Ketchup Jam! pt1

Well, hell its easter allready! Not quite sure what happend here but my last blog was in january...how the time slimes away from us all! Spring time has arrived,(then retreated, then arrived agien) Todays suns making yesterdays snow melt faster then a fat mans resolve at Tim Hortens!

So whats up with Ketchup JAM? Well, its time for some spring cleaning! Time to empty out the camera, dust off last falls faded memorys, and try in vain to ketchup, by jamming abunch of stuff together! Like the pondering rapter above, I just loved the idea of a tomatoe smoothie...So with the clever title,(and a leap of faith)I get to use him.

Quick get-up-to-speed, crib note style fall and winter: I worked at Black Earth...and thats about it! Oh sure I bought a car, I moved Slice in,(you remember the creepy-est of the kittens from way back when,)Slice had babies,..But thats about it!(and those are for another blog,)

Late(2late?)last fall I decided to build a porch onto my tiny trailer,(I mean the mighty DufferDen!)and caught up in waves of enthusiasm, I totaly over built the sucker!(I mean, in case of tornado, I'll be found under my porch, it'll still be there!)(room for you too, but please book well in advance,)(all major credit cards accepted!)

First off when building a porch, you need a good deck,(or if you get lazy, you can just stop at the deck, nothing wrong with a change of design mid stream, like how most of my omlettes turn into scrambled eggs!) First thought was to pour pads, and bracket 4x4 holders, to save time, money, and last but fisrt, LABOUR! After talking with other overbuilding freinds, and giving some serious thought to the massive frost heaves,(just take a drive down some of our back hiways, and you'll understand frost heaves a little better!)I decided to drill 6foot pilelings, fill them with cement, and jam 8ft. 4x4's(treated, of coures)deep into mother earths clay embrace!(notice the 36can pack of Boxer beer in the back ground, I'll credit much of this design to Boxer!) Next comes the 2x6's, some Tyvek,(same stuff I made flags out of for my Goffer Golf last year,)(pat./pend.) and of course r20 insulation!(cozy deck=warm porch!) To top off your deck, I like more Tyvek, and a fat layer of 3/4inch ply!(this could be the dance floor for a trucker wedding!)(sorry to all truckers, and mostly to all married out there!)(bettcha you wish you could live in a den, or build a truckers dance deck, buttcha can't cause your married, and he/she just wouldn't understand the lost property value for some useless stupid deck! I mean how many trucker weddings could there be? it's kind of a nich market, isn't it?)...(?)(or tell him/her its a Pacidurm Breeding Research Facillity,)(or just keep going and finish your porch!)

One of the most important, key ingredents to any project, is the side kick, right hand man, gopher, and or helper guy, in this case I got my bro Carlin to be all of them! This is him sitting next to the short wall of the porch,(one of his rare un-mobile moments, don't tell him, but I'd say, "I'll be right back," then go for like 3 beer, check my spam mail, play some vid, and he'd be just a hammering away out there for like 20 min!...look at the grin, poor guy still thinks he's gettin paid!)...(I mean thanks agien Carlin!) More porch next Blog, amazing overnight tranformations, etc.

On to a bright sunny afternoon late last fall, when the leaves were gone and the day's were begining to shorten noticeably, the bosses fianally let us play the grass side! This is hole #6 tee box,(back tees) for this year it will be hole #1,(a brutally long par 5 for the opening hole? ouch!) I hit a very happy shot just past the grass bunker, right by the crook in the pond,(upper middle of the shot on the left,)(remember, you can enlarge most pics by left clicking on them!)then waited for like 20min. well the rest of the group sprayed many tee shots left, and right, onto the road, into the pond,(the same pond on the upper left witch feeds into the stream from "Antanmy of a Stream" from last summers blogs,)proving once and for all, if you build the course...don't mean you can play the course. Dont get me wrong, I gave plenty of balls to the water gods, but most of my driver tee shots were on terra firma!(and I don't even care if I spelt it rong. thats how it sounds.)

Above right is the 6th green, with water to the left, and water behind us to the right, you'd wanna lay-it-up-to-the-right-yardage, so to speak.

This is the #7 tee box, the green is over the water, and all that pretty black sand. I hit a couple out of the sand, just for fun, and it was denser by far then normal sand, will take some getting use to, but it is so cool! Notice the long shadows already, and this is only our second hole.

Here is the 8th green from above the 7ths bunkers, notice how the water wraps around the green, with just that strip of black sand around the back to save any over zelisht shots? I got to help dig that bunker in.

On the right is the 8th tee box, hard to tell, but to the left of those trees is the green,(being pinched from the right by trees, and to the left with the above pictured water.)(If memory serves...now serving for match point, memory...I hit it so far left, I missed the water and landed back on the 7th fairway!)

O.k., this is for those of you who don't belive I'm accually living this extravigent life. This is last fall me,(accaually hitting the above noted far left shot!)(thanks Dale for the pic.) Notice the same style socks as my hole in one shot from like 3 years ago?(could they be the same socks...with the amazing Jiffy Sock 2000, only CSI could tell!) Look closely by my right foot, its my aliment aid. I take a full beer can and put it by my foot, and if I swivle too much, I SPILL THE BEER! A decidedly un-Canadian thing to do!

Here is the wonderfully dizzy'n 13th upper tee. way down in the distence is the green,(upper middle/left) you can see the bunkers in frount, but the drop offs to the right and behind are invisible. (till you've mowed them that is!) Several stories up, on the tip of a nub, out in the wind, trouble all around, 200+yrds. I think I'll lay up!(some what un-manly for a par 3, but safe golf is smart golf on this course!)

This is the 13th green, its so far up in the hills, it was dark by the time we got down, we really played three more holes after this, but the rest of the dark shots,(both golf and photo,) are best left behind. Just know this, after the golf we had deep fried turkey, n'pickles, n'mozzarella sticks, n'whatever else moved too slow in the shop that night! Yum!

In closing I'd like to leave you with this...I don't think the problem is the baby carriage, the sequway, or the lazy. The real issue is every cellphone camera carring povorotzi wannabe out there ridiculing any one brave enough to try something fun. She should have strapped on one of those speedwalker, supercyclest, 1970's bannana seat look alike helmets, with a suit designed for NASA, (by speedo) streched over her frame, big goggles, and of course a five foot silk scarf. Hook the kid on back in some sort of streamed line, bobslead on mags thingy, hunch over your "I'm too important to walk" scooter, in your best downhill skier pose, and zoom off at 4mph. giving the camera jerk your best "queen caught at a shoe sale" wave. Remember crazy is better then lazy!

Latter DufferKev.