We left Mobile for National Doubles on Monday afternoon around 1pm, arriving at the Round Rock course 4 am Tuesday morning. The Texas police followed us a couple of times along the way but apparently couldn't find a good excuse to pull us over.

There was camping right at the course but it didn't provide any bathrooms or showers so we spent an hour or so finding a different campground. We drove back to the course and shot 15 holes in cool weather and 3 holes in the rain.

The next day Cam and Dickie showed up in the Flying Eye van and got a campsite a hundred feet from ours. After a day of trying to figure out the flow of the courses and searching for a few pinless pin positions, we all headed back to the campground to watch some TV and play hackey-sack by lantern-light.

You're probably wondering how it went in the Mobile tournament... Al took second (again), this time to Ron Russell who shot well. Al was six strokes behind Ron going into the final 6 holes (for the top 4 Open players) and narrowed the margin to 2 strokes. Al got a bonus $75 for the best round in the final 6. Dave and I cashed at 12th and 8th place respectively. Sue came in second behind Leslie. Leslie shot a personal best -5 at Chickasaw, beating many of the male players. I shot a -6 to barely edge her out. Third place was Mike (Worm) Young who you may remember me mentioning from the Texas States last year.

Three of the four courses we played at Mobile were tightly wooded courses where it's nice to know where not to throw your drives. It's a little tough on out-of-towners but somehow Al keeps playing well on courses he isn't familiar with. It should be interesting to see how well he plays when we finally get to some tournaments that we've actually played in before.

The Winnie is running well with our recent repairs taking hold. The propane leak is fixed but now the refrigerator won't ignite. Ah well, we've been buying ice and placing it into a tub in the fridge. It keeps things cool but not quite cold. We placed a lantern on the front lip of the Winnie last night to cast light for our footbag game and the heat cracked the windshield... this could be the excuse the police have been looking for to pull us over.

Today Mark Ellis and Avery Jenkins are flying into town. We were going to go pick up Avery at the airport tonight but as luck would have it Mark and Avery are flying in on the same flight. Avery will stay with Mark tonight and we'll pick him up at the course tomorrow. We pitched the tent for Al and Sue and Avery will be staying with Dave and I inside the Winnie. The daily weather forecasts can't decide if it will rain from day to day. It's wait and see on the weather.

I'll write more soon. Don't know when I'll have access to a telephone again so this may take some time in getting to you.

- Todd

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