Packing for an Extreme Golf Vacation

It’s deep freeze where we are headed this weekend for a guys’ golf vacation. There is no canceling it, unless we are prepared to walk away from our deposit. All I have to do is to remember not to blame my brother-in-law for choosing the BC Rockies and the time of year to go. I always think it’s risky planning a golf vacation in the same mountains where you find avid skiers.

It is going to be a high of 14 degrees celsius on Sunday, the warmest day of the week. Then the weather will make a drastic turn for the worst. Temperatures will drop to single digits and snow showers are forecasted for Monday and Tuesday. We may be forced to play under winter rules.

If you are insane like us and need to pack for extreme weather, don’t be afraid to cross dress yourself. Don’t deny yourself of warmth by bringing dri-fit golf shirts, windshirts and light jackets that only makes you more fashionable on the links. Instead, bring golf mitts (lined with fleece), a wool sweater, a winter hat, earmuffs, turtlenecks, wooly socks, long johns and a blanket to drape over the cart seat. 

Remember that you can lose 30% of your body heat if you don’t wear a hat. And visit your local golf store for winter golf gloves. FootJoy is one brand that makes gloves for the occasion but don’t expect to find them in a hot place like California or Florida. Every proshop in Canada carries winter gloves.

On colder days, I choose to play with softer golf balls. Choose a compression of 60, 70 or 80 at the most. If you choose higher compressions, you may lose some distance off the tee. Remember to pack rain gear. You will need something to protect yourself from the elements in case it rains or snows. I know when I am wet, I get colder faster. In my golf bag, I carry waterproof pants, an extra glove in a ziploc bag and a light jacket with a hood. 

It sounds like a lot of gear to bring but you will thank me in the end. It’s better to be safe than sorry. Stay warm because I plan to.

Stuck in Florida?

Did any one of you take advantage of the $1 per day car rental to Florida that I reported a few weeks ago? If you got there and forgot about the time or if the weather back home was a little short of sunny and warm then I do not blame you for staying longer. I heard that the PGA guys playing the Masters this morning in Augusta, Georgia were delayed due to fog. That is nothing compared to what some of us have to deal with. In parts of western Canada, Montana and parts of Washington, we are being blanketed again with snow. How hard is it snowing? It is snowing so hard and furious this morning that by the time you have shovelled your driveway, it has accumulated as much as what you have shovelled a minute ago.

I was checking air fares on Sidestep.com and found that flying to Palm Springs is just as much as flying to Orlando, Florida. It may be a stretch going to Florida for a weekend, considering it almost takes a day to fly in and fly out. I think if it is going to take that long to fly to a place, you might as well stay for a week. Otherwise, you will be living out of a suitcase and I am sure a lot of us have done that before. I am also not like my friend who lives in Los Angeles and travels to Vienna for the weekend. She will call her parents up the night before and plan a brunch half way around the world then fly 12 hours to get there.

Before I go, I just want to rescue the ones that took advantage of the $1 per day car rental to Florida – go to Alamo.com and book a one-way rental for as low as $11.99 or $59.95 a week. Be sure to enter the coupon code of FLDAGPS to get a free GPS with your rental. And with this offer, you will have 14 days to drive out of Florida. All this is on the Alamo site. Dollar has a free GPS offer too but you will need the coupon that is listed on our site.

A Ray of Light

It’s really funny here. When it snows and the roads get slick, people speed up. It’s the same in Los Angeles when it rains. People tend to drive faster and get more aggressive. There’s one day here every year around the start of winter, when you hear it on the radio, how many fender benders there were on the highway. It’s always alarming to hear it, and it’s usually in the upwards of a few hundred.

There’s a lot of accidents out there and speed is always a factor. I don’t want to sound like Mother Theresa but slow down around school and playground zones. Drive defensively and don’t practice nor encourage road rage.

Ok, enough about safe driving. I know it all goes out the window when you get a traffic ticket in the mail citing that you had speeded. It’s no use denying it because there’s a photo of your car attached to the ticket. Isn’t there a law about snapping your picture without consent? Oh I forgot, they are the law.

Anyways, I was off to Best Buy to shop for a radar detector. After paying $120 for my ticket, I figured it would be the last time that they were going to photograph me without my knowing. The salesguy tried to sell me the new Cobra XRS- R9G for $500. I liked the wireless remote display that you snap onto your dashboard. No wires like the old way, where you had your radar detector attached to the windshield and a cord to the 12V cigarette outlet. He explained the unit had 12 bands to detect all sorts of radar and the best thing was its ability to notify you of any red light cameras by GPS. Cool. Before I dropped my bills, I wanted to come back and check out the price on the net. When I was driving back, I was behind this dirty truck with muddy plates. A light bulb lit up or should I say, a ray of light hit me – why don’t I just muddy my plate so these cameras can’t identify me? It turns out that there’s a spray you can buy that obscures your license. It puts a glare in the middle of your plate so it’s hard to make out what your license is. For more information about this spray, come and visit our site but I’ll have to drop it in some secret place. Like radar detectors, I would guess that this may be illegal in some states.