Tag: Michigan

Early Morning Rounds

I haven’t had the opportunity to play an early morning round of golf in a long time, but boy do I miss it. There is just something about the chill in the air, the uninterrupted dew on the fairways and greens, and the empty course waiting to be played that makes for a peaceful morning. Dodging the mowers can be tricky, but fun.

My penchant for early morning rounds likely developed during my junior golfing days. At the young age of ten or eleven I started competing in nine-hole tournaments at local golf courses. The courses donated (I presume) early morning course time to the Traverse City Junior Golf Association for us to compete. And compete we did, once a week through the summer. There were usually about eight or ten tournaments, which worked out to one per week. Just enough to establish a competitive season without being too great a burden on our parents, who got us to the course at obscenely early hours.

Later, high school golf tryouts started at 6am and ran all week. Needless to say, it was a very tiring week. High school tournaments were usually played early, too. And there were always too many pranks to be played and fun to be had to get to bed early.

So, through all of this nostalgic wandering is the reason I like playing early in the morning. It gives me a reason to think back on my childhood when I had trouble falling asleep because I was so exciting and nervous about the next mornings nine-hole tournament. That feeling never went away, and to this day, I still get butterflies in my stomach when I tee up my Titleist on the first tee and take those stiff practice swings.

Michigan #6 in Preseason Ranks

I wish I had something more to say about the pre-season rankings below other than that I miss going to fall games in the Big House. I used to live a few blocks away from the stadium in Ann Arbor and the few of us who woke up early enough would sell parking spots on our lawn for $20. Most games we could park $400 worth of cars, money we either split and pocketed or put in the house fund to buy stuff (E.g. – a large screen TV.)

1. USC
2. Ohio State
3. Texas
4. Florida
5. Oklahoma
6. Michigan
7. Florida State
8. Miami
9. LSU
10. Tennessee

Michigan Wine

“Michigan’s Wine Country Grows Where the Cherry Is King” – a NYT article about what great wine Michigan has to offer. The focus is on Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties in the northwestern part of lower Michigan. (By the tip of the pinkie finger is you look at the palm of your right had.)

I’m not a big fan of the cherry wines, which are very sweet. But both the white and red wines I tried at the Leland Wine Festival in early June were delicious.

It’s always fun to see your home area highlighted for good products.

On Being Home

I’ve been home for less than a week, and already I’m gong nuts. I walk around looking in cupboards, around corners, and outside. I’ve managed to take a doorknob off, but replacing it has been asking a bit too much at the moment. It’s weird to experience such a drop-off in mental tasking from 2+ weeks of law school finals to loafing. The down time is good, but I need to make / build / do something sooooon.

Update on the Harmonica Player

I wrote an open letter about the harmonica player that sat on the cement wall outside of the UGLi throughout my four years at the University of Michigan. A recent facebook group brought to my attention that he is actually a professor at the U of M, and is not, as I had assumed, homeless. His name is Tom Goss and he’s been playing for nearly 20 years. Chances are that if you took a stroll through the Diag in Ann Arbor you would hear him today. Here’s a Michigan Daily article on him.

The Elusive Breakfast Nook

The nook invites you in in a subtle way, like it’s a drug dealer in a high school hallway. But, I’ve never bought or dealt drugs, so I’m only guessing on that. What I’m saying is that the nook is subtle unless you are in the know. Then it is the place you spend your Saturday mornings having the usual or the special. They will know which you prefer.

Nooks in my life:

  • The Omelette Shop in Traverse City, MI
  • Angelo’s in Ann Arbor, MI
  • The Friendly Toast in Portsmouth, NH
  • The Cottage in La Jolla, CA
  • Whitlow’s on Wilson in Arlington, VA

Drag Racing

The high school parking lot is dark and empty. The faded lines that define the spaces during weekdays create lanes the length of the lot that we are racing down as fast as we can in a Jimmy and a Jeep. The fear of getting caught is too far behind to enter our mind.Alice is in the back seat of my Jimmy holding on tight and talking – always talking on her cell phone. Her bright blond hair shines against a black t-shirt that reads “Metallica” in bold silver letters across her breasts. I look away from the pavement ahead and into the rearview mirror. Alice sneers when I catch her eye then blows me a kiss. The air in the car sits low like a heavy fog and smells like cotton blossom body wash and cigarette smoke. I inhale deeply through my nose and exhale through my mouth as the adrenalin pulses down my spine. The engine whines as the car nears eighty-five miles per hour.

At full speed Bob’s jeep looks like an autonomous red blur rolling on black spheres. Even during the day he is invisible behind dark tinted windows, and now he is just a lurking shadow ahead and to the right.

There isn’t much to this race, beyond the girl in my back seat. She was the fixation of his adolescent dreams and is now the source of our silent animosity. She is also my girlfriend because I was too arrogant to know the rules. To care.

Bob doesn’t talk to me anymore, and it is irony, perhaps, that we are racing each other tonight. As if racing cars in the darkness of nowhere will settle something. Damn it, it’s just a girlfriend. Is that really going to wreck our friendship? It was more than that. I knew that. But staring ahead into the open lot and knowing there was a lost friend racing next to me exaggerated the void.

It was over before it started.