THE TOUGHEST DAY YET

IT WAS AN ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR FALL DAY and worse yet, it was Sunday. I busied myself with work, bills, college apps, errands, garbage, recycling, running and email. I did everything but the thing I really wanted to do. Yesterday was a breeze because it poured. Friday was a long day of work that persisted till evening. Thursday I listened to my brother give an inspiring presentation on how you can fuel profits and growth while taking drastic measures towards corporate sustainability. The audience was enthralled, and it was not an easy crowd to enthrall. They were the top people from around the world who make up the 30-year old consulting firm PRTM. Their incisive questions showed how closely they'd been listening as my brother told his tale of elevating operations at Burt's Bees in pursuit of The Greater Good. It's constant innovation, and most everyone's inolved at some level. The kind of company you really want to work at, and feel pride about it. And because of this, their remarkable growth has seen an inverse relationship with their carbon footprint. 

Oh to be making my own green footprints along the 16th fairway below. But it seems I'm meandering toward my own greater good. 

OBAMA COMES TO OUR LITTLE TOWN

IT WAS AN HISTORIC NIGHT IN LEESBURG. And just when I'm wondering whether or not I can survive a year without swinging a club, the crowd erupts with a resounding  "YES WE CAN. YES WE CAN."

OFF THE BEATEN CARTPATH

I'M SURE AS HELL NOT ON IT.  And with each invitation to play I turn down, I become more painfully aware of the excruciating pang pang pang pang of withdrawal that tears at my psyche more violently than a four-putt.

Last week it was Nick inviting me to play Congressional. Last weekend I had to blow off a 36-a-day jaunt down to Raleigh with Randy and the boys. And I'm getting 16 emails an hour from that squeakiest of wheels Tracy who's doing his damnedest to cajole me into joining him and a dozen or two other lunatics for 3 days of golf, gambling and gars with comped hotel rooms and passes to The Big Smoke. What, no showgirls?

I'd be surrounded by fellow Golfoholics, but with one big difference - they'd be feeding their addiction while I'd be starving mine. Would I ride along and get vicarious pleasure, or hole up in my room with the lights off after losing my dry-fit shirt at hold 'em?

So I'm just a happy camper. Last weekend I stacked wood and have splinters and sciatica to show for it. Next weekend, perhaps I'll take up knitting. Because it is getting downright chilly around here. Hell, I could knit myself a fuzzy pink straitjacket. 

It's medication time Mr. Balata.

ONLY 51 WEEKS TO GO

IT WOULD PROBABLY BE EASIER TO GIVE UP SEX. I've resorted to dreaming about the game. And it feels like cheating. Even my morning run along the course gives me tinges of guilt. Particularly when I check out the pin position, choose a club in my mind, tee up a virtual ball and begin my backswiSTOP! This can't be right. Like Jimmy Carter, I have lust in my heart. Only it's for a damn game. Please don't tell my wife.

LOST WEEKEND

IT'S SUNDAY MID-AFTERNOON AND THERE'S STILL ENOUGH DAYLIGHT left to play 9. I question how much resolve I have to refrain from playing. What was the point of this pointless exercise, anyway?

Oh yeah.  To see what I can do with those 10 hours a week I'd otherwise be spending on fairways and greens (which probably wasn't close to 10 hours at all given the amount of time spent in fescue and bunkers and water hazards and somewhere over the rainbow and the out-of-bounds stakes).

So here's how it went. Woke up. Made coffee. Drank three mugs. Did some work. Went for a run. Made breakfast. Did some more work. Went to the bank. Then to Costco. Then borrowed a seen-better-days wheelbarrow from Scully. Tried to repair the thing. Then put on my golf gloves. 

But instead of reaching for a golf club, I reached for a log, and proceeded to unload a pick-up truck overflowing with a cord of wood that I then had to move from my front yard to my back and stack in neat little piles so that we can heat this damn house when I can no longer afford to pay the bills, which could be any day now given the economy. My repair job to the wheelbarrow gave way before the stack of wood did, and I was hard-pressed to get it moved before daylight disappeared and the chilly air of evening set in.

But fortunately I had a cord of neatly stacked freshly cut hardwood that I could build a nice fire from. After bringing a load up to the fireplace, it only took three newspapers and a blowtorch before I could coax it into flames.

