Adventures

There’s been a delay in posting this story; perhaps because it needed a little time for me to absorb and digest it before sharing.

As you can see from the picture, the 2009 U.S. Senior Open this year was held at the Crooked Stick Golf Club, which is located in Carmel, just north of Indianapolis. Mike had tickets and we drove up on July 31st. We decided to take my car because it’s reliable and gets great gas mileage, has good tires, just had its 15,000 mile checkup, and the air conditioner works (none of these things apply to Mike’s car). On the way north I realized, and commented to Mike, “It’s been a long time since you and I have gone, just the two of us, on an adventure.”

We walked around Crooked Stick, seeing the pros make both bad and good shots, just like the rest of us seniors. I think we both enjoyed watching the people more than the golf. Crooked Stick is a nice course, but not fancy with flowers and shrubs and trees because it’s a “links” course with narrow fairways and lots of hillocks and large sand traps and tall, thick grass in the wide roughs. Not that we were disappointed; just that we weren’t particularly impressed.

We found our way off the course and out to the buses, and remembered to get off at the White Stop, which would be the closest one to where we were parked. Where were we parked? Neither of us had counted rows or yards or steps from any spot to any spot, so we had no idea where to start. We took alternate rows, walking up and down, and about an hour later we found the car. We were both just dumbfounded that we couldn’t locate the danged car! That wasn’t the sort of “adventure” I had in mind.

Applebee’s provided us with a good meal along the way, and we continued driving south. Then, I woke up suddenly from a short snooze to realize that the car was slowing down and all the dashboard lights were blinking. Mike said that the car had no power and he pulled off the highway. Then I saw that we were out of gas! There is a series of short horizontal bars on the dash that disappear from top to bottom as the gas tank empties, and when it has only one bar left it blinks madly, wildly, noticeably, even though it has 30-40 miles of gas left. Neither of us had noticed any blinking! Another “adventure”…

Before we were married, we had a habit of running out of gas. Back then it was a euphemism for finding a place to be alone with your date, but we actually did run out of gas. It got to be a joke. It became a series of similar, laughable “adventure” stories, some of which occurred even after we had kids. And here we were again, alone together in a car, and out of gas. Groan. Somehow it’s more fun when you’re in your 20s than it is when you’re in your 60s.

A “Good Samaritan” helped us out, thankfully… and I would like to say our gasoline adventures have ended, but who’s to say?