September 2017 Goodies

It comes with the date, and the memories, and being a New Yorker who has his own experiences from that day and time. It comes from having a friend who lost his son. It comes from being there to smell the rubble and read all the flyers and witness (and feel) the pain.

I set up for my tee shot as always.  The finishing hole was a straight-away 450-yard par four with two trees acting like field goals about 230 yards from the tee box.  Hit it between the field goals and you set yourself up for par or better; pull or push the ball and it hits one of the trees, most likely landing without a clear view of the green with bogey written all over it.  It’s a good final hole and I had scraped it around for the day, but wanted to finish strong so went after the tee shot.  Half way through the swing I felt a sharp stab, like a tiny knife had been jabbed into my lower back.  My legs gave out and I ended up on the ground.  My first thought was, “did it make it past the trees?”  Indeed it had and was actually one of the better drives of the day.  Immediately after that thought and seeing the ball land it dawned on me that I was sitting on the ground and not sure if I could stand up on my own.   It took a bit of time to get upright and walking was fairly excruciating.  I knew something was wrong, but I had no clue of what was to come.  The day ended with that swing.  I wasn’t able to hit the approach shot and walked off the course directly to my car.  There was a long journey ahead of me, both physically and mentally, but I had no clue just how long it was going to be.

Portugal was one of the big winners at World Travel Awards’ Europe Gala Ceremony 2017. On a night of night of high drama in host city St. Petersburg, Portugal was voted Europe’s Leading Destination with Turismo de Portugal scooping the prize for Europe’s Leading Tourist Board.

Winners of the 2017 World Travel Awards

It is with great pleasure that we announce the Europe winners of the 2017 World Travel Awards.