Roller coaster weather continues

My last post was very brief since I ran out of time the week I left for Florida. You might think things here are dull and boring in the winter especially if we are covered in snow. I can tell you it is anything but. We may not have the pressure and pleasure of a daily routine to mow and prep the course for daily play but the phone is always ringing and in the case of the week before I left the office was a revolving door of people stopping in. They range from scheduled and unscheduled visits with vendors to landowners and members stopping in to deal with Association or Club business. The staff is greatly reduced so there is always plenty to do. This is actually Will Warner's more regimented season. I used to say busy season but that is not accurate. Will is always busy but unlike in-season fixing repairs as pieces break this time of year he is doing a preventative maintenance regime to every piece of equipment including the fleet carts. He breaks up his time with snow plowing and tree work as well as other tasks around the property (you may remember the new door installation in the clubhouse) but has a lot of equipment to go through so needs to budget his time wisely. Our other full time staffer Chris Welch is in his second winter and has done the preventative maintenance, if you will, of the course accessories. We use the off-season to break down, prep and paint the ball washers, tee markers, benches, flagsticks, rakes etc. He is currently in the middle of the benches. We do not have the best facilities to do this type of work since the only heated spaces are Will's shop and my office. We expanded the second floor to a storage room where we can steal the heat from my office to help dry paint but this requires the door to be open and the sanding and painting in this confined space is tricky at best and the dust and fumes that creep into my office are not fun either. We will often try to schedule some work to coincide with Will's vacation so we can utilize the shop area.

6th hole ski tracks end of Jan

4th hole foot prints and ski tracks Sat

I can honestly tell you I am getting bored with writing about the weather. If it's not rain or the lack thereof, the extreme temperature and humidity, it is this roller coaster of snow and temperature that keeps going up and down just enough for us to lose the snow for a day or two then drop back down and give us more snow. My last post described the cover no- cover events in that week. Since that time we have done it again. I estimate we have had and lost snow cover at least 8 times. We have had more than 8 snow events with snow on top of existing snow this is just complete removal and re-cover. The sad part is the warm spell is just short enough to melt the snow so we have not really seen much golf this winter at all. Storm pictures of only 5" but a heavy wet mix:

sledders 9th hole

snow and ice stuck to everything

branches and trees weighted down

"I estimate we have had and lost snow cover at least 8 times"

sunset 9th Sunday Bert playing with his ball in the snow

I was asked by a club member (Bruce Stone) on Twitter to write about the new fertilizer regulations and their impact on Mink Meadows. I will attempt that in the next post. I have to be careful since another member (Joan Malkin) is a part of the sub group writing the MV regs. We had our first public hearing right before I left and the sub group met in my absence to make a few changes based on the feed back. The State regs were also released last week and the MV regs will need to be tweaked to match those in some cases. So when I get a handle on what all the changes were and read the state ones a few times I will put together a post detailing what it all means.

the "Black SUV's"

 While on vacation our MV experiences with secret service alerted us to a special visitor to the restaurant we were dining at. I noticed this "guy" trying to blend in when we first arrived then as he walked in front of us i noticed the ear bud and immediately Cheryl says "Secret Service". I replied "why do you have to do that? It could be private security." Well then more showed up and then the typical black SUV and sure enough it was third in line Speaker of the House John Boehner coming to dinner. Cannot get away from it.

trade show floor at GIS

Cheryl accompanied me during the trade show of the Golf Industry Show in Orlando. That is me talking to some vendors (White Metal Golf) and she took the picture for Ellen who likes to wear hideous pants while playing golf  at Mink.