GOOD NEWS !!!!

Below is the blog I wrote after the Kiwanis Charity Golf Tournament last year.  Everyone enjoyed themselves  and this year  The Kiwanis Club of Four Corners Davenport are holding their Charity Golf Tournament again!!!

If you are looking for an exciting golf day out, with lots of prizes, mark your calendars now.

SATURDAY 14th MAY 2011          1.30 p.m. Shotgun Start

Not only do you get to play at Hunters Creek Golf Club, Orlando you can enter yourself or your team for a the “hole in one”  Grand Prize of $10,000.00 .  Fancy your chance at that?  If a hole in one is not your style, what about buying a raffle ticket or two for the Helicopter Ball drop – for only a dollar per ticket you could receive a prize of lovely cash.   Raffle prizes will be presented at the dinner after the event.

For more details, on a great day out, contact Colin on 863 287 1321 or email him at colin@phmfl.com.

It’s a rare and unusual occurrence for me to take a Saturday morning away from the business but this past weekend was very special.  Colin, my husband , is a very  committed member of our local Kiwanis group and has spent a lot of time and energy arranging a Kiwanis Golf Tournament.    So I felt it was only right to arrange for a team from Premier.   Four of us ladies met at Providence , the golf course that was hosting the tournament, and collected our Goody bags and our carts.   After a little time spent stretching our muscles , loosening up our shoulders, we were off!!      The first hole is always the awkward one,  especially since we were being followed by a mens foursome, and we knew they were watching and waiting for us to whiffle our shots, or worse, hit the balls into the lake!   As it happened it wasn’t too bad, and we were away pretty sharply.

We continued throughout the first 9 holes , although none of us came close to the “Hole in One ” prize, but we did get the Womens Longest Drive !

There were a couple of times when we may have lost a ball or two, and certainly the beverage cart was essential to our well-being, as each of us had forgotten to include energy bars in our golf bags………….

However, apart from having to change golf carts –   we had one that wouldn’t go up the hills -  we managed to complete the course with much laughter and fun, and some sunburned shoulders.  The tournament was on the hottest day of the year to date!

The four of us collapsed into the restaurant at the end of the day to have dinner and to hear the results.  Well, we knew we weren’t in with much of a chance, competing as we did against mens teams, all of whom obviously played a great deal of golf regularly.    No-one managed to get the Hole in One prize of Ten Thousand Dollars, which had to be won on a par 3 hole of at least 163 yards, although one golfer managed to get just a foot away from the pin.   That would have been something to really celebrate!!!

Still, Premier Home Management did get the Womens Longest Drive prize, and we watched with pleasure as the Winning team, “Virgin on the Riduclus!” took first prize.

The story behind this particular team is something a bit special too!.  It was a team put together by a friend of Colin’s, ( Ian,  who works for Virgin  Atlantic), all of whom had flown over with Virgin  especially to support the Tournament.

Arthur H, Ian’s father, who is 76, won the prize for Closest to the Pin.  Arthur is in the middle of the photo below in the dark shirt.

The two major sponsors of the tournament were Virgin Atlantic and C. J. Services of Haines City.   Premier Home Management provided chilled face wipes at Hole # 12 for all the participants to freshen up, and cool down in the heat.

Raffle prizes were presented after the main prize-giving, and many of the attendees were fortunate enough to have their numbers called.  There was also an auction of a Flat Screen TV as well as a one day Golf  School at the David Leadbetter Academy.

The best part of the whole day was learning that the Tournament and all the hard work by the  Kiwanis members has raised over two and a half thousand dollars for the terminally ill and underprivileged children in the local area.

Today is your last chance to watch Space Shuttle Atlantis take to the skies.  Due to take off at 2.20 p.m. this afternoon for the STS132 mission – a 12 day flight to replenish parts and replacements for the International Space Station.

Will this be Atlantis’ last mission?  There are only two more missions planned for the rest of this year, and then the Shuttles are due for retirement.

Atlantis is scheduled for retirement after this month’s mission, and there is a lot of speculation and some controversy as to where she will be exhibited.   Several large cities are hoping that they will be successful in bidding for the opportunity to place Atlantis on display.

For those who would like to know more about the whole history of the  Space Shuttle programme I advise going to the official Nasa website   www.nasa.gov where you will find stories, photos, details of the current mission, and information of the next two Shuttles to fly.

