Highland Walk Golf Course at Victoria Bryant

This weekend Melanie and I traveled down to northeast Georgia to visit with her brother in law's brother and his wife. We traveled down with her sister and brother in law. This is the third time that Jon (Mel's brother in law) and I have taken advantage of a family outing to play a round of golf. In fact, two years ago when I played with him and his church group in Winston-Salem at Pudding Ridge my bad playing inspired me to put some real effort into not sucking.

This time Jon's brother joined us and he hadn't played in six years. He struggled early but started getting his groove back halfway through the first nine holes. We started at 8am this last Saturday morning and at 8am in early July in Georgia it's already pushing 80. It was really hot by 10am. I drank a lot of water and sweated like crazy. But we made it through all 18 holes. I was really feeling the heat at the turn but I chugged a lot of water over the next three holes and was feeling a lot better for the last five holes. Playing 18 holes of golf is like watching the Coca Cola 600 NASCAR. It feels like you go through about three or four stages of play as the day passes and your game fluctuates.

The course, which is known officially as Highland Walk Golf Course at Victoria Bryant impressed all three of us as soon as we stepped out of the car. It's in high country and from the clubhouse area you have a good view of the surrounding countryside. Our reservation had been made in advance over the internet by Jon's brother Mike and we paid $40 each to play 18 holes with a cart. I thought that was a great deal once I saw the great condition of the course and the course design.

There are three things to really know about this course: elevation change, doglegs and challenging greens.

A great example of elevation change and doglegs is hole #3. We played the white tees and this hole was 391 yards from there. There is little margin for error on this hole. If you go right you are a mile away from the green, if you go left you are in the woods and if you don't get a good long drive you are facing a tough uphill lie with woods between you and the green and if you aren't careful you can end up on the woods with your long second shot because the fairway pulls hard right to left almost until you get up to the green. Also, the course doesn't use doglegs to artificially add a stroke to a short hole. The holes take to their turn far enough down the fairway to reward a good drive and punish a short one.

This picture below shows a good example of what I mean. This is the view from the tee at hole #5.

You have to hit over a valley onto a relatively small landing area. I had one of my better drives here and had a nice look at the green. Of course, I hit my 4 iron right into the woods to the left of the green. Below is a graphic provided by the golf course.



Another doozy is #12. This one reminded me of the old #9 at Revolution in Charlotte, NC. You have to hit through a tunnel of trees onto an elevated fairway. In honor of the old #9 at Revolution I went ahead and hit my tee shot directly into the woods. Jon, who you see standing below in the panorama nailed his tee shot to about where you can see the golf cart. If you get a good tee shot you are looking at an elevated green about 150 yards away. Par here is as good as a birdie.




The 17th hole is their signature hole and you are way, way above the fairway when you tee off. Your ball just flies and flies and flies. If you hit it straight you will be about 100 yards from the green.


I have to mention the greens. The greens are really tough. They are hard as hell to read and they are super fast. I've never misread to many puts before. Jon said he thinks it's because courses in Georgia are inspired/compete with Augusta. That may be true because two putting here consistently is extremely difficult.

I would love to play at this course again. I would go there in a second. For a public course on a state park it blows away all of the public state owned courses in Charlotte. The design and condition is as good or better than Emerald Lakes in Matthews, NC. Renaissance in Charlotte has a design on par with Highland Walk but it's not nearly as well maintained. I can't imagine playing a better course for a mere $40. It's perfect.

Bottle Rockets

What would the 4th of July be without a couple of pictures of bottle rocket trails?



This one isn't really a bottle rocket. It's pyramidal shaped spinner that we like.

Lake Hartwell Panorama

Today we are in Lavonia, GA at a house on Lake Hartwell. This is the view off our friends' dock.

From 201102

The Okinawan Sky

One thing about Okinawa that keeps coming back to me is the clouds. Being on Okinawa is like being in the middle of the ocean. I may be wrong but Okinawa has to be too small to really effect the clouds so what I saw was like floating in the middle of the ocean. It mesmerized me. Essentially, all day, almost every day, low cumulus would pass over and pile up over the island. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else. Well, you know, it's not like I am a globetrotter or anything but I know what I like. Here's a few recent shots from around Okinawa showcasing the clouds.



This one is my favorite




This guy Le Monde Bleu has a bunch of nice photos.




A sunset by Ralph Doria. Okinawan sunsets were out of this world.


This is me enjoying a sunset around 1988 in Okinawa.

Mackinac and the Father Marquette Statue

I recently purchased a set of Michigan vacation slides from 1966. I came across a nice shot of Fort Mackinac and the Father Marquette statue. I went of Flickr to see if I could find a recent shot from a similar angle. I couldn't find an exact match but I came close.

1966


2006

Getting Old in Sports

I've been thinking a lot about this New York Times article about Derek Jeter and the aging athlete. I was especially struck about a comment he made about Willie Mays. Mays' late care is often seen through the, as the writer put it, his "sad last years with (the New York) Mets." Mays really did have an pretty effective post 30 career. For players 30 and over he is sixth all time in total home runs (third if you don't count steroid ridden monsters). But if you look at achievements you really can see that once even baseball players hit 30 their truly great years are mostly behind them and at 35 you are over the hill unless, of course, you are a steroid ridden monster.

