The Ryder Cup Experience

Last Sunday Louisville endured a windstorm that was from Hurricane Ike. Nearly 300,000 people lost power. Jeff, Rachel and I were three of those residents. As of today, a little under 100,000 people are still without power. Jeff, Rachel and I are three of those people. We are very blessed, though. I brought our refrigerator items to the unused refrigerator in Paul and Andrea’s garage on Monday. While I was there I got a phone call from Sister Stubbs offering the use of her empty freezer, so I sent all of my freezer items there, so we didn’t really lose any food. We stayed in our (very dark) house on Sunday night, but since then we have been staying at Jeff’s parents house. All things considered, we are very very lucky. Our house did not sustain any damage, our trees are still standing, and there are just a few dead branches on the front yard that quite frankly we wanted out of that tree anyway.

Here are a couple of pictures of the damage from the wind storm.

I DON’T LIKE IKE!

This has been a crazy week. Besides living away from home, I am also working at the Ryder Cup. I am a liaison for the domestic and international media. They can’t access Valhalla without going through me. Don’t worry, I haven’t let my status go to my head. I’ll still be your friend (if you want). Another way to describe my position at the Ryder cup is as a parking lot attendant. I park the cars in the Media lot, also known as PGA Lot N. (Lot N, Noelle – coincidence? I think not!)

On Tuesday I arrived at my post at 5:30 a.m. We weren’t too busy that early, so they asked us to come in at 6:00 the following morning. It was busy enough early so they asked us to come in at 5:30 again on Thursday. As I was chatting up my clientele, I learned that on Friday (the 1st day of competition) the media people needed to arrive at 4:00 a.m. I informed my supervisor, and after they confirmed my information, they asked me to come in at 4:00 a.m. on Friday, which I did. I was originally supposed to work only Tuesday through Friday, but after demostrating my great skill in parking cars, they asked me to come in on Saturday morning at 4:00 again. So I’m going to. Needless to say, I am a little sleepy.

Rachel’s week, in the meantime went as follows. On Tuesday, Jeff’s mom took care of Rachel until about 1:30 at which time she left Rachel with Jeff’s grandmother. I arrived to get her at about 4:00, but she had just fallen asleep, so rather than wake her up, I decided to take a nap myself. On Wednesday Rachel stayed with Monica and her two kids. The report was that she did really well and had a lot of fun playing. On Thursday Rachel stayed with Tina, and again did very well. On Friday she spent the day with Jeff’s mom again. She is handling this odd week like a true professional. If I could find a way to bottle Rachel’s awesomeness, I could sell it and make a fortune!