Arnold Palmer Golf Tournament
Mar. 28th, 2012 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessHow to attend the Arnold Palmer Golf Tournament in style, or, why I wasn't at ICFA at all on Thursday:
1. Wake up and realize there can be no golf without coffee. Or no coffee without golf. No. Wait. The first one. This will all be clearer with coffee. Explain dire need of coffee to mother.
2. Terrified mother, realizing what an entire day with a coffeeless you might be like, quickly agrees.
3. Pop over to Bay Hills.
4. Bay Hills, for those who haven't been there, is one of those Florida golf courses surrounded by lovely well manicured homes, which thus means it can only be reached through lovely, twisting, well manicured streets, which means that even if you carefully follow the directions of every single sign and every single gesture from a volunteer you will still end up taking a right when you should have taken a left and therefore ended up nowhere near Parking Lot Ten necessitating a U-Turn and another sip of coffee.
5. Fortunately enough, once you do reach Parking Lot Ten, your attention will be distracted by two striking sandhill cranes and two fluffy little baby sandhill cranes who don't even have real crane feathers yet. They are little and brown and stumbling and frankly just seeing them is worth the entire trip. And for those wondering why we should protect sandhill cranes which are frankly pretty stupid birds, even as birds go, I can only say, FLUFFY LITTLE BABY SANDHILL CRANES. Cuteness personified to the point where even the grimmest person will end up grinning.
6. By "parking lot" I mean "additional golf course" and by "parking" I mean "going up and down little hills and bump bumps and trying to figure out exactly where the disabled parking on a golf course actually is.
7. Scooter assembled, pass through security after convincing everyone that your illegally oversized backpack a) can fit into a plastic Mastercard bag b) contains nothing more dangerous than a Gatorade. Which will turn out to be hideously dangerous later, but I anticipate.
8. Gatorade also turns out to be a remarkable weapon against the enticing sights of $4 lemonade. And no, not the homemade stuff, either – Minute Maid lemonade.
9. Begin exploring the golf course. Parking lot ten starts you off nowhere near the main tents of hole 1 and hole 18 (which we jointly agreed to avoid, with a sigh of relief) meaning that almost nobody is around and you can watch golf and viciously fighting ducks without an issue.
10. Deal with the one issue, which is that the scooter has been carefully equipped with multiple safety measures including automatic breaks to ensure that it absolutely will not take off down hills, which means that it will barely go down any sort of "steep" incline (the differences between the scooter and dictionary definitions of "steep" are profound). Also that the scooter wants to tip over when it crosses the bumpers set up to protect the various wires running to the multiple, multiple cameras of the Golf Channel and NBC which are pretty much everywhere. This adds a bit of excitement to the day.
11. Watch the small crowds of people happily following in the Wake that is Tiger Woods Not Actually Winning Yet (this got bigger on Sunday when this became Tiger Woods Maybe Really Making a Comeback This Time), followed by the somewhat smaller but considerably happier because carrying beer crowd following Phil Mickelson. Crowds trot off and the ducks start fighting again, leaving everyone to gossip with the "volunteer," who, as it turns out, has paid $90 for the privilege of standing in the sun, moving his arms up and down for silence, and watching to ensure that absolutely no one – no one – dares have a cell phone on anything but vibrate or, even worse, TRIES TO TAKE A PICTURE. (Any attempt to take a picture during the event summons security to the spot immediately. Scarier than the fighting ducks.)
12. Find like your absolute dream house, with a WATERFALL and a small hot tub and various balconies and a profusion of plants dazzling in greenness and bright flowers, and comfort yourself with the realization that, really, it's just far too close to its neighbors and you'd never have any privacy which kinda negates the waterfall bit.
13. Thanks to your inability to read or a woefully inadequate map (I'm going with the second, more flattering possibility) find yourself at yet another hole watching Tiger Woods, followed by Phil Mickelson, again, followed by the current leader. Realize that as much as you would like to return to the car, you don't really need to return that much. Settle in some nice shade right beside two men comfortably lounging in lawn chairs.
14. THUNK!
15. AHHHH!
16. WHAT?
17. BOUNCE!
18. Swiftly find out that the loud THUNK came from the sound of Zach Johnson landing a high speed golf ball right into the crotch of the (male) spectator in the lawn chair.
19. Freaked out spectator: "You know, I put my hands there because I just had a feeling…."
20. New problem. Not only is spectator kinda stunned but the ball bounced off his crotch into the lap of the next person, who scrambled up allowing the ball to land in the chair. Everyone is very excited trying to figure out what to do next, other than absolutely and positively not touching the ball again since it was already sorta illegally moved. We think.
21. Zach Johnson strolls up sadly, expecting to find his ball in the high grass, and is somewhat stunned to realize that it's sitting in a chair instead.
22. "Are you all right? No one's been hurt? You're sure?"
23. Everyone is fine if just a tiny -- tiny -- bit overexcited. Maybe not tiny. Zach Johnson passes out free golf balls while waiting for a golf marshal to show up. Golf marshal appears. Excited discussion. Finally, chair is moved, ball is dropped, and Zach Johnson remembers to aim for the right spot this time.