My log supplier, The Woodpecker, clearly was not inspired by Gallo's old tagline, "We will serve no wood before its time." Fortunately I had a box of those fake packaged logs in my garage and I conscripted one to serve as nuclear kindling for my reticent hardwood. Before long my bride and I were hunkering down before our stone fireplace with a pizza, a bottle of wine and a chick flick that lulled me to sleep faster than a couple of Ambien.

That was yesterday. Today looked a lot like a repeat, only the wood hauling was replaced with helping my teenage daughter with an essay assignment that would have been considered extreme at Harvard Law. This teacher must have a grudge more sizable than the national debt to bear. This is not how I want to spend my former golf days.

I haven't touched the guitar, looked at the piano or dusted off an old manuscript waiting to be rekindled. But I did get a few miles in on the trail each day, and my knowledge of my daughter's high school government studies is probably at nearly 3rd grade level by now.

And if I hurry, I can still get 9 in. Or head on down to Home Depot and pick up a new wheel and axle and try to repair the borrowed wheelbarrow. Again.

Only 359 more days. But who's counting?

FRIDAY I’VE GOT MONDAY ON MY MIND

WHY THE HELL ISN'T IT RAINING? It's a lovely 65º Fall day, the kind that's custom-made for spending the afternoon knocking down pins and pressing bets. Quitting the game has been a cinch until now. Now the balata hits the cart path. And I've fought back by lining up Friday afternoon meetings far from the course.

Only problem is, after Friday comes Saturday. A day historically reserved for an early morning round with Scully or Tolle or Paulini or Palmeri or Wilber or Andreini or Quigg or Tanner or Regardie or Ebaugh or Vachon or Garcia or any of the hundred or so hopelessly addicted golf junkies at River Creek. Instead of digging up divots and repairing ballmarks, I'll be digging up the yard and cleaning the garage. Oh joy.

Not that I'd trade any of it for the perfectly struck 3-iron, the scent of a Davidoff, the $5 Nassau, or the trash talking pricks I call my golf buds.

Not when I can be washing out trash cans and planting petunias.

NOT THAT I COULD PLAY ANYWAY

It's not like there's time for golf right now, let alone showering and shaving. 

But it's the perfect time of year. The grass is green, the greens roll true, the leaves are like fireworks. Reminds me of my favorite passage from On The Road. 

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

So why am I wasting my time writing about giving up golf? 

What the hell am I going to do with the 10 hours a week I won't be squandering on the links?

I thought I might finally learn how to tickle the ivories of the black elephant that lies dormant in our living room.

I thought I might finally write the book that's burning a hole in my looseleaf.

I thought I might devote the time to getting Golfoholics off the teebox.

Barb thought I might at long last clean out the garage.

But my company had a different idea. Let's consolidate in DC. Double our footprint and hunker down under one roof. Great idea. 

Only it means 3-4 hours a day in the car.

Chauffeur wanted.

Or at least a few good golf audiobooks.

MY, HOW TIME FLIES

364 DAYS AND COUNTING. Boy, that was prolific. 

No time to write. Spent the day working and the evening letting the drummer kick with Citizen Cope at Strathmore when I could have been playing glowball with Freitas in my backyard.

The grass is always greener on the course.

DAY ONE

GOT THROUGH THE ENDLESS DAY without popping my trunk and reaching for my clubs. Spent it holed up in our Tysons office with my sun-damaged mug buried in my MacBook screen, immersed in a new business proposal. Surprisingly, I didn't feel a single pang of withdrawal until I pulled into the neighborhood.

Coming down Olympic Blvd, I found myself gazing longingly at the golfers coming up number 4. The green was lush and inviting in the sinking October sun.

As I drove by the 5th teebox, it was empty and exerted a familiar force that pulled me toward it with inescapable magnetism. I nearly drove my car into the water hazard where the fountain flirted shamelessly, whispering my name as drops of pondwater shot up into the crisp autumn air and cascaded back down dancing briefly on the surface before becoming it. 

On the green the flag waved. I waved back like a love-struck idiot.

Ah, the much-longed-for serenity of the course at the end of the day. 

I will miss it.

Damn, will I ever miss it.