Of course one man's vacation
is another's torture.
The truth, of course, is that
everywhere has its pluses and minuses
...Now, back to our golf game.
Our intrepid and accomplished
midwestern bowler is acquiring
great new skills in spherical manipulation
with every swing.
First, locate the ball...
Then we can go for the putt.
And after a few zillion putts,
we can attempt a full swing
for a long shot. Or go for the
swing first, if aim isn't a priority...
And with a little help from our
friends (very little), there we go, wheeeeeee!
As the lasses finished up their
hits and tallies and parred
and sparred, I looked for
pretty things to capture
with my lens. There's only
so many shots of people standing
over tees you can get excited about.
Here's a lovely water hazard,
ever so inviting to the hot and sweaty golf ball.
Another bit of the landscaper's art.
Some pretty summer blossoms.
A couple hours later it was done.
I'm not sure who won,
probably me.
I got the pictures and didn't
break a sweat. Lorraine
and I stopped by a Wendy's
and I got a drink or a Frosty
or something and Lorraine
got something for her supper and
we went back to her house and teased cats.
Though I'm pretty sure the cats always
got the best of any situation, sooner or later.
I rested up at Lorraine's as she mostly went about her normal business; I caught up with my email, called Amy to tell her I was still on this side of the plane of existence, called Nancy C. to keep tabs (she still had all my art held hostage, after all), generally kicked back a bit. Just as I had decided to get off the computer, all the electricity went out. That was certainly a neat trick, but I didn't think my psychokinetic abilities were quite that developed....Three Rivers started getting some rather violent, extremely fast windy storm weather. A storm ripped through town quickly and many trees and signs and other big scary things fell over all around town. Streets were blocked off either by nature or police tape, as lines were down dancing and sparking on the asphalt here and there. That was in the late afternoon, and we went to Lorraine's church meeting both for her to do that and to check out the neighborhood. I didn't so much attend the meeting as guard a sofa in the back of the room while she did the meeting stuff. It was somewhat interesting in that it was mostly in the dark, being in the church basement and most of the electricity around town having been cut off. If people weren't sitting around candles quasi-conspiratorially and talking, I could have had a nice nap. Pity I didn't have my camera with me then (or it was too dark for the camera); some of the storm damage was actually impressive.
This weather thing changed a few matters...we had to do stuff we wouldn't have had to otherwise, and couldn't do some things; the next day we had to help out with Lorraine's sister's
freezer situation, seeing as the electricity wasn't coming on fast just everywhere, or at least not dependably at any given time, and more storms of the same ilk were predicted. In fact Chicago was being blasted, and a really big blow out was expected about the time I'd be heading that way. I couldn't just wait out the weekend since I had to be back at work the next week, so I had to leave sooner than planned and double-back east, or risk taking an express tornado ride to some unscheduled destination. L and I brunched at Burger King and said our good-byes, and I headed back to Coldwater and towards Fort Wayne, Indiana, rather than Gary.
If I had gone straight to Illinois then, I am not sure whether I would have made it or not...when I started it was fairly sunny except for clouds building to the west, and the ride was reasonably uneventful except for growing traffic. However, by the time I got near Indianapolis, the storm front was black and well-defined, a big scary WALL to the west. I managed to get through Indy and aim southwest-ish when it hit. I am pretty sure I just skirted the storm, but that was truly bad enough. It became midnight-dark and the rain was so thick there was no seeing...wind lashing and moaning...there wasn't really anywhere to pull over safely at this area either, so everyone crept along and hoped to see tail lights. Some cars did get swept over the side, and of course there were a couple of fools who didn't slow down--fast enough. After a time of white-knuckling the steering wheel, it let up enough to get through, and finally it was back to just a normal rainstorm. Definitely scary to be in, alone in a car. I've been in them in the ol' van but this was my first really bad one in the minivan. Finally when I'd made southwest Indiana, it was all to the north, and I decided that considering everything, I'd done the smart thing with the course altering. That was a HUGE and nasty storm. I nicked it but I didn't drown. I think I weathered out the rest of the storm and the night at an Illinois reststop.
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