Range Rat

Day 1 at altitude. Needing a week or so to get acclimated. Plan's to work ground up again, getting better grounded as I'd learned in San Antonio, getting more posture awareness til it feels natural, working on the pivot, side bend and creating more space for the down swing to come through.

All of these I can work on with the wedge, and take it easy to let the hands catch up. Eventually, I'll re-find a balance of how much practice vs rest to keep things pain free once the hands heal.

Patience is in order while healing and preparing the lower body foundation for this revision of the swing. Mentally, getting brain around mechanics of a more body centric swing in preparation. Meanwhile, just enjoying the view.
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Recovery

Been out of action the last few weeks. Both hands, and right elbow throbbing with deep ache from months on the rock pile. Just not used to that. And, no spring chicken anymore either.

Had to stop Advil and equivalent nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories cuz they're bad for you. So, no alternative but to chill out, switch to herbals like boswellia and cumin, toss in some glucosamine for hope, and be patient.

I've a nagging strained joint at the base of the left thumb, which i've figured out a way to shore up using rock tape (KT). This variable stretch tape is genius.

Slowly, the aches have started to subside and can sleep without pain, and grip a club again. The rest has also been a good time to analyze some videos, surf the Tube and reflect on what to work on next. Here's the current list once the sessions resume:

1. Don't tighten grip on club when downswing starts. Old baseball reflex. And I'm bleeding out some energy here. Learn to hold off on that and just rotate the body.

2. Get better coordinated on the left side of my body. I'm right footed, and not well coordinated with left leg, which I need to precisely activate to post up and clear the left hip. The slide is another deep baseball habit (and another power leak) that needs to be eliminated up for good. Drill hitting off left leg only. Pick up balls out of cup using left leg instead of right.

3. Get un-lazy and rotate body through the second half of swing. Focus on not letting arms collapse after hit is good metric across the range from short pitches to drives. Develop and hold high finish.

4. Rotational strength training. Also start spending more time with the driver, including going wider on back swinging, and pushing to extend through the ball.

Good short list for resuming the grind on the range. Thanks to the tape, get to kick off the restart with a bit of filming with the golf ball and a drone. More on that soon...
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When in Rome

Quickie at Blade Runner inspired carbohydrate crack shop during layover in Amsterdam en route to the Indian Ocean. Toasty. savoury, crunchy and creamy - the best window shopping on earth for late night yum food.
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Divine Intervention

Search for coincidence of sunshine and space-available shelter during the American spring break season pushes things eastward, through New Orleans, Alabama, Biloxi and now Florida. 

Unfortunately, regardless of blue patch chased, rain has similar plans and follows. It's spooky. Been using RadarNow to gain advantage of god's eye view with no success. Today, from Palm Springs to Miami, it's sunny and dry, except here. Resigned to stop chasing greener pastures, and just do a sit and wait.

By chance, landed in an odd, relatively unpopulated corner of Florida, and maybe make a few chill friends.

Passing time doing a bit of exploration of the flats off of Homosassa, futzing with the drone, and think experiments on how to convert this blog into something something more interesting and useful as an app.

Meanwhile, the Trump Chronicles in the home state of Marco Rubio provides endless entertainment.
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World Famous

Somewhere in the outback way west of El Paso, TX where you still pump gas then pay cash. Jerky's good, but apparently the big seller is wasabi peanuts from Japan. Go figure.
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Road Taco

Pink slime and trans fat crack. Permitted only on bad days or on road trips 8 hours or more.
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Q-School

It started as another typical Saturday. Raw Meal breakfast. Cup of joe to go. Run errands, then down south to the Raven for the day's rock pile session. Ran into Martin Chuck. Had a nice lunch.

By chance, there was an opening to squeeze in right when the rates dropped at 2 PM. Weather was perfect. Felt good. Why not?

