Day 3: Driver Training

Landon and Bridget in their respective chairs working on
a few different word puzzles in the newspaper.

Good news! Even though we were picked up earlier today, I wasn't as tired when I woke up. My body is starting to realize that it will be getting up before 6 a.m. (usually before 5:30 a.m.) each morning. We are all falling into a routine, especially Landon and Bridget, who sit in the exact same chairs each
morning... Cute, right?

Today was the same format as the past two days: seminars in the morning and split up in the afternoon. This morning we covered the Pace of Play proceeders. Pace of Play is a policy/philosophy/rule that creates an overall time par for the course, meaning that a time is set in which all players and groups try to compete the course within that designated time. The policy is groundbreaking! It helps to speed up the playing time so that no player has an advantage (by taking a longer amount of time to evaluate a shot) and allows the tournament round to end in a timely fashion. The inner workings of the policy can be a little confusing at first, but thankfully I was able to volunteer at a tournament two months ago and see Pace of Play first hand. For the first time all week, I understood something and was able to help those around me. It was a good feeling even if it did just last for a few minutes. Next we moved into stroke penalties... I'm starting to get the hang of it. I'll just leave it at that.

This is Ox, one of my groups GMC trucks.

Stephan Hamblin, the executive director, came to speak to the interns during lunch. He's a really cool guy. He speaks so passionately about the organization that you know he cares about it so deeply. It makes me even more determined to do my job effectively and efficiently this summer. Once lunch was over we moved into the fun part: driver training! Finally outdoors, we moved through five different stations to learn how to drive with a trailer, take care of the vehicles, hitch a trailer and park a trailer, drive a Yukon, and change a tire on a trailer. We were learning all of this for 7.5 hours today, but it flew by!

Driving with a trailer was different, but not too bad. The hardest part of the day was backing up the trailer  Michael was my spotter and coached me into the spot after a few tries. I always overturned the wheel and just messed it up. When I was the spotter, I was able to cox Michael into the spot the first time. It somehow just clicked. Needless to say, I will be the spotter for the summer! The exciting part of the day was that after dinner each team actually got to drive their vehicles back to the hotel. We aren't allowed to run errands or anything, but it is still nice because no one will have to wait to be picked up, which means more sleep and less waiting around for everyone! Who doesn't love that?

Checking the oil.

Changing a tire on the trailer.