Acculturation: the process of adopting the cultural traits or social patterns of another group.

I am not doing this.  Of course, I’m not particularly trying yet.  I’ve spent most of my days indoors doing work on the ole’ Lappy or the keyboard.  The other days I’ve spent with Ash just enjoying why I made this move.  Did you know they drive the speed limit here?  Like most of the time!?  I know, it’s shocking.  There’s a place where it’s a 15 mph when school is in session.  You’ll never guess what I see: people going 15.  Like MANY people.  ALL people, going 15 miles per hour.  It’s like a funeral process in every direction.  Creepy.

I’ll be damned if I’ll start pronouncing this state “correctly” either.  Nuh-VAAA-duh?  No thank you.

But I do enjoy it, even if it feels more like an extended vacation spot rather than home (yet).  I have a feeling I’ll be more active once the weather turns warmer and they don’t close every road (to disc golf courses) prematurely.  And if I go out and actually meet people.

I may have myself a Scott Fourre and company at my place on New Years.  Looks like I’m startin’ to wrangle up my first party.

Engorgement: the act of devouring greedily 

I engaged in this this weekend.  Thanksgiving dinner with the other fam, Sunday dinner with the other fam, and eating a bag of pretzel rods the other day.  Hey, I have to store up fat for the winter, don’t I?

I left my camera in a car in San Jose after a paintball game. But here are a couple of crappy phone-quality pics. When I get my camera back, I will snap some shots of my place, my area, and maybe even my girlfriend.

First, my war wound from the paintball game. When you get hit in paintball, you put your hands (and gun) up in the air, people stop shooting you, and you walk peacefully off the field. Occasionally, you’ll get hit in quick succession by a few errant shots, but after a second or two, they stop. You should NOT get hit seven seconds later, especially not in your ribs that are unprotected when your hands are up in the air. See illustrations.

Feels lovely.

Speaking of lovely, these are REAL clouds. I did not touch this photo up (I assure you it looks so fake because of the poor quality of the phone’s camera.  Actually, it looks like an oil painting, but it’s real.  Taken overlooking a Target)

So here are the photos of before and after my trip. First, some of the goodbye party.

They’re cute, but for some reason, I think they look better in sepia. You be the judge.

Anyway, I left and about 3 miles before I hit PA, what do I see?

Dead-stopped traffic. Ahh, NJ, I’ll miss thee.

As I said in one of my last posts, our country gets less interesting as you go west. Case in point. Above is some interesting topography in NJ/PA.

PA – fall foliage and hills dot the spectacular landscape

OH – traffic cones and bends in the road dot the rugged landscape

IL – some trees dot the landscape

IN – A tree… and, uh, some power lines, dot the rather drab landscape

IA – some… well, some dots dot the… wholly uninteresting landscape

WHYoming – only these billboards dotted the landscape, constituting the longest 4.5 hours of my life

UT – absolutely nothing dots this barren landscape which can only be described as moon-like and godforaken

Hell, look how bad things are in Nebraska.

NE – so unfun they banned the thumbs-up

Then the states starting lying to me.

I didn’t see one.

But not all was bad. I hit four courses, and though I only took pictures of three, the one in Nebraska (of all places) was amazingly beautiful and photogenic. Here are my pics of all three courses (the first pic is a small course in IN, the second and third are at Kearney in NE, and all the rest are at Lake Hastings in NE)

skipped off the top of the basket on my second shot

Not a bad course. But nothing compared to these

The third pic (hole 9) is one of the best holes I’ve ever played (especially considering the 20+ mph winds) It is 500′ long downhill, with a road (and lake) OB to your left, and schule all the way to your right. There is a 30′ stream that makes the green an island green. It’s possible to pump one down past the stream and give yourself a deuce putt, or you can play it safe for your three (hopefully avoiding the one tree). Great hole. I 4d it because I can’t up to save a monkey from being skinned.

And I’ll leave you with various sunset pictures which shows that my 80mph one-handed photography skills are still goin’ strong. They are in order of how I like them.

Pics of my place and the area coming soon.

- There’s a place on Route 287 in New Jersey where you can see, off in the distance, (on a clear day, very important), the mighty Sheraton hotel building.  This is impressive because it is about two miles away.  You’ll lose it in the trees again and it’ll appear later.  Two miles!  While in Utah (or Wyoming?), I saw off in the distance some wind turbines.  Now this was at dusk, so visibility was NOT good.  These turbines were over TWENTY-THREE miles away!  That’s what lack of trees or, in fact, any interesting geological changes, will do to you.

- When you’re driving east to west, don’t do it on a daylight savings weekend.  I literally have no idea what time it is.

- I was in the bathroom at a Pilot gas station when an announcement broke over the loud speaker.  “Attention Pilot customers, we have a polite trucker in the store.  He just said ‘please’.”  My estimation of Iowa went up one iota. 

Our country gets exponentially less interesting as you travel westward.  I have a photo montage in my camera of just how uninteresting it becomes.  In PA, you start to strip away the wonderful mountains and beautiful fall foliage.  In OH and IN, you strip away many of the rolling hills.  In IL and IA, kiss goodbye pretty much any elevation changes, and most types of foliage taller than 5 feet.  Once you’re in NE, there go trees altogether, as well as buildings.  CO?  Bye bye turns in the road.  And the scariest part?  I haven’t even GOTTEN to WY yet.

So I’m in Colorado now at Mitch’s, realizing that three straight days of driving isn’t all that cool.  What IS cool?  Playing new courses.  My pics won’t be up for a while, but here’s what I’ve done so far:

Trinity Links (Joliet, IL)  – Short course where I’d estimate 15 of the 18 holes are deucable a) if you know the course and b) if you’re not playing like a mullet.  I was +5 after 4 holes, having outdriven a 210′ by over 100 (oops misreading of the sign).  Nothing special, but free and a quick play.

Peninsula Park DGC (Iowa City, IA)  -Recommended by PDGA guru Chuck Kennedy and seconded by a few people, this course was home to the IA states this year.  Not a bad course at all.  I made the mistake of tagging on with some locals in a round that began at 5pm, and before I realized it, I was in a 7some with an hour and a half of daylight.  After ten holes, I broke off and tried to plow through the rest, skipping one or two when it just got unbearably dark.  A good course, and apparently I caught it at the right time (low weeds, no mosquitoes)

Lake Hastings (Hastings, NE) – Seriously, if you ever have the misfortune of having to drive through Nebraska, go to this course.  I didn’t realize it was over 20 minutes out of my way, and was about to turn around, but I decided to plow on ahead and I was glad I did.  This was probably the most beautiful course I’ve ever played, meticulously manicured, and just breathtaking.  I have half a dozen shots of it when I get my cables unpacked.  There were some amazing holes.  The only thing I think that was a detractor was that there were maybe 6 ‘dinker’ holes (incredibly easy threes – must deuces really), but I didn’t mind because there were 20-30mph winds that made every hole difficult.  Great course!  I might have been swayed because it was PERFECT weather for disc golf.

Cottonmill DGC (Kearney, NE) – This course got a four out of five rating, so I expected great things (especially considering nearby Hastings was unrated).  This course was good, no doubt.  Four out of five?  Eh.  It actually reminded me a fair deal of a slightly beefed up Oxbow Falls course in NY.  Lots of shots required in your bag, but it just didn’t have the ‘it factor’.  And what’s more surprising is I played the course [blind] REALLY well.  I shot with three locals and put together a 57 (at least three of my drives were aimed off because at least half the holes were blind shots and I was in a hurry).

More to come.