Kermit

 The second round of golf was played at The Frog, a Tom Fazio course on the outskirts of Atlanta. His signature designs include large bunkers and small greens. The Frog was classic in that respect. It is also a public course.

While the condition was never going to match the Athletic Club the layout was very good and Cookie and I had a good match which I sadly lost 2 & 1. We were joined by Brandon and his partner Cheyenne. They were at Augusta today for the ladies amateur competition.

The evening saw me drag Cookie round Blockhead again looking for haunts from 1996 and earlier. The 5 Paces Inn is still going strong and is still home to Old Whites RFC, our first opponents in our 1992 tour. Twickenham also played the Georgia State team as well as Hilton Head, Savannah and Charleston.

Buckhead is much changed but it was good to visit the old haunts, as the newer restaurants like The Iberian Pig were full to bursting.

Today we visited Stone Mountain before travelling to Columbia where we are based now for our trip to The Masters on Monday and Tuesday. The weather is set fair so my legs might get an airing at golf tomorrow. I will need to buck my ideas up though or I will be whitewashed!!

Georgia on my mind

In 1996 SWMBO and I were fortunate enough to be volunteers at the Olympic Games in Atlanta USA. Our brief was to help man the Georgia Dome, a multisports venue which, at the time had been purpose built for the Atlanta Games.

We worked some long and hard shifts from 06:00 in the morning to gone midnight some days. venue was split in two and was used for the men and women gymnastics and the men and women basketball events. We were lucky enough to be on duty in both halves of the arena at various times.

We met the world during those two weeks, which nearly became three, as the pre-qualifiers began before the opening ceremony and the finals of the basketball were held in the second official week.
I chatted to the CEO of Delta Airlines who was happy with a bit of man chat while his wife and three daughters became engrossed in the women's gymnastics. SWMBO was vetted for a visit by Bill Clinton, but that never came off which was a pity. Our uniforms were awful, but did get us lifts home in the rain on a couple of occasions.

Today, therefore, marks an end of an era, as the Georgia Dome was detonated and reduced to rubble in the space of very few seconds. It was a 21 storey building and the biggest indoor sporting arena in the World when it was built. There are , no doubt, plans to erect something else in it's place, but a bit of our heritage seems to have disappeared with the building today. Our memorial bricks are still in Centenary Park and some parts of Buckhead remain, like The Five Paces and  Mike and Angelo's but progress has no time for sentiment so accept today for what it is and move on! An anniversary tour in 2021 might be a goer though, y'all.