting itself), but given that my job entails watching over a tiny portion of the transportation planning process that's a happenin' in the San Joaquin Valley (sans Bakersfield, but that could change at any moment, job assignments are always in a state of Brownian motion), as an escapee from the Rolling Hills of Iowa (its not flat people - drive across Iowa sometime and you'll get it), I find it fascinating (at least when the AQ is good, and it was OK today considering that Summer Got Turned On About A Week Ago) to see the Coastal Ranges on either my right or left (depending on whether I'm going south or north) and the Sierras on either my right or left (north or south). Its weird to think I'm driving down this vast central valley - that is almost as big as my home state (a hair shy of 40K square miles vs. Iowa's almost 60K square miles) and is # 1 in agricultural production and grows all sorts of cool stuff that would never grow outside in Iowa (like avocados and walnuts - California produces most of the planet's walnut supply. Did you know that?) with mountains on either side of it.

(I sure am using a lot of ( ) in this entry).

Now, if I stare straight ahead - its much flatter than Iowa (and most of Kansas, which I have driven through enough of to know that Kansas is flllllaaaaaaatttt) I don't see the mountains and I can almost pretend I'm back home, but when you catch a snow-capped Sierra peak in your peripheral vision, it pops the illusion. Not a bad thing, because seeing snow capped mountain peaks - particularly when we are a third of the way to July and these aren't the tallest peaks in the Sierras - its just way cool.

But it still doesn't seem quite real. Of course, if the cosmologists are correct, according to the math of string theory, everything we see and perceive is actually frighteningly similar to a 3-D hologram - we are part of that hologram, and that hologram is based on a matrix of two-dimensional information that is stored beyond the edge of our universe where we can access it. In other words, the entire 13 billion light year wide universe that we can detect is just one honkin' big simulation being run on a serious network of Linux boxes, possibly begging to be converted to iPads to increase Apple's bottom line. All those obsolete winsh*t boxes aren't very environmentally friendly and ergo design pretty much sucks.

Of course, how can we take ourselves seriously - or *anything* seriously, for that matter, if we are all holograms? Well, I wish being a hologram wasn't so serious, because it really shouldn't hurt all that bad when I drop something heavy on my toes, or, I should be able to will myself into being handsome, rich, and at least as good looking as I think I really am in my mind.

(And I should be able to instantly transform this 13.3 Macbook into a 17, with all of the upgrades for free. Its only fair, if my body is in The Matrix, I want to be rich, and someone important - like an actor).

The string theorists are probably wrong. Every time they Think We've Got It All Figured Out, Woo Boy, something new comes along and smears the dry erase board of cool math equations about 6 people in the world understand sort of.

Those fake mountains sure are pretty though, and they need to clean up the programming code so they'll look clearer, don't you think?

mystery

Ok... since I wasn't brilliant/planned ahead/etc. weeks ago, I would have had a reservation for the Disney Grand Californian when I signed Davis and Meredith up for summer school at the beginning of April. Of course, July and August are the busiest months at Disneyland and there was no way I could get a room booked there (and its the best hotel, trust me on this - it has a private entrance to California Adventure, and if you've ever driven in LA and seen the parking lot at Disneyland, saving $14 a day + drive time, it makes an enormous amount of sense to stay within hoofing distance of the park entrances.

So, tis going to be October. It will be less crowded then (and cooler) anyway.

what's my motivation...

Since I no longer have a Beginner Triathlete account - apparently, once you decide to leave the website, the owners will not let you back on if you decide you want to come back (never mind that I paid at least a couple of hundred bucks to be a member in the 2+ years I was on there)... although all I really wanted to come back for was the forums, and its blogging function, which is awesome. But apparently I did stuff - um, I guess its called being a Free Thinker - that annoyed the website's owners, so I guess once you leave, you really do get shoved out the airlock, because when I attempted to re-establish an account a few months back, I got quickly banned - even though I never did anything that violated the TOS, as far as I can tell.

Free Thinking along the lines of "well, you know, I'm really not a good athlete, I don't have oodles of athletic ability, and why should I bust my ass training when I'm never going to win or even place respectably in any race that I'm paying (insert dollar amount here, but even most run races now are at least $25 for the t-shirt, and triathlons are $40 on up) to participate in... shouldn't this be fun rather than some bizarre online competitive contest?"

