Why Spring is Ugly

We are now approaching my least-favorite time of year: Spring. Yes, there’s all that lovely birds-and-bees stuff, with birds returning from the South, and bees pollinating flowers. But gardening has never been my thing, so Spring is just another word for “too warm to ski, too cold to golf.” Or more succinctly, “mud.”

Last year my last day of skiing was St. Patrick’s Day, March 17. No green snow, just a whitish-grayish slop that barely covered the ground. In all, I skied five times last March, and none of those times was memorable for any good reason.

SNOWBOARDING VERSUS GOLF
All this brings me to golf. Yesterday I was shoveling a patch of the driveway that has been untouched for a while, when a young man came through the neighborhood selling discount coupons for a nearby golf course. It’s a fairly scrappy course, and it’s not at all an attractive one. Little tree coverage, barely one pond, and hardly any change in elevation. It’s good for my super-high-handicap game, of course, but not for the visual and aesthetic stimulation that occurs on a fine course.

But then again, Old Scrapper doesn’t have the $75 greens fees that would make playing there a waste of money and time. So, despite my general rule against buying from solicitors, I bought the coupons. I should recoup my purchase price and actually save some money on my third or fourth outing of the year. Since O.S. generally opens in April, I can start working towards “saving money” soon.

Generally, golf is more expensive than skiing or snowboarding. You can buy a cheap set of gear for either sport at roughly the same price, and if you match quality-for-quality, a daily lift ticket is roughly the same price as the fees for an 18-hole round of golf. It’s harder to make a comparison based on season passes, but it’s fair to say that if you make the appropriate adjustments (length and quality of golf course, size of ski area), a season pass for either sport is roughly the same price.

Still, it’s probably time to remember the Top 10 Reasons Why Snowboarding is Better Than Golf.