Got paired up with some Q-School dudes gunning for spots on the tour. They played from way back, made it hard on themselves, and just smashed the ball around for fun. Was a great experience playing with them and watching how good their short game was, which gave them the confidence to attack the stick knowing that if they missed, having to get up and down was no big deal. I'm only guessing, but it seemed like they weren't playing for score. Rather they were letting random stuff happen to practice how to get out of, or capitalize on, this situation or that.

On the wow front, their ball flight off the tee is indelibly inked in my brain as something to envy, and figure out how to achieve. Wedge distances are about the same, but they're a club longer around the 7 iron, and two clubs longer with the long irons. I've more work to do. Watching the ball flights, I think it has to do with the amount of de-lofting at strike and just more head speed.

Mentally, it was heaps of on-the-spot spot performance pressure training to hit my drive with my two day old driver after watching theirs get smoked down the fairway 320 yards or more. As with other sports, just dove in and played from the same tees they did all day. Recipe for becoming really good is accepting you're not, and don't quit. It was sweet.

It was good session, and after all rock pile work so far, getting feedback on how wee bit legit my game is (I'm not anywhere near their calibre) in their eyes, as the old guy among youngathletes chasing whatever 20 somethings chase. Golf's a nice job if you're one of the best 125 on the planet. If not, you still have incredible talent, and need to figure out how to monetize the value of that as enabler of something else more lucrative. Listening to their plans and dreams as they were trying to figure out the concept of value and how economic slave ship earth works was a journey back to a time when I did the same.

Practically speaking, at my age, leverage will come from the mental side of things. So today was more Dalai Lama time that was fresh, and fun.
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Hostile Cactus

Was warned today about the dreaded jumping cholla, a hostile species that apparently waits patiently and then jumps and snags onto ambulatory life forms passing nearby for transportation. Nice strategy for getting around. Scary, like the odd critters in the Aussie outback trying to kill you.

Checking on the web, they don't quite have the ability to jump at you, but they do have tenacious micro spines that embed into virtually anything.

Photo By Nebarnix, CCSA 3.0

Add to that a wobbly stem structure, you get a an ouch when the first one digs in, a pull back reaction which bends the whole plant like a golf shaft and lofts more of these hostile balls of microspines at you. Ouch. Process repeats, and repeats. Before you know it, the legend of the attacking jumping cholla is perpetuated (Golf Fan Attacked by Jumping Cactus on the Tube here).

They're nasty and painful, and best to avoid them, but leave 'em alone untouched, and you'll be fine. And if you do get pricked, don't react, scream and hop around cuz they will "jump" on you :-)
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Sunset Magic

Sunset on the Sonoran Desert should be on everyone's bucket list. The light is absolutely magic. Amidst all the golf-related scramble, a little breather and a walk to take in the amazing desert nature here.

The little guy in the front doesn't fit the composition, but el patrón sahuaros have a beginning too.
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Harder is Better

Slowly making daily progress with the 4 iron. Today, with dilated eyes, feeling of distance between brain and ball is wobbly so it's like swinging weirdly drunk. Just one drop of stuff in each eye will do it. Secret agent kit for the MI6-KGB Match Play Championship.

Thought then occurs to me that maybe range sessions should be made purposely difficult. Choose small targets. Windy conditions. Hard to hit irons. Bad lies. Lousy balls. Master that, then a nice warm day on a perfectly groomed course has to seem like shooting ducks in a barrel.

Could move to Scotland. Or, wonder if there's a club harder to hit than my 4?
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Fluids Check

PVD progress inspection on the docket for today. The eye exams are really starting to wear on me. Show up on time. Wait. Get asked the same questions each time. Wait. Get eyeballs numbed. Be told some safe-esque story about a blue light looking at my eye when I know it's a probe and it's gonna prod my eyeball. Wait. Dilation drops. Wait. Etc. Just want it to be all over.

Good news is that nature is progressing without drama. Wontons still floating around in there and kinda there to stay. They can be lasered but require hundreds of pulses (that actually hit the wontons) before they start to pulverize. Or, the vitreous humor can be removed, but that's not a simple oil change.

