East Coast Reboot

Let me start by saying that although I hope people will find this blog interesting, I'm mostly doing it for myself - to document this "bucket list trip" and to capture a little of my thoughts and feelings from the last few years. But as my dear friend Tom Morris put it eloquently, "No one gives a rats ass what you have to say. Just post pictures and be done with it." In that spirit, I'll try to keep the editorial up front and the more fact based "field notes" towards the bottom.

SAYING GOODBYE TO CPG

And by CPG, of course I mean California, the people I called my family out here and the game of golf. 

As I have told many of you on many occasions, this trip to California was a watershed moment for me. I don't mind sharing that at the time I moved out here, I was in a marriage that was in a tailspin - it was only 6 months after the wedding that we had found ourselves in therapy. Soon after that I got the job offer at Cobra. It seemed like a good opportunity to move us out here and start over. But after two years of circular arguments and what seemed like permanent emotional mayhem, we decided that there was no  righting the ship so we called it quits. 

California was the perfect place to heal. The sun, the golf, the nice condo by the beach, the motorcycle trips to the desert, the occasional crazy night when "DJ Sasha" made an appearance... All of it made tolerable what was otherwise a very complicated and difficult time. (While I'm thinking of it, a few other quick SoCal memories: driving to Oakland to watch the Pats crush the Raiders, hand feeding rhinos at the Safari Zoo, an epic motorcycle trip with Tim to the Joshua Tree Music Festival, shooting par - one time only - on the back nine at Twin Oaks, seeing dolphins and sea lions while sailing with friends, living at the Residence Inn for nearly 6 months with free breakfast and housekeeping, my first and only "poron party" and a million other wonderful experiences that I'm sure I'll touch on in other blog entries.)

Leaving the people I met here was very hard. When I first moved to Oceanside, I quickly found myself in a very tight crew (virtually all of it through Titleist) and hanging with those guys also distracted greatly from the marriage mess I was slogging through. The group "disbanded" several years later as people started to couple up, get married, move away and have kids, so our gatherings have not been as frequent as the "old days". Even I found myself less available once my partner Erin came on the scene.  She's reading this so I won't embarrass her too much. Needless to say she has transformed my life and was a huge part of making this chapter out here an incredibly special time for me. The last thing I will say about my west coast family and friends is how special it was to see them last weekend at our farewell shindig. It was so wonderful to have everybody in one place wishing us well and it was hard not to get emotional as we said goodbye to so many important people in our lives. I will miss you all - can't say it simpler than that.

As for golf, well, I'm not sure I was supposed to be in golf in the first place. I was a web guy who hacked once in a while, but randomly took a job at Titleist back in 2005. Since then I have gone through an intense love-hate relationship with the game and the industry. But for now, I feel like I have sucked out all the benefits possible from the sport and I am ready to move on to something else. (What that "something" is, I have no idea. Right now I am homeless and jobless - a scary and exciting place to be!)

Oh yeah, and I am also saying goodbye to CPG, as in COBRA PUMA Golf. (I still have to write it in all caps - force of habit dictated by the company brand book.) To all my friends who are still there, I know you will do good things. But for the love of pete, please learn how to convert your own videos to WMV - the next person taking my place will go postal if they end up having to do that stuff!

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Beautiful poppies outside outside the CPG office 

FIELD NOTES

Day 0: April 2, 2014
Breakfast: 1/2 cup yogurt that spent the night on the counter (fridge was cleaned and defrosted the night before). 

Lunch: none
Dinner: handful of trailmix and one Southwest Chicken Taco at Carl's Jr.

Moving day. Movers came late and unnecessarily brought two trucks (one to load at my condo and one to shuttle things back from our storage unit a few miles away). The head of the "team" was Bart Shwarma - a soft, round Indian man with an Indian accent that was so thick it was hard to understand anything he was saying. (Molly Molloy asked the brilliant question: if you are taking an American name, why are you taking Bart?) He and the team were flat out incompetent. I saw unwrapped, white couch cushions be dragged on the ground. A lamp was broken. One guy wrapped my armoire in padded blankets and another guy took them off when it was going on the truck, saying it wasn't necessary. (I was so eager to get on the road to start my motorcycle trip, I didn't care. I just wanted everything to get on the truck so I could leave.) When everything was finally packed, I sat in the truck with Bart to sign the paperwork. He told me he was 3 months from retiring. When I asked him what he planned to, he said "Not drive a truck around anymore. And maybe go to India." I asked when the last time he was there and he said he had been there 4 years ago, just before his wife contracted Lou Gehrig's Disease and died. It made me think - incompetent or not - everyone is fighting their own battles and it made me appreciate what I have even more.

The empty condo just after the movers finished packed. (Now to sell this thing!)

I jumped on the bike at 3:30. My plan was to drive to a town called Gila Bend, AZ (Google said it was 280 miles away but by the time I got there my odometer said 320). The drive itself was wonderful - the bike was dialed in beautifully and purring like a kitten. I was wearing my new "unitard" (as my lifelong friend Tim calls it) - a one-piece suit made of strong material with armor at the shoulders, elbows and knees (more on this later).

The drive was long - almost 6 hours - and although it felt like being thrown in the deep end, it was surprisingly pleasant. The temperature got down to a low of 41º and I had to stop several times to put on layers. But once I got the warmth situation set, it was fantastic. I passed through some towns that made me think of friends like Yuma AZ (George Cadwalader) and Blythe (Blythe Crane) and Dateland (Siobhan Howard). And I had recently connected my helmet headset to my iPhone via Bluetooth so I was able to listen to soft music in the background while I motored on through the night.

On the road to Augie's in Gila Bend

When I finally arrived at Augie's Quail Trail RV Park, I was nervous. It was pitch black and Google took me to a dilapidated trailer park that looked like a South African township (or maybe something out of the movie "The Hills Have Eyes").  Thankfully Google took me to the wrong spot and Augie's was not far down the road. The owners left me a sheet at the front desk with directions to my campsite so I let myself in, set up camp by headlamp, and hit the sack in my cozy tent, happily knowing the adventure had started and I was on my way. 

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