It was definitely a good Independence Day. Well, for the most part, anyway.
Katie had to work from 9-5 at her job, which sucked. However, being a holiday, she gets time and a half, which doesn't suck.
Instead of sitting at home on my duff, my dad came over and we went to a relatively new disc golf course in St. Charles that I've been wanting to try for some time. However, I really had no idea where it was and the online map provided by the St. Charles Park District really blew chunks in terms of accuracy. A half hour after starting our search, we found it.
All I can say about this course is WOW. It's nine holes of pure hell. Instead of just being a straightforward disc golf course, this one involved a real physical workout. You were hiking up and down hills and driving both up and down ravines. In many cases, your disc might get stuck halfway up a ravine and you have to climb to get it. And these are not graceful slopes, either. One of them was a fairly severe 55-60 degree slope and it had rained the day before making it quite slippery. None of the holes exceeded a par 3 and all were really short distance, but the difficulty was second to none.
We loved it! It was a really nice, new take on disc golfing. I'm not expecting my brother to actually read this post so, hopefully, the next time we all go out to play, the difficulty of the course will horrify my brother. And I'll be there with my camera waiting to snap shots of his expressions. May have to do some audio as well.
We left the course drenched in sweat and covered in dirt. Instead of going out for lunch, we just went back to my place. I jumped in the shower while dad grabbed some food and drink. Then we settled down in the living room to watch Kelly's Heroes. Nothing like father and son enjoying some quality time with Clint Eastwood.
He left shortly after that and then Katie came home. She changed and we jumped in the truck to head over to Fox Valley Mall in Aurora for the city's fireworks display. Actually, we first visited Hooters for dinner. Katie is not one to quibble over scantily-clad waitresses when the wings are as good as they are at the Hoot. Me? I'm just not gonna quibble, period.
I pointed out to Katie the irony that I was wearing a Bad Monkey shirt (what do you do when your monkey's been bad?) and a Horny Toad hat in a Hooters restaurant. I swear the overt sexual connotation was completely unintentional.
After our wings and the pitcher of Blue Moon, we decided to check out what few stores were open as we waited for dusk to arrive. Then we set up shop in the bed of the truck. Back in the day, Katie and I used to have picnics in the bed. However, once I got the hardtop tanneau cover on it, those picnics ended. It's a bit awkward trying to sit up in the bed when there's a hardshell lid hanging right over you.
But for fireworks, it was ideal. We spread out some blankets and laid back in the bed with the lid up as far as it would raise.
And what did we do? We slept. Intermittently. The beer was hitting us as was the long day we'd had so far. If someone were to walk past us, they'd have found at least one of us sleeping at any given time. Here's the photographic evidence...
Should I worry that Katie's hand is covering the monkey on my shirt? Would that constitute "touching my monkey" as Dieter repeatedly attempted to con people into doing? Hmm... And, hey, that's twice recently that I've been photographed shilling Dave's shirts. What the hell?!?!
We did wake up in time for the fireworks, though. And I'm glad we did. It was an awe-inspiring half hour of skybound explosive glory. Our parking spot had a nice view, but wasn't quite close enough to allow for great photos. But I took some anyway. This is probably the best of the bunch...
How'd you all spend your holiday? Clearly more a question for my U.S. readers, but anyone is free to chime in.
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