Bad news is dilated eyes for the rest of the day, which means yet another blurry, sunglasses mandatory post-exam afternoon.
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Dear Mr. Bezos

Aaargh. The United States Postal Service. Avoid like the plague, but they've discovered yet another crack in the wall through which to gain access to my life.

Apparently Amazon has contracted them to do the local deliveries, and the USPS tries to deliver on Sundays (to a known closed on Sundays address), documents it as closed, and the package which would normally arrive by Fedex or UPS on Monday then goes into the black hole of the postal service.

Of course the USPS knows the UPS Store is closed on Sundays. But do an inquiry and you'll get the response a form hasn't been filed declaring that or some other typical nonsense.

I can't opt out of Sunday deliveries, so only way to fix it is to write the boss.

Gsus. With the UPS Store, Fedex and Amazon, thought I'd managed to escape the gelatinous slower than tectonic plate shift tentacles of the USPS. Sigh.
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Read My Mind

Stopped by Whole Foods to reload on parmesan crisps. Found a new variant, with garlic, onion and yummy seeds. No need anymore for Parmesan in the oven experiments :-)

At least someone is reading the blog. ha ha.
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Dilemma of Distance 2

87 yards from the green, pop in a lob cozy to the pin. Walk up 10 yards or so,  and try again, this time a bit softer. Ball still flies almost the same distance as the first.

So reducing the flight distance of short irons is a trickier problem than it seems. So must be yet another secret lurking about for doing that.

Time to start digging again.
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Cheating

Yes, I cheated. Instead of hitting balls today, snuck out onto the course. That's the third tee at the Raven, on a perfect late Saturday afternoon with nobody on the course (do the dalai lama and give up playing the 18 holes you are entitled to, late afternoons on the weekend are awesome times to play). Did assert a little moral compensation by promising to myself: "just nine holes". Learned a lot today playing hookie from the range.

Didn't play from the back. That's probably not fun yet. So played the silver tees one notch down. Addressing the ball on the first tee, the first thing I noticed was my feet noticing how bumpy the ground was. Sweet. I'm getting feet sense and connected to earth :-)

Today, I was lucky, like being rewarded for the thousand swats of discipline and the long days of patience waiting for Mr. Ping. The course is easy on you on the right, as there's usually a another fairway there. So spraying the driver, usually right, wasn't disaster. Played a lot off the neighboring fairways today.

The range work with the short irons paid off. The 9 through lob all hit the green (which seemed huge compared to the range targets) and made up for the other not so good shots. Was really happy. Only one fattie today. When I had to hit a 4 or 5 iron, things weren't so wonderful. So the work with short irons isn't helping much on the longer irons, or on the driver. The utility clubs, however, flew the distance but aim was kinda random.

What I learned:
- Can't hit a driver
- Short iron practice doesn't transfer much to long irons or driver
- I hate my putter (old Ping Anser from Ebay)
- I feel the ground under my feet. Bumps on tees, gradients on greens.
- Can't hit bunker shots
- The heads on tees are now very small. Ball kept falling off. Maybe age.
- Suck at longer irons
- Hybrids fly good, so need directional work there next
- For now, 220 for my 19 degree and 200 for my 22 deg
- Short game around green: contact is ok, distances bad
- Non-full swing short iron distances are hard
- Mental screw ups are unbelievably unconscious and appear stupid

A little digression into the destructive power of the subconscious heroic ego. On the ninth hole, the driver flew good, but into the right rough. Standing at the ball, I had a clear line to the whole green and could make it with the 19 degree hybrid. Lie was good. No wind issues. Pin way back left and easy to dribble in on a right to left. Crack. Then crack, again. I literally didn't see nor think about the tree near me that would come into play if the shot started beyond the right edge of the green. Now I'm in the trees, punch out with a 7, have a long iron to the green, and three putt from about as far as I could be. The brain spirals into the Woulda-Couldas. Smart sister Shoulda, however, says shoulda hit whatever confident to get into short iron range (which I'm striking good all day). What shoulda been a 5, now is a 7. Didn't hit the green in two. Didn't get an eagle. Just stuck my head up my backside on this one. In reflection, however, I never saw the tree nor even thought I'd hit it. It's fascinating. It's not stupid. It's worse. It's unconscious.

