4th of July Vacation Part I: Charlevoix

Rae and I paid a visit to her family in Michigan for the 4th of July. My official word for the week was decadent. We zoomed around on a boat, played golf, and ate lots of food.

The first part of the trip was spent up north in Charlevoix (top of the mitten). Thursday was spent with John, Robbin, and Co. on their new boat, the JD Won One II. It's rather deluxe, and even has a dingy on the back. Their boat has a boat.

On day two, Rae, Ray, Irene and I played golf at Dunmaglas. This was the first of three rounds that my father-in-law Ray and I played over a three-day period (thanks, Ray). What I remember most about Dunmaglas is that there is a big hill in the middle of the course and they set it up with a bunch of tee boxes on top. The result is that you get to hit soaring drives that hang up in the air and then drop down to earth at ten thousand miles an hour. Pretty cool. The downside is that, to facilitate the layout, they needed lots of long winding cart paths that seemed longer than the holes themselves. Not exactly a walker's course.

Here's Rae on the 14th tee. You can see the big drop to the fairway behind her.

Seven Oaks Golf Club

I played in a Golf Channel Amateur Tour event last weekend at the Seven Oaks Golf Club. It was my first time playing in one of these tournaments, and I'm psyched to say that I finished first in a field of eight. Normally they divide players into six flights based on handicaps, but because only eight people showed up, they instead used a quota system in which you get one point for a bogey, two points for a par, four points for a birdie, and six points for an eagle. Players are assigned a negative starting score based on their flight. I finished at plus three, thanks to a stellar back-nine 40. My total score for the round was 89; highlights included four of the best bunker shots of my life and a great bounce off a tree after I jacked a tee shot straight toward someone's house out of bounds.

Seven Oaks was a great place for the tournament. It is the golf course of Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and was designed by Robert Trent Jones. It has hosted a NCAA Division I Championship and two New York State Men's Amateur Championships. The course is definitely challenging, but not so penal that folks were loosing balls all over the place. The greens were something else, definitely the fastest putting surfaces I've ever played on. I saw more than one two-footer turn into a twelve-footer coming back the other way.

The next event is on the 14th at Foxfire in Baldwinsville, New York. Wish me luck!

Photo credits: Seven Oaks web site

Rainbow

There is some very sad news in my world this week. My sister-in-law's cat, Delmonte, was senselessly killed on Sunday. I've been praying to my Higher Power for some help in coming to terms with this. I got a response in the form of a spectacular rainbow that greeted me tonight at Frear Park.