Kilts and hooks and fireworks, oh my.

Finishing up the weekend discussion:

Friday we got up early and headed to Ballyowen Golf Club in northern NJ. We were running a few minutes late but really wanted to take some practice swings. They were supposed to have range balls to hit, but they were out so we couldn't even do that. We headed up to the first tee and were greeted by a curmudgeon in a kilt who told us we were "on the tee". That meant no time for putting practice either. I dropped a ball on the practice green and hit a putt and the kilted ranger said, "You're on the tee!" This ranger nazi theme would continue throughout the day unfortunately.



The course itself was very nice with fewer trees and more high grass in the rough as it emulated a links style course. Links are originally Scottish, hence the kilts on some, but not all, of the rangers. I wonder if you have a choice....hmmmmm. Anyway, the rangers kept politely badgering us, but at one point I had enough. Some innocent older ranger (about 75 or so) came hobbling onto the green while we were putting. I shot a nasty comment at him in the vein of "Are you going to keep walking while I putt or stand still?" Now he had already picked up the flag for us and turned out to be a nice guy and all and probably wasn't going to say anything to us about our pace (which was well ahead of the group behind us), but my fuse was lit and he was too close.

Anyway, the rest of the round was fun despite our playing partners. One of the two guys must have spent several thousand dollars on his clubs and talked a blue streak about his sticks, but we routinely outhit him for distance off the tee. His putting stroke was good, I'll have to give him that. The other guy, also named Ken, was a complete hack. He took 4 shots out of one bunker and even turned to his buddy after one of the shots and said, "I wasn't even looking at the ball during that swing." What the hell is that?











































After the round we headed up to PA and Lake Wallenpaupack. On the way though we stopped to get Ken some cigars. In the next building over from the cigar store was a store that sold little knick-knacks and "God bless this house" signs and the like, in addition to fireworks!! Too funny. I went in the there and bought this four foot high box of fireworks originally priced at $100 for $35. What a deal, post Fourth of July and all.

Then, finally, we got to the house on the lake. Here are some shots of the house:



Yes, that's a little waterfall in front of the house. It has a huge wrap-around porch!
















Charlie was too tired to move out of the sun apparently.









Yep, that's one tired pooch. Did I mention it was about 95 degrees and extremely humid? Hoboken Dawn said the house had never been that hot. Oh, and where was Joe's room? The top floor. Ouch.









This is the yard and driveway looking up from the deck.












Finally the heat broke due to a cold front passing through. That meant heavy, steady rain for about an hour or so. Unfortunately Ken had already started grilling dinner. What to do? Simply move the grill under the canopy.....seemed to make sense to us!








After the heat broke, the upstairs room was as cool as any other in the house and remained that way through the weekend.

Tomorrow, the dreaded treble hook story and the near collapse of the weekend.
(that's known as a teaser by the way)