Goose Goofs Off Day 2015

I’ve explained before in this blog what Goose Goofs Off Day (GGOD) is all about.  I started this holiday in 2005 and have celebrated it every year since.  This year is my 11^th or GGOD XI.  I use Roman numerals to keep track of them just like the Super Bowl, because GGOD is the Super Bowl of personal holidays in my book.

 

Some friends have suggested that as a retired person, I should celebrate several GGODs each year.  It’s a tempting idea, but I just can’t seem to make it happen.  At this point in my life, I am just too busy to goof off more than one day in 365.  Perhaps that will change as I get older and shed some of the responsibilities I’ve acquired, provided I can successfully dodge any new ones that come my way.

In keeping with my own personal tradition, I celebrated Goose Goofs Off Day XI in November – specifically on November 16.  What I like about November is that the weather can be so variable. Some years, cold temperatures and snow flurries have forced me to look for indoor diversions like visiting museums and art galleries.  Other years like this one, the weather was sunny and warm tempting me to spend most of the day outdoors.

 

This year, I left the house around 10:00 AM and walked to Phillips Park in Carrick to play a round of disc golf.  The sun was shining and temperatures were in the mid-forties, with the promise of warming to the 60s by mid-afternoon.  The fallen leaves were ankle deep in some places, but luckily I didn’t lose any discs or even spend an extended period searching for any errant throws.  Most of my shots were decent, if not spectacular.  I only took a few mulligans.  On hole #7, a fat trunked tree kept stepping into the path of my second toss.  I thought it was only fair that I not count how many tries it took me to outsmart this wooden creature and get my disc past him. On the ninth hole, a couple of his sylvan brothers tried to intimidate me, but I just picked up the discs that they swatted down and kept throwing toward the basket.  I got an honest 5 on that hole despite their efforts – no mulligans were necessary or taken.  Anyway, after completing the 9-hole course, I treated myself to a coffee and Bavarian cream donut at Dunkin’ Donuts before walking back home for a quick lunch.

 

By early afternoon, the weather was beautiful, so I wanted to spend a few hours goofing off outdoors.  On previous GGODs I had explored a number of County and State Parks, but I had never gone to North Park.  I checked out the Allegheny County website and saw that it had bike trails and hiking trails and was only about a half hour’s drive from my home.  So I loaded my bike and walking stick into the hatchback along with a few trail maps printed from the park website and arrived at North Park around 2:00.

 

I parked in the Boat House parking lot, got out my bicycle and found my way to the paved trail that loops around the lake.  It was a very pleasant 5-mile ride.  There’s a restaurant at the Boat House and I considered stopping in for tea and a snack, but it was too nice a day.  I took my backpack and walked to a picturesque spot beside the stream that feeds the lake and wrote in my journal about the wonderful GGOD I was experiencing.  By the time I walked back to the car, it was 3:30.  I drove to a parking lot closer to the hiking trails and hiked till about 4:30 when the sun was starting to get low in the sky.  I hadn’t hiked in a while and thought I was handling the moderate hills pretty well until a young guy came pedaling up the trail on his mountain bike.  Then I heard something behind me, and turned to see a guy in gym shorts in a full run down the trail.  Well, I said to myself, that’s O.K. for them, but I’m taking it easy today.  That’s what Goose would have said, after all.   

When I finished my hike, it was getting close to sunset and dinner time, so I got in the car and drove home.  After warming some leftovers, I drove into Oakland to listen to author Elizabeth Kolbert lecture on her new book, The Sixth Extinction.  I arrived home after the lecture around 9:30 and relaxed with a beer while watching some television.  I felt satisfied that I had done a good job of taking it easy on GGOD 2015 and looked forward to goofing off again in 2016.