Golf at the Lake FOREST golf course

Yesterday's blog mentioned a golf course and I got the name wrong calling it Lakeside - it's actually Lake Forest. Today I played the course and found it to be one of the most attractive and well kept courses I have played in the area. (I've played Celebration, one of the Champions Gate courses, Hunter's ridge and a few others). There is a par 3, 197 yards, about 175 yd. carry over water. It's really beautiful.

The sun was close to setting as we played the last few holes and the long shadows and golden tones were enough to give that pleasant hum that can ripple through your body and tell you it's great to be alive, or as it says on my golf cap - "Life is good"

Traveling in Orlando - the west orange trail

After living in Las Vegas for so many years, I should have been better prepared for the many travel and recreation opportunities that have nothing to do with the "well known" spots. Last week I discovered the "West Orange Trail". I expect to explore all of it's 19 mile length. For now I have seen about 11 miles at the South-west end. You can see some pictures at http://goodclicks.com/florida/wot/west_orange_trail.htm

I discovered the trail while driving around randomly. I spotted a few people on in-line skates and I pulled over when I saw a small parking lot, popped the trunk and put on my skates. Living in the Stroudsburg, Pa area I had become "Skate deprived". The area has golf, hunting, camping etc, but is like a skater's desert. So off I went, skating on a very wide, smooth path that seemed to go on for quite a ways. After skating around the Lakeside golf course I spotted two women with bicycles taking a break on one of the many benches along the path. Inquiring about the path they told me one of the more pictuesque spots along the way was the town of Winter Garden, some five miles further. That was a little more than I wanted to do after such a long time off my skates and I decided to head back to the car. I did go back the next day to view a bit more with my mountain bike.

If you enjoy skating, biking, jogging, walking or ??? the trail is really great. There are many amenities that I will cover in future blogs. Stations, outposts and relaxing scenery are just a part. Restrooms, water, free museums and more. check back and I'll cover much of it,along with links to websites and photos.

Building new habits

I am looking at building a new habit. So some of these blogs may come across a little weak. the habit? Writing on a regular basis. What am I calling regular? At least once a day.

Yesterday I began researching RSS feeds and believe I should build my first feed as a report on Orlando. While I'm looking at tools for all kinds of things like "content management", "validators", "XML formatting" etc I intend to use this blog as my training wheels. Now that blogger is using ATOM I need to see how acceptance of ATOM goes.

RSS feeds are really great. If you don't know about them you will. The drawback for the moment is the fact that you need to download and install a reader. This can be a daunting task for the vast majority of modern surfers. Likely this will be overcome as the technology brings great benefits. Perhaps newer browsers/operating systems will have them built in. Maybe there are other programs already available, but I don't know about them yet. If you do just email me jim@jlcc.com The spammers already have this address, but Mozilla (Thunderbird) does a good job of deleting about 98% of it.

This blog is rambling on and so I'll close and try to focus on a single subject at a time in future blogs. At least I'm started on building my new habit.