In my experience, most Good Fridays are somber days with grey clouds, snow or rain which seems fitting for the day when Jesus was crucified. However, here in Victoria, yesterday dawned bright and sunny.
We'd made plans to golf at Mt. Doug but I called my mother first to wish her happy birthday. She is 88 and was off to lunch with her boy friend, Cecil, to celebrate. I told her I'd be dodging Canada goose poop on the course while she indulged in a seafood repast. She found that funny.
Mt. Doug in the summer is a lovely course set at the base of the mountain (a hill to any Albertan but mountainous here). Deer cavot on its fairways and eagles soar overhead. In the winter (it opens in February), geese are more numerous than golfers. I'd expected it to be the same in the spring but the geese were gone; no droppings to worry about but the course was almost bog-like. This made for some interesting golf.
Normally, we must pair up when we play Mt. Doug but yesterday we played as a twosome. This was good as our first two holes were pretty rough. The third hole offered me a chance to really smack my driver and I hit it 150 yards. I know this because it was in line with the 150 yd marker. The ball would have rolled further if it hadn't become stuck in the thick, wet grass. I don't think a mower had been down this fairway in weeks.
Glen hit a 'lucky' tree on the 4th fairway which saved his ball from entering the 5th and I hit a lucky tree on the 6th hole saving mine from the nearby stream. With golf, you take the luck where you find it. I also had a putt that lipped the cup, paused, then curled in. You can't plan that no matter how good you are at this game.
We finished the nine holes not scoring well but it being our first time on a course since Christmas perhaps this was inevitable. I beat Glen by 7 strokes which has never happened before but he was struggling with the old clubs we use out here. We'd bought them for Geoff when he was 14 so they are definitely old technology. Mine are not much younger. We hope to bring our Calgary clubs out here in the summer. That will give us 6 sets of clubs in our storage locker. Golf, anyone?
One funny aspect of our Good Friday game came from the fact that scattered across the course were tiny daisy-like flowers. They hugged the earth so missed the cutting blades of the mowers. The problem was they were white and I often lost my ball amongst them. Still, they were pretty even if they did look like snow.
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