So... last time we were heading up to Daytona. We decided to stop at the grocery store to look for Helix one last time. There was no sign of him and we trekked northward. I'm sure he'll be fine. At least he's better equipped to be out on his own now than he was when we found him in New York.

We stopped at a car wash and cleaned the outside of the Winnie so that we could apply some new decals I bought in Kalamazoo. It took awhile but she cleaned up pretty well.

Daytona was a tough course with ponds, streams, and lots of big trees. A good drive could get kicked anywhere. Many people had a couple good rounds and a couple bad rounds, although the course remained basically the same.

Al played strong throughout and finished second behind a smoking Climo. I had a bad first day but shot up 16 places on Sunday to take 9th. Dave started well and slid backward but hung in for cash. Sue won the Women’s’ division over two other players. There was a shootout at the end of the day for the top six Open players (overall), the top two Masters, the top Woman, and the top Grandmaster. “Johnny Rocket” McCray outlasted the field to win a bunch of cash. Al made it to third place and won an extra $50.

Triple Crown, Third Leg/Finals - Daytona
Sue won the overall title for the Women.
Al was 2nd in Overall.
Todd was tied for 7th overall with Dr. Rick Voakes.
I'm trying to find out where Dave finished overall but I can't wake him up.

Al and Sue hitched a ride back to Climo's house where the Blazer and pop-up camper were. Dave and I took the Winnie and headed for St. Louis. We would meet Al and Sue there, leave the Blazer, and head for Phoenix.

After playing all day Sunday I drove the Winnie 1100 miles to St. Louis in 24 hours. Not bad. Al and Sue had gotten there about two hours before us. The rear-end on the Bronco was acting up a bit, Winnie was fine. Dave McCormack was still in Florida, but we spent the night at Dave’s house with his cousin / secretary / maid Sherri.

Next day we headed for Kansas City, staying over at Halbaby Kurz’s for a couple hours of ping-pong and talking, then heading out at about midnight on Tuesday night. It was a long drive to Phoenix for the Bob West Memorial. We had to replace a couple fuses in the Winnie along the way and it got very cold up in the mountains (man we need a heater), but we finally got to the Arizona courses as the sun came up on Thursday.

Found a campground at Westworld, a sort of stables-and-pologround kind of place. Anyway, we secured a place to stay for a few nights and headed off to the Scottsdale course. We ran into some people we hadn't seen for awhile and got all caught up on who's doing what this year.

Al and I drove about 3,500 miles between the two vehicles in about 4 days. We were whipped. We also spent about $600 just on gasoline. So, as usual, we're low on money and need to shoot well this weekend. Hopefully we can make some cash at the tournament doubles tonight and maybe talk some of the pros into buying some plastic. Most pro golfers either get free or discounted plastic already so it's a tough sale... we hope that some of the local amateurs will come out with money in their pockets.

In other news, we finally worked out the final draft of our interview with DGWN. Rick Rothstein has a guy here who is supposed to snap a bunch of pictures of us for the issue. Maybe he can get a good one that becomes a cover photo! That would be too cool.

More to come, tune in next week.

- Todd

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