Sunday

I'm inputting this while in the air from Denver to Moline. I'll add more from Mapecrest once I make it home.

I cooked a traditional Maplecrest dinner for the boys last night. We had wined and dined enough those prior three evenings that a night at home was pretty much what the doctor ordered. The condo abuts next to one of the fairways on the golf course, and the back patio has a complete outdoor kitchen. I did steaks, potatoes, broccoli and had additional side dishes of corn and some steamed mushrooms. Maybe not a home run, but a triple for sure.

We played Grayhawk Golf Club on both Friday and Saturday. They have two courses...Raptor and Talon...both desert style with plenty of bunkers as well. Lots of work for all of us. Top Ten weather for all of the days. Like Joe Nicols' current country hit, Sunny and 75. A nice way to spend the middle of January.

The one low-light from the trip...I never got to Total Wine & Spirits to inspect the wine selections. We had a tee time of after lunch on Thursday, and then met people after golf on both Friday and Saturday, so the time for that excursion to TW just never developed. Bummer. (But we still had those bottles of Jordan the first night, a bottle of Silver Oak that second night, and some VERY good stuff at DC Ranch on Friday night.)

Random observations from the trip:

1. My Safeway Club card from last year worked again.
2. Wine currency at Safeway was $12.99.
3. The Barrett Jackson auction had some collector cars sell for some BIG numbers. We watched on the tube. Hot August Nights has more American classic cars, I think.
4. Maggiano's might be a chain, but it's a good spot for Italian food. Reasonable prices. Decent wine list.
5. Roger Penske of auto racing fame (he has two teams in the NASCAR Cup series), is the owner of several luxury car stores that we always drive by in Scottsdale. We always commented on the stores, but we didn't figure out that it was Penske's until this year. They must have been entertaining for the auction.
6. Service to MLI out of DEN is from the last Tarmac walkway, from the last gate at the far, far end of the B Concourse. Reminded me of those connections in Detroit.
7. I saved a total of $70 by carrying-on my luggage for the trip ($35 each way.) The first bag, my clubs, cost $25, and a second bag was then going to be another $35. But I elected to gate-check the carry-on both ways since I already had to wait for the checked golf clubs. I think that makes me cheap.
8. The GPS device that I received for Christmas worked as advertised. Interestingly though, the yardage on the Talon course at Grayhawk was off 10 yards at most of the sprinkler heads. I'm actually going to write to Bushnell to see if they have had any similar feedback.
9. I haven't enrolled in any TSA expediting procedure, but I had clearance on my boarding passes each way not requiring me to take off my belt or shoes. So has more info from the NSA been provided to the airlines on me?
10. This is three significant trips in a row that travel has gone pretty much as scheduled. I don't like my odds on the next one.

Now landing at MLI. Glad they now let iPads be used in Airplane mode throughout the flight

More later.

BCOT


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad