Back at it
Portland, I missed you!!
It’s so green and wonderful here. The sun is out and it feels like a completely fresh start now that I’m back in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve been gone for almost four months and am excited to get out to my old stomping grounds. I went to Columbia Edgewater today to start my “tournament prep” by getting used to the speed of the greens and the different type of rough. It went pretty well, I practiced short game aspects and then played the par 3 course. I really missed the short game facility out there, it has got to be one of the best places to practice short game in the country. At least, it’s one of the best that I have had the opportunity to utilize. Here is the short course practice area, it’s a 100 x 100 yard chip and pitch area with bunkers and unlimited types of lies:
I hit the ball well, felt like I had made huge progress since my last time out there. The holes are between 50 and 130 yards and I hit every green on the majority of the four balls I played and the ones I missed were just a little left or right. All in all, definitely striking the ball worlds better than four months ago and I am proud of that.
My putting was decent, but it will take a few days to get used to the slower speed and less break of these bent grass greens. In Georgia they use a different variety of bent grass that has more grain and far more break. It will be easier to adjust to these than the other way around, just don’t give up the cup in most cases.
A new episode is up, it’s the 25th episode in The Dan Plan’s life, which is a good milestone. I’m not sure what the future of the episodes will be as the production company is out of Atlanta and we honestly have zero budget for putting them together, but I do know the next six are in the bag, including a couple from the tournament coming up April 21, so there will be episodes up for at least the next month and a half. After that it will be a bit stretched to put them together, but I hope that we will be able to continue producing them indefinitely. Only time will tell at this point.
The trip back from Atlanta was a blast. My friend Chris Onstad (of Achewood.com) flew out and drove back with me. For the most part it was uneventful, but we did manage to get the truck stuck in the mud in Kansas about 15 miles south of Oakley. We were going to try and see the Chalk Pyramids in the middle of the night as the moon was full, but Google maps took us off the road on a wrong turn and we somehow (I say we, but I was driving so have to take the blame) got the little Toyota stuck in the only 5 feet of mud in all of Kansas. For an hour we tried to lay down wood, dig out the tires and push the truck to dry land, but the thing was totally jammed in. Finally, a police man came with a large truck that had a winch, but said he couldn’t tow us out because it was policy due to the fact that they could get sued for damages, although he “could” ran a background check on us in case we had warrants out. I suppose this is what the world has come to where you can’t get help from an officer, just arrested. At any rate, here is a dark photo of our stuckness:
The officer knew of a man, Louis, who could tow us, but he wanted $125 to pull us five feet forward, so we decided to give it a go on our own. About 30 minutes later, coyotes started howling and the wind began to pick up, so we called AAA. They told us it would be no longer than 45 minutes to get a tow. We waited patiently for our escape. About 2 hours later we still hadn’t seen anyone, but then finally got the call from the tow truck driver as he was on his way. Seeing that Oakley is a town of about 1,500 people, it made sense that Louis was our AAA man. He got out of his truck and for the first 2 minutes just stared at us blankly, it was fairly odd. Then, he said we should have called him at 10, which is when the officer called him… I wasn’t quite sure how to explain to him that we had actually called him then, so instead talked about our failed attempts to free the truck. He was a man of few words and just walked right by as I was talking to hook his chain to the front of my truck. fifteen minutes later we were free and back on the road, covered in mud and with ice cubes as toes. It was a good night by the end, but we never did get to see those Chalk Pyramids. Perhaps there will be another chance one of these days.
The rest of America (at least from Denver to Portland) looks a lot like this:
It’s a huge and beautiful country. So much land and open space. I highly recommend driving across America one day if you have not already.
The one downfall is that we didn’t have time to stop and play some courses. I saw a handful of one’s that I would have loved to have teed it up on; this one in particular:
It’s a bit hard to see behind my goofy grin, but there is a course down there along the Snake River in Twin Falls, Idaho. One day I will play this course, this much I know is true.
For now, it’s back to Portland and time to get tournament ready. My view today:
Check out this week’s episode which is up now and congrats to fellow lefty Bubba for the amazing comeback and subsequent playoff victory at the Master’s yesterday. What a finish!