Now, to be somewhat honest, most people on BT were not like that but after a while one gets tired of the same personalities, the same arguments, and the same running around in rhetorical circles while trying to find motivation to exercise period.  I'm almost 50 years old, I was always picked last for every sport in school (or not picked at all), and, compared to most people in my AG that I see walking around in the world, I'm in far better than everyone BUT the hardcore (insert sport - runners, cyclists, triathletes) who were either stars on the athletic teams in high school and college and that we were put in assemblies at the politically correct equivalent of gunpoint and expected to say "Yay, rah-rah, go TEAM!" when these are the same people that shoved the chess club members into the lockers during passing period.

In other words, I look pretty decent but I suck at sports. I will *never* be good at sports no matter how much I practice, or train... so, aside from being terrified of open heart surgery, angioplasty, and becoming dependent on the meds the pharma companies in this country invent to create dependency rather than learning good exercise and eating habits, how do you stay motivated to exercise and not turn into a blob of lard?

The same thing sort of applies to music (although I have more talent at that). I'll never be an A-list musician but if I practice my ass off I could be a fairly decent B lister. This means if I went to church - which I don't do (and I don't plan on starting to just to play), I could be in a decent orchestra in a larger church every Sunday if I wanted to give up sleep.

I'm just having difficulties finding motivation to enjoy much of anything right now. I don't have anything to complain about, but I'm fighting that vague sense of dissatisfaction with nearly everything that is always eating away at the edge of my thoughts; its been a part of my personality for so long I just put up with it.

Anyway, I just don't feel like exercising hard anymore.

disneyland

Um, who'd ever thought booking a few days at the Disneyland Grand Californian or Disneyland hotel would be so complicated. Of course, July-August is their busiest time of year... and I am trying to book at the last minute. :-p

the last day(s) of castle carson

Fell on the same day that Nebraska jumped off the Titanic - er what will soon be the late, great Big 12 - for the Big 10. My childhood home (not the true childhood home, it was the 2nd house we lived in, but its the one we moved to when I was 5 in 1966) sold yesterday. The new owner is a house flipper that plans to do a great deal of remodeling and replace the garage that fell down many years ago with a new two car garage. A bit of urban re-homesteading, which is nice.

In the process of deciding what to do with the place I got a lot of advice, and really, the only logical choice was to sell to a flipper. My parents - actually Dad - did very little to the place other than the absolute maintenance that had to be done - roof, new windows, ac/heat aside from ripping off the wallpaper in '66 and installing carpet over the hardwood floors (which, of course, these days, are highly prized, especially in a house built in the 1940s), painting the interior (one time - I kid thee not) after removing the wallpaper, and ripping out the old kitchen in the 1970s and remodeling it.

To be fair, that's not entirely accurate as the "only" things... he put paneling in the big basement room downstairs that eventually ended up being a storage room for all sorts of sundry crap (with the emphasis on the bulk of it being crap - thank you very much A OK Antiques for doing the estate sale and getting that stuff out of there), he put a film editing bench in the basement (where he and some of his friends did a few highlight films for the Iowa State Girls Athletic Association Girls' Basketball Tournament in the 1970s - before videotape killed 16mm film), and did a very minor remodel on the downstairs bathroom (changed the floor linoleum and tiled the walls). 

This may sound like a lot... but for the last decade nothing was done. There were settling cracks in the plaster (gotta love real plaster walls) that were upstairs, the upstairs bathroom was to the point it was needing a remodel, and the entire house needed painting inside and out. There was some dry rot on the outside window sills, and more than likely the new owner will rip out the bushes out front as they got so overgrown that if you trim them back, they'll just be sticks. It will be interesting to see the house listing - this is assuming the flipper doesn't do a custom remodel job and sell it direct to someone - once the house is ready to go on the market. Even though its raining in Des Moines today, I would not be surprised if someone isn't busy ripping carpet out of it right now (although I'll bet they fix the plaster cracks and cosmetics - perhaps even paint the walls - before they rip the carpet and refinish the floors... that would make a lot of sense (and if he's remodeling bathroom(s) I wouldn't pull the carpet off of the stairs until the upstairs bathroom was finished).

