August 11 - Friday
Funny how all dorms seem the same. Same type of furniture, same smell. It was nice to have the kitchen and eat off of real plates, bowls, and glasses. It was also nice to use a spoon and a knife and not have to use the handle of my spoon as a knife. We're living in the lap of luxury.
It was another blustery cloudy day in Scotland but not cold - yet. We took the footpath heading towards the golf course.
"We are in St. Andrews! Aren't you excited?!" - S
"Yeah." - J
"I thought you'd be skipping down this path or clicking you heels up in excitement." - S
"I am on the inside." - J
Then he breaks into a grin from ear to ear.
That's more like it.
We stop in front of the bridge before the eighteenth hole. It's an itty bitty thing that might otherwise not catch too much attention if you didn't know its history. We walked up to the first tee of the Old Course and watched for a while. I was antsy to get Jon to the clubhouse to see what was going to be involved with getting him on the course or if we even could this week. It wasn't until late afternoon before we wandered our way down to the clubhouse. The staff was really nice and said that so long as they had a copy of Jon's handicap -courtesy of his brother, David - Jon would be able to play as early as tomorrow. Cool. We went to the proshop to find out about renting some clubs and met a many from Canada who had also rented clubs and had just finished a round on the New Course. Turns out he was there just before 0700 and literally walked onto the course with no wait. Jon talked with the guy about the clubs and the courses - Old Course versus New Course. Turns out the two courses are back to back and share the same terrain. After while we had our game plan for tomorrow - be at the course at the crack of dawn. I had to go too - someone had to take a picture of Jon taking a swing at the first tee. We hadn't gotten up really early in quite some time. 0800 has been our average wake up time so to be at the course no later than 0630 wasn't sounding too appealing to me I was just hoping that Jon wouldn't ask me to follow him through the entire course. I've done that once - when we were at Whistler, B.C. And that was pretty darned boring. I wasn't going to volunteer to join him but if he asked I wouldn't say no. How can you say no to someone who is skipping and clicking his heels up "...on the inside.". He's been waiting to play at St. Andrews for years. It's a rare opportunity to be here and I planned on slapping a smile on my face and skipping right along with him - up nine holes and back - if he asked me to. We went to Tesco's and bought groceries for the next few days and then headed back to our dorm room. Jon wanted to go back to the course and practice before his big day tomorrow and I wanted to do a little excercising myself - a nap sounded good too. By midafternoon we were both konked out in bed.
Jon did get a couple hours of practice time in and I was able to do some cardio around the playing fields on campus and at a nearby park.
By the evening we were both hungry and the vegetable stirfry we were able to make in the kitchen was sounding really good. We also had fresh tomatoes and spinach. If we aren't camping we try to have foods that don't pack well in the bike bags which is most produce and refrigerated items like milk, yogurt, cheese, etc. The veggies were really good - so much better when it doesn't come from a can. Now we could have eaten in the kitchen since there was seating but heck, we had a tv in our room so back we went with our dinner. We watched the news, the European Cup Track and Field Games, Jaime Oliver's food show which I saw for the first time in London when Mary was visiting and some other food show. We did watch the Time Machine until we fell asleep during the afternoon - that's a classic you definitely should Netflix that one if it's available on DVD! We get about 8-10 channels but there's only about 4 stations that are repeated on those channels but it's more than we're used to getting in the campgrounds!
I read one of our books that we got from the Center for Alternative Technology while Jon studied all of the St. Andrews literature he had gathered since arriving in town as well as what he collected while at The Open last month before we went to bed.
"I think I'm getting a little nervous about tomorrow." - J
