Viva Las Vegas, Or Not 

I really don't want to put into words how I feel about Las Vegas.  I have been there several times and each time I visited the city I have tried with all my might to like the town. Each time I went there I vowed that this time would be different and I would learn to like the place.  Well, each visit pretty much evoked strong feelings about the place.  OK, I'll say it.  I hate the place. 

Why do I not care for Las Vegas?  There are several reasons that I hold this opinion. First off, from where I live it is an almost seven and a half drive through nothingness, the California High Desert. The drive is basically once you have gotten to the boondocks, you still have about one-hundred and fifty miles to go. Flying there is not too bad, but in order to get around you must rent a car. The freeway system is pretty good, but the whole place runs at a pace that you better be careful you may get run over by that Mack truck. The traffic around the strip is, well what can I say.  Basically, Las Vegas is Los Angeles in the desert with a lot of rude people that just goes on and on. At least in Los Angeles you have an ocean nearby and it is not 150 degrees in the summer. Bottom line is, I just don't like the vibe of the city.

I've had some valid reasons for going to Las Vegas.  Let me share them.  First off, my first visit to Las Vegas was with my ex-wife. Our reason for going to Las Vegas was that we had never been there. Well, cross that off our bucket list. Her and I flew there in I believe it was early June, rented a car and did many of the touristy things you do when you go to Las Vegas. 

 We don't gamble so we really didn't go to the casinos.  We did Hoover Dam, The Liberace museum and The Billagio Fountain as well as going into the Luxor. The Follies Bergiere show at the no longer Tropicana hotel kept our interest and we enjoyed it. I hope the Oakland Athletics enjoy their non-existent ballpark when they move there on the site of the Tropicana. Sitting out at the pool at The Flamingo was a highlight of our trip. OK now, been there and done that. It wasn't that big of a deal and we probably won't come to Las Vegas again.  I was wrong.

I don't know if any of you are familiar with the jewelry company Cookie Lee.  It is a multi-level marketing company that sells jewelry and my ex-wife became a part of it.  She did fairly well with it I must say and recruited a couple of ladies into the company. She had a prospective recruit that lived in Las Vegas so off we went to meet with this lady. I was going to play golf with this lady's husband, so I went along.

This trip was a total bust.  We stayed a a fine Best Western which was very nice and had a great pool.  We enjoyed very much the evacuation of the resort in the heat of the July summer when the fire alarms went off.  It turns out that someone badly burned their toast causing the smoke alarm to go off in the room which facilitated the evacuation.  All in the name of safety.  Did I say that the pool was great? All kidding aside though, the resort was the high point of this visit.  The room was very nice and the staff went out of their way to make things comfortable.

Here goes a summary of this trip.  The recruit had ulterior motive and didn't sign up. The recruit's husband whom I was to play golf with backed out.  The whole trip was a bust, except for the exceptional stay at the resort. 

Trips three through six were business trips-sort of. When I was a teacher, I was also coaching golf at a local high school and middle school.  There was a coach's three day clinic/tournament that I was always invited to each year and it just happened to be held in Las Vegas. That clinic/tournament tuned into TOURNAMENT/clinic as most of the almost 200 coaches played in the tournament but sort of disappeared for the clinic. My memories are very fond as I participated in three of these events put on by The Professional Golfers Career College out of San Diego and we got to play some of the great courses in the Las Vegas area. On the rotation of courses were Stallion Mountain, Royal Links which is now closed, Desert Pines and the two courses Boulder Creek and Boulder Creek Municipal in Boulder Creek. I enjoyed very much going to these tournaments but my third was the last that PGCC held. The first year we got rained on and the second and third year the mercury soared to a wonderful 112 plus.  Another reason I hate Las Vegas.   

I've been to Las Vegas three times since The coach's tournament. My present wife drove the seven hour trip there on a time share promotion and came away seven thousand dollars poorer. Yes, we did buy the timeshare and I will share that story tomorrow, we enjoy it even though it was very expensive.  My wife was the one that said yes and we got to play golf. I wrote a post about this and I will repost it tomorrow so that you can get a good idea of what happened.

