The day started like any other. The four of us at the hotel ate our continental breakfast with deliciously strong black coffee and way too many helpings of OJ and met up with the rest of the team at the qualifier course, TimberCreek. Three of us stenciled the first 15 holes with distances to the green, with me naturally ending covered in spray paint and unable to use a Bushnell Rangefinder to save my life. Luckily, a large cell of thunderstorm moved in, forcing us into the cart barn and clubhouse where we met a junior who will be playing the tournament this weekend. And since he hails all the way from the land of crumpets and double-decker buses, naturally the relatives he is traveling with enjoyed a nice cup to tea to take the chill off from the strong Alabama downpour outside. Yeah, you guessed it, I want to be friends with this kid.
But once we realized the storm was not about to pass soon, we moved back to the Steelwood course to our HQ to pack Registration (Reg) bags... one of my favorite things to do. It involves organizing product, putting them into bags, and organizing these bags into boxes to give to the players. Organization and separation, now that's something I can enjoy.
When the thunder and lightning was gone we were sent out on the Steelwood course where the actual tournament rounds will happen Monday-Thursday and I was part of the crew marking the course for hazards. This course is so spread out and tough that we basically finished off 2 cases of red spray paint circling every hole to show the hazards. That's not even the good part yet. I almost got malaria, I'm sure, based on the number of mosquitos swarming around me out there and wearing my rainpants through the high grass only made the heat worse. But it gets better. Aaron on my team is scared to death of snakes and one of the members out playing this afternoon decided to tell him there are rattlesnakes out here. So we were warned to be cautious of the brown snakes but that the black ones are OK. So we saw about 7 snakes and the other crew working on the Out-of-Bound markings saw a 'gator in the cartpath. Then I was marking a water hazard in front of the tee on the 7th hole and going through some really swampy area when I came upon an area just saturated with flies. I took a breath and realized that it smelled like something was rotting. I looked ahead and saw a black mass, with flies hovering around it and quickly took a different turn with the yellow paint, messing up my line, but avoiding what I thought was a dead something. Another intern on my team came around when I radioed out about it and she verified that it was definitely a dead snake on top of something else that is dead too. So, welcome to Alabama, y'all! It's pretty much living up to expectations thus far, though I'm not sure where everyone who lives at this course makes/made their money.
Rain delays, empty roads, malls, crazy ladies yelling at me (I'll try to remember to include that in tomorrow's post), and dead bodies while I sweat through my rain gear and get some mosquito-borne disease or a snakebite... sounds pretty close to what I dreamt of when I looked at maps of Alabama in the atlas with Dad when I was little. No surprises here.
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