On the bright side, as a bonus, with nobody in front or behind me, worked on way to record audit data for the round in real time. The score is just the symptom. I'm interested in drilling down to the root cause, for which you need data. With root cause, you can then shape the daily practice routine and surf time on the Tube. Hmmm. Maybe an app...

So, I've some pondering to do and weave that into this week's work.

BTW, it's funny that I found a few balls on the course today. All good almost new if not new Callaways. Hmmm. A sweet way to PR a ball.
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Get a Grip

Was running around today trying to find a 75L ultra lightweight dry bag for the island expedition and noticed my steering wheel grip. Then realized those three fingers, as well as the middle two on the right hand are feeling stronger. Finally, the body is changing.

Did the first pass this morning packing for the atoll, and I'm easily 15 pounds over. I'm a spoiled travel slob with my 3x75 lbs limit from the formerly friendly skies. The little putt-putt that'll take us some 450 miles south of the main island doesn't negotiate. Meet the weight limit, or stay on the main island and work on your tan. Time to get serious about baggage weight.

Found this fabric called Cuben that'll do the trick. Now to find a dry sack made of the stuff large enough for the kit.

Ah, the grip seems to be taking the right form, thanks to secrets from the dirt.
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8.7 Pounds

Gonna take the drone to the Seychelles. Got a bit carried away with embroidery mania.

Carry on limit is 13 lbs. After case and drone, 4.3 lbs left for laptop and misc stuff I don't want to check. Got a pocket digital scale to be my attorney en route.

Checked luggage on the teeny plane is 33 lbs. Batteries go in there. Four of them. Plus cameras and flyfishing gear. They require flats boots, which sucks, because they're huge and heavy. One DSLR and small 18-135mm lens. Light tripod. Dive mask. Necessary battery chargers. 9 and 12 wt rods, tarpon reel, another reel with 10wt line, and a light one with 9 for fun. Gonna be bit of a trick. 30.1 lbs is verboten. Run the simulation next week to take stress off the situation.

Think I'll do layers and wear all my clothes en route. And cargo pants with lots of deep pockets.

And 3DR should take that gratuitous black logo off their backpacks. Leave room for your fans.
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IOT Failure

Trying this IOT thing. Got the mountain cabin all wired up and on the net. It's pretty awesome. Temps spike when furnace runs, and drops when folks go inside and cold air rushes in. SMS text delivers alerts if things go out of range. Gives you peace of mind. It's cold up there.

First one went belly up today. All good til they break. So it's not about price. It's about they just keep working... Luckily my mate Bish (he's remote too right now, in Florida) had one of his guys go check it out. So it's just the sensor that went bad.

Made in USA has a chance if they do it right and not do the Walmart thing. Else the Germans and Japanese and Swiss will take it.
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Goop du Jour

Get it over with. Squeeze. Smear. Clean excess. Savor the vinegary scent.

That super slick plastic really bugs me. From hotel room tables to cheezy car dashboards, slick is showing up everywhere.. Touch it, and it slides off. Turn, then it slides off. Aaaargh.

The signature of cheap, and yet another way to cut costs and pass the consequences onto you. In thirty minutes, it'll be touchy feely again.
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Chill Session

First day back on the range after a break. Ball flights good and fun. So probably hit a few more than I should. Good ol' sweatshirt when warm out is also a good pore purge.

Now to ice down the wrists and hands. Wash it down with crisp Oi Ocha green tea, cold.
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