The Horror, The Horror

Due to the capricious nature of the interweb and Blogger, I won't be posting my swell pre-story from last Friday about me going to Ohio. Instead, you only get this lame recap. Probably with some swell photo goodness after I finally find my digital cam in the luggage. If you do manage to find a stray post from me somewhere, please send him home. No difficult questions about why there were no calls and who was he with and why couldn't I meet these new friends will be asked.

But yes, I headed down the delta into the crazy that is Ohio. I willingly ventured (alone I might add) into Crazy Land to meet up with the rest of my exploratory golfing expedition.

Obviously, since I'm posting this now, I survived. But while my body may be intact, the madness has descended upon me. No man enters the Heart of Darkness and walks away unchanged by the experience.

I think I know part of the reason they are crazy. It's the weather. In the Great Grey North, we don't have the kind of heat and stupidity they tolerate in Ohio. Sure, we can get in the 90's but it'll be for a day or two. We just cope by staying inside. In Ohio, they embrace it. They'll willingly go out in the 90 degree and 90% humidity.

As soon as I exited the air conditioned goodness of my fly hoopdie, I could feel the sweat and despair and moisture embrace me like an dead lover. My shirt was immediately plastered to my body and I could feel a line of sweat break out on my back and begin to run down into my shorts. This gave me an immediate case of swamp ass. A big hunk of sugar like me just melts in weather like that.

My only defense was to try to play golf as early as possible and get off the course by 10:00 am. A normal round of golf will take 4 hours. I made it a forced march to escape the weather in just under three hours. Then I'd sit in the swelter of my Aunt's apartment. Because she's a million years old, she likes it hotbox hot. I felt like I'd gotten my dirt in Boss's yard. After about 12 minutes of the indoor heat (coupled with discussions of old people I didn't know), I ran screaming from the hellishness. I went back to my hotel pool, left an oil slick and slinked around the edges like some crazed, demonic, albino alligator. I'd raise my head just enough to have a sip of a cool refreshing beverage then slowly slide back into the cool embrace of the water. At night, I emerged to feed. Yes, just a few short hours in Ohio and I have reverted to my most primal instincts: water and food.

My favorite example of the contrariness that is Ohio came on the course, of course. The establishment we played at would only sell 3 beers at a time. Thus, if you wanted to procure enough refreshments to last for 9 holes for a foursome, you had to bring reinforcements and thus, slow down play.

Luckily, directly across the street you could visit the drive through liquor store. Don't even get out of your car to purchase as much beer as you want. Hmmm, what type of behavior might this encourage? No one seemed to resent my elegantly logical solution of taking a golf cart through the drive through.

After two days, I feared for my sanity. I'd eaten dinner at 5:00. Pretended to care about the scarves my cousin was knitting. I could feel the madness clutching at my mind. I itched all over.

Under cover of darkness, I sped away into the farmland of Ohio and made my escape. The meandering road meant nothing as I raced through each town that was a mirror image of each other. Lodi, Greenwhich, Willard, Norwalk, Bellevue, Monroeville, Clyde, Fremont, Woodville, and finally, at long last, Toledo and escape to the North.

I rocked back and forth in a fetal position later that night, repeating over and over, "Fourty, Fourty-One, Fourty, Fourty-One, Fourty, Fourty-One." Yes, I did battle with the only weapons at hand--my diminished wits and my trusty clubs. At least I played well. Like some idiot savant who grasped to the liferaft of sanity that is golf, I could still play amongst the madness that is Ohio.

And I didn't even get a Swenson's dammit. Maybe next year.