 The second time I went to Las Vegas on a immediate family reunion of my five children and I stayed in our timeshare. My wife did not come along and I won't go into that. My daughter who lives in Las Vegas is a fantastic golfer and I got to play golf at The Bear's Best golf course with her.  One of the highlights of the trip was finding out the gender of our next grandchild-my only grand daughter-and going through the National Atomic Testing Museum which was a blast, pardon the pun.

The third and last time I was in Las Vegas I was with my wife.  Her son  whom she sees rarely, was going to be in Phoenix, Arizona.  She wanted to meet up with his so we decided to drive and use our timeshare as a sort of halfway point on our way to Phoenix and stay a couple of days at our timeshare.  This not only would also include a round of golf in Las Vegas. This trip went off without of hitch and we got to spend some quality time with her son.

I know that this post was a bit rambling and probably wasn't that humorous, in fact probably downright boring. Thanks for staying with me on this. My post on Friday will be about the courses I played in Las Vegas and my opinions on them.  The bottom line on this is still, I hate Las Vegas.

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Who Am I?  Writer or Golfer?

So, I am having to make some big changes.  I have asked myself what do I want to be when I grow up.  Do I want to be a writer or do I want to be a golfer? I don't want to reveal my age, but I will say that I just entered my seventh decade of existence. I play golf and I write.

Social Security and my teacher's pension have kept me going for a while and so has being married to a wonderful wife. However, eating Hamburger Helper and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as our daily sustenance is not my idea of living.  Once in a while we splurge and make a tuna fish sandwich.  OK, its not that bad, but I would still like to supplement our income and the best way I know of doing this is through my writing. With this in mind, I have decided a couple of things, so here goes.

The biggest thing is that I have to devote more serious time to writing. What I need to do is to set aside a block of time where I am not disturbed and sit down at my computer and write.  This must be a ritual each day as there are a few things that I want to accomplish on a regular basis and I can't do that if I am not consistent. I have to totally internalize that I am a professional writer first and golf along with travel are my subjects. Golf and travel are my subjects that I am painting and the written page are my canvas.  Writing has been a hobby and it is time to change that.

Secondly, I must become more consistent posting my blogs.  How can you build a following and when you don't know when another post is coming out.  Readers go away from you work, because they can't depend on you being there.  They want new things and ideas to read and enjoy.  If you are not consistent in your posts, they will not subscribe and think that you have fallen into a cenote in the Yucatan, drowning in that cenote. Well, maybe not that but they won't come back if there are no new posts on a regular basis 

Here is my plan.  I will post hopefully three times a week, most likely Monday, Wednesday and Friday so watch for it.  The Golf Course Travel Bag will be my main blog but I will also try to get a couple of my other blogs such as Golf Is For Couples and David Rallis Writes up and running in this mix. Posts will not only be about my thoughts on different aspects and topics in the game of golf, but I will also share some of the observations about some of the over 250 courses I have played. What was it like to play some of the wonderful courses I have played such as Pacific Grove in the Monterey area?  What are some of the hidden gem golf courses I have played such as Oceanside Muni? I will share that with you.

I have a lot to write about and there is more to come so I hope you will join me on this literary journey. I am also making arrangements to do some affiliate marketing through my blogs so I hope you will support me with that as well. My goal is to get my readership up to at least 10,000 hits a month and a subscribers list of about the same size.  I know it will take time so please help me on this.  I would appreciate it so don't forget to hit the follower's button on the blog.

I don't know if any of you know this but I do have a website.  The web address is http://the-golf-course-travel-bag.com and is basically a course directory.  The unique thing about it is the courses listed in it are all courses I have personally played and some personal comments about what I thought about that course.  They are basically courses on the West Coast, but I have played in Florida and some other places as well. Again, I hope to have some affiliate marketing on that site and please visit as well as subscribe to the site.  I am in the process of updating the website with a few courses that I have played since I last updated it.  

To those of you who have read my blog when I publish, I want to say a hearty Thank You. I hope to welcome many more readers into the Golf Course Travel Bag blog family.  Please don't forget to hit the followers button and thank you for reading, I'll

see you soon.