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This past weekend my wife's side of the family had an impromptu family reunion. It wasn't formally planned, but since some of her family was going to be in town from Texas and San Francisco, other members of the family decided to travel from New York, Ohio, and Chicago to visit. It was a fantastic if not loud weekend of hanging out, laughing, talking, and over indulging in both food and drink. Before everyone arrived, it was decided that a group of us were going to play golf on Friday morning.

Since I have not played golf in more than a decade, I politely declined, but then I told my brother in law if they needed one more person to fill out a foursome, I would be happy to go. Turns out they had 11 people. Funny how that works right?

So I dub my clubs out of the corner of the garage on the Thursday before and wiped all the spiderwebs and dust off of them. I thought about pulling one of them out and taking a few practice swings, but I really didn't want to disturb the mice that might have built a nest down in the bottom of my bag. Just kidding. Sort of.

I bought these clubs for $40 off a guy a long time ago. They aren't the greatest, or even average, but they get the job done when I need them.

I was pretty nervous knowing it had been something like ten years since I last swung a club, and even then I wasn't that good. Thankfully, I got put in a group with my father in law, my brother in law, and one of my wife's cousins. In addition to that, my oldest niece had promised to drive around my father in law in his cart. He plays on a league every week during the summer, so I was afraid I would let him down, but unfortunately age has gotten the better of him and though he still played better than me, he had some shots that made me not feel quite so bad.

I'm going to include this post as a #wednesdaywalk post sponsored by @tattoodjay. You see, even though we had a golf cart, most of my shots went so short that I ended up just walking from one shot to the next. I think I got over 10,000 steps just playing golf that morning. We agreed on a cap of 8 strokes for any given hole, so there were quite a few that I just took my 8 and didn't even bother finishing.

Actually, I started off pretty strong with a 5 on the first hole, but it kind of went downhill after that. I guess I got too cocky or something.

Did I mention it was hot? We were on the downward side of the heat dome that obliterated the middle of the country last week, but it was still blazing hot. I was sweating like a beast and we were all drinking as much water as we could just to function properly.

This is a shot of my father in law teeing off.

This is a shot of my niece taking a swing on one of the holes. As a softball player she has a pretty natural swing an though it didn't go the direction she wanted it to, she had quite a bit of distance on her drive. Her sister also came to drive a cart and on one of the holes that she took a swing she almost hit us out in the fairway.

Needless to say, I was pretty frustrated with my game, but I did have some good shots. I had one or two good rives, and I had an amazing putt from probably twenty feet or more out where I read the green really well and the ball went right in the hole much to everyone's amazement. Even mine!

If you look at the scores, I am that 63 there in the center. YOu can see just how poorly I did, though I did manage to only get a bogey on one of the par 3's, so that is pretty awesome. It looks like I started strong and I finished strong. My wife's cousin was the winner of our group shooting 48, my brother in law shot 54, and my father in law shot 58. In the other groups my other brother in law was the winner shooting a 38, but he plays this course every week for his league and his brother was playing best ball with his son who is only in 7th grade, so their 40 they shot is still kind of impressive.

We finished the round of nine holes in about three hours and then we decided to head to a local bar to get some food. We could have stayed at the golf course and ate at the clubhouse, but we decided to take our party on the road.

I got an Atwater Brewery Dirty Blonde Ale and it was delicious.

I followed it up with a massive smashburger that was delicious and yes, I ate the whole thing! Although I wish I had played better, it was a pretty amazing morning. I was feeling it that night though. I pulled a muscle in my groin teeing off on one of the holes, my back was aching, and my both my shoulders were sore. Golf is a lot more intense than you might think!