24. Realize that is getting hot. And you need French fries. Also, a nap. Otherwise you will not be able to move quickly enough to avoid golf balls aimed in your general direction. Or, for that matter, fighting ducks.
1. Wake up and realize there can be no golf without coffee. Or no coffee without golf. No. Wait. The first one. This will all be clearer with coffee. Explain dire need of coffee to mother.
2. Terrified mother, realizing what an entire day with a coffeeless you might be like, quickly agrees.
3. Pop over to Bay Hills.
4. Bay Hills, for those who haven't been there, is one of those Florida golf courses surrounded by lovely well manicured homes, which thus means it can only be reached through lovely, twisting, well manicured streets, which means that even if you carefully follow the directions of every single sign and every single gesture from a volunteer you will still end up taking a right when you should have taken a left and therefore ended up nowhere near Parking Lot Ten necessitating a U-Turn and another sip of coffee.
5. Fortunately enough, once you do reach Parking Lot Ten, your attention will be distracted by two striking sandhill cranes and two fluffy little baby sandhill cranes who don't even have real crane feathers yet. They are little and brown and stumbling and frankly just seeing them is worth the entire trip. And for those wondering why we should protect sandhill cranes which are frankly pretty stupid birds, even as birds go, I can only say, FLUFFY LITTLE BABY SANDHILL CRANES. Cuteness personified to the point where even the grimmest person will end up grinning.
6. By "parking lot" I mean "additional golf course" and by "parking" I mean "going up and down little hills and bump bumps and trying to figure out exactly where the disabled parking on a golf course actually is.
7. Scooter assembled, pass through security after convincing everyone that your illegally oversized backpack a) can fit into a plastic Mastercard bag b) contains nothing more dangerous than a Gatorade. Which will turn out to be hideously dangerous later, but I anticipate.
8. Gatorade also turns out to be a remarkable weapon against the enticing sights of $4 lemonade. And no, not the homemade stuff, either – Minute Maid lemonade.
9. Begin exploring the golf course. Parking lot ten starts you off nowhere near the main tents of hole 1 and hole 18 (which we jointly agreed to avoid, with a sigh of relief) meaning that almost nobody is around and you can watch golf and viciously fighting ducks without an issue.
10. Deal with the one issue, which is that the scooter has been carefully equipped with multiple safety measures including automatic breaks to ensure that it absolutely will not take off down hills, which means that it will barely go down any sort of "steep" incline (the differences between the scooter and dictionary definitions of "steep" are profound). Also that the scooter wants to tip over when it crosses the bumpers set up to protect the various wires running to the multiple, multiple cameras of the Golf Channel and NBC which are pretty much everywhere. This adds a bit of excitement to the day.
11. Watch the small crowds of people happily following in the Wake that is Tiger Woods Not Actually Winning Yet (this got bigger on Sunday when this became Tiger Woods Maybe Really Making a Comeback This Time), followed by the somewhat smaller but considerably happier because carrying beer crowd following Phil Mickelson. Crowds trot off and the ducks start fighting again, leaving everyone to gossip with the "volunteer," who, as it turns out, has paid $90 for the privilege of standing in the sun, moving his arms up and down for silence, and watching to ensure that absolutely no one – no one – dares have a cell phone on anything but vibrate or, even worse, TRIES TO TAKE A PICTURE. (Any attempt to take a picture during the event summons security to the spot immediately. Scarier than the fighting ducks.)
12. Find like your absolute dream house, with a WATERFALL and a small hot tub and various balconies and a profusion of plants dazzling in greenness and bright flowers, and comfort yourself with the realization that, really, it's just far too close to its neighbors and you'd never have any privacy which kinda negates the waterfall bit.
13. Thanks to your inability to read or a woefully inadequate map (I'm going with the second, more flattering possibility) find yourself at yet another hole watching Tiger Woods, followed by Phil Mickelson, again, followed by the current leader. Realize that as much as you would like to return to the car, you don't really need to return that much. Settle in some nice shade right beside two men comfortably lounging in lawn chairs.
14. THUNK!
15. AHHHH!
16. WHAT?
17. BOUNCE!
18. Swiftly find out that the loud THUNK came from the sound of Zach Johnson landing a high speed golf ball right into the crotch of the (male) spectator in the lawn chair.
19. Freaked out spectator: "You know, I put my hands there because I just had a feeling…."
20. New problem. Not only is spectator kinda stunned but the ball bounced off his crotch into the lap of the next person, who scrambled up allowing the ball to land in the chair. Everyone is very excited trying to figure out what to do next, other than absolutely and positively not touching the ball again since it was already sorta illegally moved. We think.
21. Zach Johnson strolls up sadly, expecting to find his ball in the high grass, and is somewhat stunned to realize that it's sitting in a chair instead.
22. "Are you all right? No one's been hurt? You're sure?"
23. Everyone is fine if just a tiny -- tiny -- bit overexcited. Maybe not tiny. Zach Johnson passes out free golf balls while waiting for a golf marshal to show up. Golf marshal appears. Excited discussion. Finally, chair is moved, ball is dropped, and Zach Johnson remembers to aim for the right spot this time.
24. Realize that is getting hot. And you need French fries. Also, a nap. Otherwise you will not be able to move quickly enough to avoid golf balls aimed in your general direction. Or, for that matter, fighting ducks.