Last weekend marked the first exceptional weather week of the year, and due to such meant golf.
Okay, maybe you don’t play, prefer alternative outdoor activities, or enjoy the beginning of the end of a long wet winter in your own unique way. But for golfers, last weekend kicked-off the first genuine opportunity to enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played, and because of such white was the color of choice.
That’s right, the thermometer hit 60, people hit the links, and many of them used said opportunity to expose their legs for the first time in 5 months. Golfers – myself included – flocked to their local facilities, and in the process took the lid off the can of dreadful clichés made famous annually this time of year.
“Nice OB stakes!”
“Whoa, you’re blinding me!”
“Hey, it’s Powder: The Sequel”
Good one, right? Wrong. It’s March in Oregon; we’ve seen the sun 3 times since October and when we did, it was 29 degrees. Unless you have an affinity for cancer (Fake-and-bake) or are indigenous to the southern hemisphere, white is what you get at the Ides of March in the northern two-thirds of the United States. Being ridiculed by a pasty-white 50-year-old for being pasty-white, is the textbook definition of “the pot calling the kettle black”… figuratively of course. I know I’m pale, aside from it reflecting my inability to afford a tropical vacation; it also screams from the roof-tops that I dwell in the very same place “you” and your equally white legs do too. I don’t need your wise-ass remarks to reinforce what my mirror has been telling me since Halloween, but for some reason people tend to regurgitate the very jokes designed to do just that … every year!
I enjoy this time of year. While I enjoy the winter and appreciate what it has to offer, by now I’m ready for the sun and the warmer temperatures that come with it. I, like many others, took last weekend as an opportunity to play golf. Others may have played tennis, took to a local hiking trail, walked the beach, or merely spent a portion of the afternoon parlaying a habitual dog-walk into an extended stay in at the neighborhood park. Either way, the weather is a changin’ and the way we go about enjoying our free time is changin’ with it.
The Portland Timbers are back, the Hillsboro Hops are on the horizon, and the sun-tans that come with watching and/or participating in said sports are coming with them. We all like a little color and if you enjoy the outdoors you’ll inevitably get it over the next 5 months. But for the aforementioned jokers as reliable as death and taxes, are the very jokes they’ll tell. If you play the games … you’ve heard them. If you watch the games … you’ve heard them. And if you’re the one telling those same jokes we’ve all heard … you arguably heard them somewhere prior to empowering them at the expense of the your friends and family who’d rather you didn’t.
It’s “Spring-Eve” people. That means golf, baseball, hiking and camping, and the water sports we all love are just around the corner. But until they’re officially here we’ll all be “white,” and the “white” jokes will be transparent.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!