Friday, December 11, 2009

Walk #345:Thrift Stores, Golf, Tiger Woods and Bowling

I'm in the Napa Valley.

After work I took two walks. Both in small towns. The first in Calistoga, on a hunt to find a couple of decent reasonably priced bottles of wine. I walked the downtown in the rain and finally stopped at the best wine shop in the Napa Valley for suggestions. They sold me three bottles, two for a party on Saturday night, and one for me to taste tonight to see what I'm about to inflict upon my peers.

Then I traveled to St. Helena to buy some soup for supper and stop at the Catholic Church's Thrift Store. Let me heartily recommend that no visit to St. Helena is complete without visiting the Catholic Church's Thrift Store. Especially now, when all the Trustfunders of the ruling elite of the Napa Valley are scurrying for every tax break for their coffers. And always remember that a Trustfunder pays less taxes on the money they never earned, than you do---who work hard for your money. It is called Capital Gains and that is the lifeblood of the Blue Bloods.

Raining in both towns. I got drenched. Forgot my umbrella...

I can't resist tossing in a diatribe against Golf. And Tiger Woods. Give a thirty year old male with a good swing and great hand/eye coordination one billion dollars and the guy is gonna cheat on any woman who comes in to his life. Even if it is a gorgeous Swedish model. Tiger was just living up to his opportunistic name.

But opportunism is Tiger's forte'. This guy has turned himself into a one billion dollar business. From golf?

Golf is a repugnant game which is best described by Mark Twain as a "walk in the woods ruined". This game of mostly the elite, has created land hogging, ugly developments all built around a bunch of over fertilized and over pesticized terroir. Golf is still a game of the elite ( I kidded a doctor today: asking him how he ever managed to refer a patient anywhere without playing golf?).

Build a Golf Course (and hire Tiger Woods or Jack Nicholas to design it) and then put a bunch of million dollar houses around it and you have something which can only be described as a over indulgent Caligua-ish use of land. These eye sores are nothing but a Republican boil on some of the best, most picturesque land in the USA!

My hope is that Golf will take a huge dive from this scandal and that Polo shirts will go the way of other elite fads. If you want to pick a good working class sport---support bowling! Bowling takes much less land, creates a real community and requires large amounts of beer drinking!

Down with Golf; up with Bowling!

4 comments:

Ian Woofenden said...

Allan -- please supply reference on demographic data of golf players; I suspect many are Democrats. I am not fond of the game either, and especially get irritated that hockey players play golf in the summer. ;-0

Today I rode to Z's wrestling tourney in Burlington starting pre-dawn and coming home at dusk. First test of the new version of the faring, and it worked well. It was cold, and I innovated by buying a pair of wools socks for the return journey.

43.76 miles
3:52
11.28 mph average
27.54 mph max

Ian Woofenden said...

Rode to meditation and back, with some hydro measurement afterwards. Actual mileage was the normal 11.25, but my speedo quit working for a bit (I think it's the faring vibrating the sensor out of position) so I only got:

9.3 miles
1:00
9.28 mph average
34.15

Pretty tired after a long ride yesterday and not enough sleep last night.

Ian Woofenden said...

Walking is cold. Today I biked to the ferry, but then drove in town, dropping the van at the tire place to get them to swap on the snow tires. I walked to the hardware store and back and was _cold_. Not enough exercise to warm me up.

Rode back home after my NVC meeting, in the dark, windy, rainy night.

8.12 miles
45:09
10.79 mph average
27.78 mph max

Anonymous said...

In much younger days, I owned golf clubs and candlepin bowling balls. The golf clubs are more embarassing, but our version of golf did include beer drinking as we walked.
--greentangle