Karsten Golf Course

Tempe, Arizona: We were up and outta here early this morning as we had a tee time on the Karsten course at ASU. Oh, I hated giving money to those Sun Devils... but when I saw the bag boys in bright gold knickers, with gold and red argyle socks... well, I just felt sorry for them! Oh, listen to me... you'd think I was a Duck fan or something!

We were able to play alone, and they made us take a cart, so it was a pretty quick round in spite of my swing. Somewhere on the back nine, I found my swing again and played better. DT was fine, as usual, and complained about his game, as usual. It is a pretty course, donated to ASU by the man who founded PING. The course is adjacent to campus, under the Phoenix airport flight pattern, behind the ASU power plant and very close to the RV park. The sun was shining and we were in t-shirts and it was just like we were in Arizona! We saw rabbits, roadrunners, cowbirds, pigeons, doves, scrub jays and crows while golfing. It was a tough little course, but I am happy to have played it.

Speaking of Sun Devils - the U of Oregon just phoned to let us know the game has been picked-up by ABC Television and the time has changed to 12:30 in the afternoon. (Kick-off was scheduled at 7:15 p.m.) The pre-function has been moved-up to 10:30... don't know how much partying will be going-on at 10:30 in the morning!

For the afternoon entertainment - DT went for a long run, we wrote postcards, gave Goldie a thorough cleaning and then drove downtown to see Phoenix and do some shopping. Along the way, we came across work crews scraping muddy sand from the streets where they had flooded over the past few days. What a mess! We saw Bank One Ballpark - the roof was open and found a few little gifts in the down town shops. The World Series was starting, so we popped into a sports bar and had a fun time watching the game and chatting with the beagle-owning bartender.