Rib Fest Part Deux

Oooooohhhhhh, what a day. Got up at 6:00 yesterday over at my buddy Principal Chris' house, showered and headed out to the Quad Cities. The night before, I drove through the rain and lighting to get out to their place so I didn't have to get up at 4 or 5 to make it out there in the morning. The drive to the Quad Cities was uneventful, but we arrived only shortly before our 9:00 tee time and it was raining, something that would actually work in our favor. We hit some balls, putted and as the rain halted, we teed off shortly before ten.

(Insert picture of beautiful golf course here, if I had my camera with me.)

As it turns out, the tournament was only last weekend, not two weeks ago as I thought, so the gallery stands were still up surrounding many of the greens and the course (The TPC at Deere Run) was still very much in great shape and playing like the pros played it. The rough was really, really rough, probably close to four inches deep and wet because of all the rain. Essentially if you hit the ball off the fairway, it would be a wasted stroke just trying to get your ball back into the fairway. Also because of the rain, we had to keep the carts on the paths which meant a lot more walking than normal. That was fine with me, but with the humidity and warm weather, we were soaked with sweat by the end of the day.

(Insert picture of deep rough, stands around the green and the Mississippi River.)

We finished our first round in under four hours, but then were caught up in the local crowd who decided the weather was good enough to play and the second round took us almost five hours.

Another shower and off for grub! First stop: Jim's Ribs. While not in the best part of town, it's not far from the other places we would go for food as well as where Chris grew up. After $40 worth of food and drinks (sodas only as we still had to drive home), it was off to Harris Pizza next.

This place is one of Chris' wife's favorite and last year we couldn't return without a pizza for her either. It's a thin crust pizza and they have grated sausage instead of the chunky sausage that you get around Chicago. The cool thing they do though is that they will half-cook the pizza for you so you can stick it in the fridge and cook it at your leisure. Pretty smart. We didn't actually eat any pizza this time, just picked up a pie for Mrs. Chris.

Our final stop was at Whitey's Ice Cream Shoppe. Chris worked there as a youth and was very funny with his "back when I worked here...." stories. With a name like Whitey's, I wonder if it could make it in Chicago without being picketed on a regular basis. Apparently they tried to open one in Peoria and had to close it. We did partake in a shake and it was indeed good.....better than any other place?.....maybe some, but not unbelievable. Lots of choices though and some interesting ingredients.

As we drove from neighborhood to neighborhood, we saw a house on 12th and 16th street in Moline that I just loved. It was a big white house with a wrap around porch, but the porch not only wrapped around, at the corner it bowed out and was rounded like a half circle. It needed a little work and the hood isn't all that great, but I would probably buy it in a heartbeat anyway.

Finally it was time to head home. We were at Chris' just before midnight and I got home just before one. It was a long, long day. It was very analogous to going to Rib Fest in Naperville: a ton of ribs finished off with ice cream. A good day indeed.