Anyway, I would have had to sink at least 20-30K into the place to make it sellable for a bank loan, and try to do the remodel remotely from California is probably not high on the List of Good Ideas.  I sold it in as-is condition, got a fair price, and the flipper should make a good profit. My only regret is that I wish my parents would have taken better care of their house than they did - because they *could* have but chose not to do so, but what's done is done.

Three weeks from today, Davis and Meredith will be here! This, of course, assumes that the standby flight schedule cooperates. I planted the Disneyland hook yesterday. As it stands now, they're here for 3 weeks, while their summer school at St. Mary's is on, but I offered to their mother that I would take them to Southern California for a few days if she wants to pick them up in LA (more flight choices - 4 airports vs. 1 here)... I'd have them stay another week, and take them down either Tuesday or Wednesday to SoCal, we'd get a 3 or 4 day park pass, and also hit the beach. I'll probably rent a car and drive us down... it is a long ways to LA - 8 hours - but by the time you get to the airport - at least an hour ahead, fly, get your luggage, rental car, etc. its a lot easier to fly in some aspects.

I spoke to both of them about it yesterday... Meredith has re-discovered email and I got about 20 replies last night and this morning. Of course, they're jacked about the idea of going to Disneyland LOL - I'll make sure we do it right, you only go to Disneyland for the first time as a child once, and while I'm not going to freak out if things aren't "perfect" I want it to be a good experience for them.

yes, try and run me down in your scary golf cart

Summer has arrived in Sacramento. This means it quit raining and got hotter than hell the day after it quit raining, but with the lovely addition - given that its been a weird Spring that was cooler and wetter than normal - of humidity.

They were carrying dogs out of the Doggy Dash 2010 festival area on stretchers, according to The Blonde. I didn't actually see this... anyway, the short and sweet version of my Race Report is that I ran 5K magnificently for the first 100 yards or so, and then I jogged the rest of it because it was hot, humid (the race didn't start until 9, they should start at 7 this time of year, it would have been 15 degrees cooler) and no one seems to know how to properly run with their dog - particularly those morons that insist on using retractable leashes, which are incredibly dangerous for everyone when you've got a few thousand runners and dogs all moshed together. Whoever thought up the idea of retractable leashes should be found, and then have 6 or 7 of those things wrapped around their neck and then the RETRACT button(s) punched... HARD.

Its actually a great event and the Sacramento SPCA does a great job of putting it on and having all sorts of cool events to watch... you get to see a police dog eat a "perp" (oh, that's fun, its like watching Cops live), the usual plethora of frisbee catching canines, and the Pug Races, and there's all sorts of booths selling food, pet crap, begging you to adopt a pooch (if I had a place to keep a large dog, Tilly, a gorgeous black 4 year lab mix would have come home with me), pet psychics (Mr. Dog apparently is really messed up - he doesn't like being a dog and doesn't identify with other dogs (the two psychics, who were completely across the park from each other and did not appear to be in cell contact with each other agreed on this - but the psychics also told me to apply for the Vancouver job.... hmmm. And I am probably going to apply).

I'm not sure I needed a psychic to tell me that Mr. Dog is weird, because he is, but he does "not like to be jogged." Which does give me an excuse to go get Tilly, or perhaps a Jack Russell terrier mix... hide your shoes and be prepared to deal with a dog that doesn't run but rather teleports between points on the spacetime continuum. BTW, I thought of a couple of great names for a Jack Russell ... either "Rat" or "Crackhead". I also want to name a dog "Dude" but Jack Russells are too goddamned hyper for the simple name "Dude."

And speaking of Dude, the announcer (one criticism - the speakers at the Dash this year on the PA WERE TOO FUCKING LOUD) for the race/event is the Dynamic Radio Voice Guy that also has done Rivercats baseball games - he was telling us at the start - where I'd hurriedly running back'ed my way to the front so I wouldn't get tripped by the dogs - to yell our names... people were yelling their names, he was about 10' from me and when it died down I said "Dude!" and he said "there's this guy here that says his name is Dude." Now, perhaps I should have instead said "Kinnick" since I was wearing my Nike Kinnick (Iowa's football stadium is named Kinnick after the 1939 Heisman Trophy Winner Nile Kinnick), but I thought Dude was more smart-ass. There were no timing chips or even a clock - I had my Garmin (which brings me to the point WTF did we need race #ers then, if you're not going to time it all.. guess they needed you to pay $25 for a t-shirt and sign the "SSPCA is not responsible if you die during this event").

