Following on from my previous blog, I'm afraid the benefits I hoped to gain from a hot bath proved to be short-lived because it soon became apparent that I was a couple of stages beyond being knackered. In addition to suffering from the heat, I may have developed a slight case of food poisoning and, as a consequence, I spent the best part of a day-and-a-half recuperating.
Fortunately, I recovered in time to take advantage of a very kind invitation to visit a rather fine golf club - where, although I only managed to play the first nine holes, we were using buggies: so, I completed the course by just putting out the remaining holes before enjoying the excellent clubhouse facilities.
My wife and I worked in golf for the best part of twenty years and, when we left, in the late eighties, some progressive clubs were starting to take advantage of technology - using computers, for example, to assess handicaps. I doubt, however, if anyone in those days could have imagined golf buggies would be equipped with GPS systems that tell the golfer the exact distance to the hole (and where it is on the green) together with information such as the location of hazards and a comprehensive record of everyone's score. For my part, I was pretty amazed.
Since that enjoyable experience, although I've been kept quite active (visiting my grandsons' schools, a local mall, a bank-holiday flea-market, a BBQ and trying my hand at cycling for the first time in over forty years) the other highlight of my stay has been attending a Memorial Day Parade. Without wishing to make too much of an issue of it, it's hard to deny that many folk in the USA seem to place a higher value on demonstrating their patriotism than most of us do in the UK............