Ty Cobb won the American League batting title eleven times. His last was in 1919 when he was 32. In 1922 he did bat .401 and came second to the 29 year old George Sisler who batted .420. Yeah, Ty Cobb hit .401 the year he turned 35. That's just ridiculous.

Cobb never stole more than 50 bases the year after he stole 55 in 1917, the year he turned 30.

Reggie Jackson was really durable. I had no idea he played 132 games in 1986, the year he turned 40. He was strickly a DH and had the best year of his career for percentage of atbats that produced walks, 17.8%. This was his fifth and final year with the California Angels and he he also had his lowest strikeout percentage at 22.2% since he left the Yankees in 1981.

Detroit Tigers shortstop Alan Trammell had his caereer year at 29 in 1987 when he had 207 hits and batted .343 After the age of 35 he never played more than 76 games in his final three years.

Hall of Famer Ernie Banks, who hit 512 homeruns, didn't lead his league in any offensive category after he entered his 30s.

After the age of 32 the only offensive category Willie McCovey led the National League in was intentional walks when he was 35 in 1973.

Jim Thome is playing right now at the age of 40. The last year he hit more than 40 homeruns and had more than 100 RBIs was in 2006 when he was 35.

The last year Craig Biggio led the National League in doubles was in 1999 when he was 33 years old.

Brooks Robinson had 100 RBIs twice in his career. Both of those seasons were when he was in his 20s.

With all these numbers out there I'm surprised the Yankees didn't bargain harder with Derek Jeter. He's 37, he's never going to his .300 again and he'll never have another season where he'll score 100 runs. That he hit .334 and had 212 hits in 2006 at the age of 35 is pretty impressive but from now on he'll be average at best.

S.S. Vacationland

I finished up the first batch of slides I purchased off eBay last year. A nice surprise was one of the first I scanned in today. It's a picture of several beautiful old cars lined up to catch a ferry across the straits of Mackinac in northern Michigan in 1952. The Mackinac Bridge didn't open until 1957 so in 1952 if you wanted to get from Michigan's lower peninsula to the upper peninsula you had to drive your car onto a big boat. It also looks like you had to wait in line for a while. The Ferry is the S.S. Vacationland.

Fancy a Bit of Rock and Roll?

Last night at the Visulite (one of my favorite venues) I went and saw Dave Alvin and his band The Guilty Ones. It was Dave playing the rock and roll show so, naturally, it was totally awesome. He's become one of my favorite artists over the years. His output since his 1994 album King of California has been at the varsity level. He played four songs off his new album and they were all well received. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one there last night that had listened to the streaming version of it online.

Two of the songs from the new album were about two of his recently departed friends/collaborators. Black Rose of Texas which he wrote about Amy Farris was slow and sweet and Run Conejo Run about his best friend, Chris Gaffney was furious. The slide guitar by Chris Miller on Black Rose of Texas was amazing. I'm not sure what he did but, I swear, I thought I heard voices.

The biggest surprise of the evening was the drummer, Lisa Pankratz, who is a total bad ass. Incredible drummer. Dave even called her his favorite drummer to play with. I would love to see her play again.

I took a few pictures. I was more into watching the show that popping off a few hundred pictures. It's harder for me to photograph live shows now because EVERYBODY is now photographing shows. The only negative last night was the two loudmouths standing to the left of the stage who talked loudly almost the whole evening. Even during Black Rose of Texas. I remember thinking at the end of the song, "Why are you applauding? You didn't hear the song."

Dave in his classic bent knee pose


Dave telling a joke


Chris Miller


The Bad Ass Lisa Pankratz

Trumped!

I sent Michael a chat message telling him to view my Call of Duty: Black Ops blind grenade double kill, which you can view below. He replied, "See your double and raise you a triple" and he linked to the second video below. Bastard.

My video


Bastard Michael's video

The Book Sale

One of the little perks of working at the library is book donations. People will donate just about any book to their local library. Most donations are your standard popular fiction. Those types of donations we stick immediately on our book sale shelves. Another large section of donations is old books covered in mold which we immediately put in our recycling dumpster. It's still shocking after all these years at the library to see some of the absolute garbage people think we could use. A PC user manual from the early 90s? No thanks! A box of moldy fiction that was popular in 1973? No, thank you! Part of it, I think is that people cannot admit their book collection is worthless. You know, sometimes it is. I'm sure when I die and my large collection of Robert Heinlein paperbacks shows up at some library a worker there will look at that box and say, "WTF?"

Sometimes you come across a nice little find though. The other day I noticed a book printed in 1944 called "Battle Report: Pearl Harbor to Coral Sea." Its pages have browned over the years and it's falling apart but, as I was flipping through it, I saw a note accompanied by a drawing on the front page. It's a message from someone named Walter to Charlie and Margaret Tompkins. Walter is thanking Charlie for being instrumental in getting him into the navy. Upon closer reading I noticed that writer of the note is Walter Karig, one of the authors of the book. So, I took it home and scanned it. It's one of those slices of Americana that I love.