Palm Springs - Part 1

Do you ever have so many post lined up that you're excited about that you don't know what to write about first? Then you just procrastinate and don't write any of them. No? Just me? Ok - then I'll stop the madness.

Let me tell you about my trip to California! It was my first time to the state.

It's hard to fully internalize the reality that not everyone in the world lives in freezing weather during the winter. It has been such a reality for all of my life. But, after spending a week in Palm Springs in January, there's no denying that the rest of the world is not sitting under a blanket with a hot water bottle every night.

If you're like most people, you're wondering what two newly weds are doing in Palm Springs in the middle of winter. We were about 40 years younger than the average aged person in Palm Springs.

We went to spend a week/help out "Bugs Baba". Bugs Baba is my grandmother (a.k.a Baba or Babba), who we've introduced in other posts (see here for example). The "Bugs" part is a play on "Bugs Bunny". I'll share more Bugs Baba stories in a later post.

The day after arriving in Palm Springs, we met up with That Girl from Paved with Good Intentions and That Boy. You can read about her take here. After patiently giving me a list of restaurant options, I suggested Matchbox Pizza because it looked like it had a nice outdoor area.

I've been a regular reader of Paved With Good Intentions for several years now. As That Girl put it, it was "...like meeting people you've known for a long time. And in a way, we kind of have known each other for a while, which makes this meeting a long time coming". You get to bypass many of the usual introductory aspects of meeting someone and next thing you know you're sharing stories about how you met your significant other and making fun of each other's husbands (apologies to That Boy).

Here's the waffle I ordered:


and R's burger:


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The next day, we took advantage of the previous week's rain by catching a day of the Bob Hope Classic that extended to the Monday (for more information on the event, click here).

I'm not a golf fan, so I was a bit skeptical at first. But, it was a beautiful day and the course itself was amazing.

I risked grave consequences a potential warning by bringing my camera in. We even made up a code: any reference to strawberries meant that I should take/wanted to take a picture.



We spent a good portion of the day following Mike Weir around. Lucky for him, despite R's repeated requests, I refused to "take a strawberry" of him waiting in line for the port-o-potty. But I did get this decent shot of him taking a practice swing.

Some of the holes are actually partially situated on the mountain side. Just gorgeous.

I can even imagine living right on a golf course like this (crossing fingers and toes that I win the $50M lottery this Friday).

I'll stop there, but I have many more pictures to share!