My mom woke me up at 6:15 in the morning to go hiking. The city of Palm Desert recently completed several trails in the mountains near my house, and my mom has subsequently become a hiking junkie (training for the Grand Canyon, she says). I was thoroughly perplexed by this newfound hiking craze, which I learned about in my phone calls home:
“Dad is getting me a GPS unit for…”
“Your car?”
“No, for my hiking.”
And:
“What do you want for Christmas?”
“A headlamp.”
“Huh? Like what coal miners wear?”
“Well, for my hiking, in case it gets dark. LL Bean has them.”
“O…K…”
The trail we took for the morning hike was an easy four or so miles roundtrip, with some nice views of a still sleepy Palm Desert in all of its illustrious palm tree and big box store glory.
Later that day I met up with Katerina to run some errands, which included trying the new shrimp tacos at Del Taco. Loved ‘em. Yeah, it’s fast food, but better than any tacos the least coast can come up with. Even bringing up the concept of a “fish taco” thoroughly puzzles east coasters, as they are unable to imagine filling their tortilla with anything other than beef or chicken. They’ll never know the awesomeness that is the Del Taco crispy shrimp taco, and will instead continue to eat their soggy fish sandwiches. Poor bastards.
Next on the agenda was a trip to the local driving range. Every red-blooded Palm Springs resident owns a set of golf clubs, although most of them are likely sitting in a garage collecting dust like mine. I hadn’t picked up a club in nearly nine years, while Katerina had recently honed her skills on the Jack Nicklaus Tournament Course at PGA West in La Quinta.
“Can you wear flip flops to the driving range?”
“Dude, it says ‘no spikes’, not ‘no flip-flops’!”
We bought a bucket of 165 balls, so we were there for quite a while, driving our fellow golfers nuts with our incessant giggling and “Wow, look at that turf fly!” I spent most of my drives trying to hit the tractor that was moving around collecting all the range balls, but unfortunately missed.
Uh, the divots were there before we got there…
Real golfers wear Uggs
I did have a few good drives, though, one of which elicited a “Dude! That’s totally a CEO shot!”
“I know, right?”
HIGH FIVE!
As we were heading back to the car, one of the 80 year old guys complimented us with a “You did great, girls!”
“Thanks, I’m trying to work on my long game.”
You should totally come golfing with Katerina and I. The mad golf cart driving alone would be worth the green fees.
Afterwards, dinner at Las Casuelas (yeah, more Mexican food) and beer at the Yardhouse, the only place in the desert where you can drink Lindemann’s framboise and Shiner Bock in one sitting.
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From Katerina:
Dude… send me that picture of me. It’s a good one. BTW, we totally rock at golf. Can’t wait to play a whole game with you. And I call dibs on driving the cart.