Monday Morning Musings
Posted on March 17, 2014 under Monday Morning Musings with no comments yet
The 18th. at Bay Hill
Sometimes a fella gets it wrong and has to fess up. I went on a little rant last week about client service and how Nova Scotians have to pick it up a notch. I stand my ground on that one. I went on to compare us to our counterparts in Florida who seem to have client service ingrained in their DNA. As some of you know, I am in the Orlando area this week attending the Arnold Palmer Bay Hill golf tournament.
There have been a lot of travel nightmares this winter and luckily I didn’t have any snags. I actually arrived several hours earlier than I expected due to a set of unusual circumstances. Those of you who have been to Disney understand their obsessive attention to detail. It really starts at the airport, one of the cleanest and most efficient you will find anywhere. By the time you deplane and take the 45 second shuttle ride to the main terminal, your bags are coming off the carousel. Amazing.
Everything was going smoothly until I went to pick up my car rental. I won’t spoil the story but you will easily guess the car company I was dealing with. The story is called “Hurtz Like Hell.” Or I may go with “Hurtz. Like Hell.” The tone is the same. I may have to receive legal counsel before publishing this one. All of us have a trace of sarcasm looming just below the surface. Mine virtually leapt out of my skin when I penned this gem.
While waiting for Peter to travel from Victoria to Orlando, I spent part of the day Saturday wandering around Arnie’s backyard: the Bay Hill Golf Club. I picked up our passes for the tournament. This is a big tournament with the likes of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelsen in attendance. The place was a beehive of activity with The Golf Channel and CBS setting up their broadcasting facilities and hundreds of other people scurrying around trying to get things ready for the tens of thousands of spectators.
Unless you have a VIP pass, you won’t get near some areas but on this day, with everyone so preoccupied, I simply walked where I felt like. I put my pass around my neck and was carrying an envelope. With a purposeful stride, I walked anywhere and everywhere as if I owned the joint. I went into the “champions dining room”, wandered the hallways of the clubhouse and , best of all, walked around the course. I took lots of pictures. The one above is the famous 18th. hole. If you flick on your TV this weekend, you will see lots of this hole.
Enough on that subject.
I know you will be waiting with baited breath for this one: a story about sex education. What in the hell is baited breath anyway? Surely you remember your first introduction to the “birds and the bees.” I bet one American dollar that you didn’t get your formal education on the subject from your parents. More likely, it was “dirty Johnny.” Coming soon, “Everything You Wanted to Know About.”
I received some wonderful feedback on the story, “Head on Collision.” If you didn’t have time to read it, go to my website and track it down. While the story was meant to be light hearted and humorous, it bordered more on poignancy. It really struck a chord with people who actually live this existence of the long commute to work. The actual story is fictitious but the content was very real.
My Tuesday story this week is on Wednesday. My loyal following ( all 3 of you! ) already know that every second week, my Tuesday story comes out a day late to coincide with publication in our local paper , The Casket . I expect a lot of feedback from this one. It’s called “The Songs We Sang.” There are a lot of songs that evoke powerful memories for us. You hear the first few notes and you are magically transported back in time. It is quite stunning how the brain retains the sounds, sights and smells of events that happened a long time ago.
Here’s hoping you have a great week.
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