So, the TV cameras were on (they even had a CRANE, sportsfans) and I got all intense with my finger poised on the Garmin in the front row, they did a countdown, and I sprinted away from the start line like I was a Biggest Loser contestant being chased by Jillian with a taser ("I'll bet you can run a block, bitch, if I chase you with this taser!" - yes, I would pay real money to see that. Wait, I'd pay Jillian to chase me with a taser, and I'd even let her tase me. She's hot. Sometimes, love hurts).

I knew there was no way I could hold a sub 5:00 run pace for very long, but that's not the point. Its to look marvelous, which I did, and I led the race for the first 100 yards or so (I had a hell of a lead, actually, it took another 100 for the first runners to catch me. This means that I'm in good enough shape that there's no way a certain Captain could catch me either...) and I eased up just past the camera crane and pulled over to the left side so the faster runners could pass. I hate being caught up in the pack at any race, especially these kind of races where I enter because even though I know there are far fitter people (and their dogs) who are going to have me eating their dust, there are far more *not* so fit people (and their dogs) that are going to be watching my taut metrosexual butt taunt them for the entire race as they vainly try to shake off decades of Doritos in a futile effort to catch up.

The heat was pretty hard on everyone today, I had a few folks pass me that later were walking. But I'm going to quit even trying to make sense of how to race, and I was so tired this morning - I had a hard week at work - that after the first 1/2 mile, feeling how hot it was, and how incredibly congested it was with dogs this year (there were very few solo runners this year compared to when I ran this race in 2008), I said "Screw this, I'm jogging" and that's what I did, and I still beat my run time from Parkway - that is, until the last 1/2 mile when I was weaving through a crowd of dog walkers (brilliantly, the 2K dog walk loop is shared with the run loop at the end) already half-dead from the humidity, and it was impossible to run fast, and I didn't have the way cleared OJ Bronco-like for me...

But I'll digress for a second about retractable leashes and people who don't know how to run with their dog (and chances are they haven't actually jogged the poor dog that much before the race - 5K is a hell of a long distance for a dog to run if its not used to it)... I about got taken down by a 60# mixed breed whose owner let it run BETWEEN my legs where the dog did a FULL STOP to relieve itself. I glared at the dude. I also did not see that dude or the dog after that.

I also want to say - PARENTS - its awesome that your child, who is somewhere between 8-12 years of age, is running with the family hound that weighs more than they do. However, your child is not strong enough or heavy enough to control a completely untrained Bowser and said Bowser is also a tripping hazard for solo runners or other runners that know what they're doing (or not) with their dog.

I am going to suggest that next year SSPCA ask - strongly - that people running with their dog not have retractable leashes. I've also been nearly taken out on the bike trail by those damn things.

Anyway, back to being stuck in the pack the last 1/2 mile - after the earlier near tripping incident, this kind of irritated me - although hell, its a really a dog walk/run race and I shouldn't care, and since the course weaves by the golf course in Land Park, where the announcer told us a few times that "don't take your dog on the golf course or its a $300 fine" - I just couldn't resist being a bit of a jerk and vented my irritation with the General Dumbassedness of Humanity by razzing a couple of 50# overweight golfers - guys probably in their early 30s (speaking of early 30s, I had someone tell me that I looked 32 today :) ) who were putting on the green (and tying this all back together with Jillian) "Hey guys, I don't think Jillian would approve of Budweiser and a golf cart as an acceptable form of exercise!"

I mean, we are trying to stop global warming, some of the electricity that charges up those carts come from fossil fuels, along with the gasoline used to maintain the course... golfers are KILLING OUR PLANET.

(I say this tongue in cheek, the golf course would probably be full of built up condos with no place for the squirrels and birds to live if it weren't a golf course...) Golf is a fun game, especially if you are a bad golfer (like me) and don't take it seriously while you are out there, and even better, if you're not playing, you can ridicule people who REALLY miss their shots and bounce their golf ball at least 50 yards off of the green right in front of you (this happened while I was walking back to my car).

"NICE SHOT!" ;)