Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Full of Hot Air

I played golf yesterday morning. My cousin's husband called and asked me to fill in his foursome. What could I say? I had some excuses: I hadn't picked up a golf club since last year; I'm wearing eyeglasses that make the world look all weird; I don't like the golf course; 6:45 is pretty early in the morning. And I could use the same excuses for my poor score, but I won't. I'm not writing about golf. This is background.

The course is on two levels with the clubhouse and five holes in a valley cut by a large creek about 80 feet below the upper part of the course with 13 holes; so, I was expecting that it would be several degrees cooler in the valley than up on top, even with the sun bright and shining; and it was 46 degrees on the thermometer hung on the clubhouse wall and 52 degrees on the time and temperature sign on the way to the golf course.

I understand that temperature difference, the colder, denser air settling into the valley. Here's the question I have. As a preface, let me say that I was riding in a golf car yesterday; but when I ride, I usually walk more than I ride, especially if I'm not scoring and want to -- contemplate the meaning of life and enjoy the beauty of nature. I was walking down the second fairway. And as I was walking on fairly level ground, no trees, no shadows, bright sunshine, on the upper level of the course, I walked through columns of warmer air. Why is that?

It was like Moses and the burning bush thing in the movie, Ten Commandments, with the column of fire. These weren't exactly columns of fire, but they were definitely columns of warmer air. I pointed this out to my cousin's husband. And this is one reason his name's on the terrorist watch list -- he looked at me like I was fucking crazy. Imagine that. He didn't understand what I was telling him. So I showed him. I walked about five feet back toward the second tee and told him it was colder here than where I was standing before, "right over there," I said, pointing to the place in the dew-y grass where the trail of my foot prints ended. He cocked his head and squinted one eye. He said, "Well, you're talking, for one thing." Not funny. "Never mind," I said. I noticed the same phenomenon in several other spots -- I was walking a lot, as it turned out -- in many different places on the course. I kept my mouth shut, though -- no contamination.

And that's the question. Why were there columns of air that were warmer than the surrounding air?

Posted by Bill at May 6, 2007 04:41 PM