This below is one of the most interesting facts about today’s Atlantis flight – please read on…………..

Bonds of Courage, Beads of Courage

Jamie Newton, an employee of CIBER Inc., a support contractor at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., knows about Beads of Courage. His six-year-old daughter, Sydney, has been battling cancer for more than a year. During that time, Sydney has received more than 450 beads — each representing an entirely separate event in the process of her treatments.

“There really is no way to fully explain how the past year has affected us all; affected our family,” said Newton. “It’s been a really tough year. Sydney has done everything she’s been asked to do and more.”

Early this year, Newton developed the idea of asking NASA about the possibility of flying some very special beads for Beads of Courage Inc., of Tucson, Ariz., on one of the final space shuttle missions.

Space Beads of Courage
Beads of Courage is the organization that provides the Beads of Courage Program and other innovative, arts-in-medicine supportive care programs for children coping with serious illness, their families and the health care providers who care for them. Together, Beads of Courage and Newton developed the idea of sponsoring a contest for the best designs of a new bead of courage. These special beads of courage would highlight the role of the space program as space beads of courage.

Newton thought “nothing could be more encouraging to a child fighting cancer than to see a symbol of courage — a bead — actually flown to space by the very people who ride into orbit on the space shuttle. That act represents one of the most courageous things other human beings do for all of us.”

The space beads, designed by talented bead artists, will fly aboard space shuttle Atlantis with Commander Ken Ham, Pilot Tony Antonelli, and Mission Specialists Garrett Reisman, Michael Good, Steve Bowen, and Piers Sellers. The shuttle and its crew are scheduled to lift off today from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After Atlantis returns from its mission, NASA will present the string of beads to Beads of Courage Inc. as a symbol of courage to sick children everywhere.

The trip to Dallas was really pleasant – my companions had given me the window seat and the flight was at a height whereby I could see the landscape unrolling beneath the wings.  Also it was a relatively short flight, about 2 and half hours,  so fairly quick too.  Incidentally there’s a whole lot of difference doing an internal flight to taking an international one.  Security is nothing like so stringent.  On an international flight in and out of Orlando,  you have to confirm that your bags were touched only by you, no-one has asked you to carry anything ,etc, etc, even before you check in.   Then you have to go thorough the normal security checks with shoes off, hand baggage in the tray via the x-ray machine and so on.

Our internal flight boarding passes were obtained by computer check in and the boarding pass and my driving licence was all that was checked  by an immigration officer as we walked through to the security check.

We still had to place our shoes and hand baggage in the tray for the x-ray, and we still had to walk through the electronic search arch, but our bags were checked in with the most cursory of glances, and if we had been taking a carry on bag only, we would not even have had to check in .

The reason for pointing all this out is that the flight back from Dallas was uncomfortable to say the least.  This time I gave the window seat to my friend, and I jokingly mentioned to her that it would be just my luck to be placed by a overly large man with garlic breath and body odour ( Yes, I speak from experience as a single traveller).

Eventually after much chaos , everyone was boarded and just as I was thinking that my luck had changed and the third seat was going to be unoccupied, along comes a passenger to take the seat next to mine.

Luckily I had put the arm rest down between my seat and the vacant one!  I’m sure that without that barrier I would have been totally squashed like a bug.  What was worse, this was a very large woman in a muslim veil and burkha.  The arm rest disappeared beneath the body and my arm sort of ended up swaddled beneath all this ( let’s be polite ) clothing.

This woman could have had two kids and a dog tucked up underneath her outfit and no one would have been any the wiser. Or she could have been carrying something really dangerous for all we knew.   Even the stewardesses didn’t ask her to put her seat belt on -  so for the entire flight she was wedged on top of my armrest and into the seat next to me , and jutting out into the aisle.  Now it’s not so much the size that bothered me as it was the fact that not one member of air staff asked her to put on her seat belt ( mostly because she wouldn’t have been able to find it, much less get it around her); and the worry that she could have been a feminine looking male carrying a bomb underneath all that clothing.

Who would have known?  Who could tell?  I certainly couldn’t!

I was delighted that the flight was short and uneventful except for our arrival, when we all had to wait till she had unwedged her body from the seat and the armrest, before we could leave our seats.  Good job there was no emergency – couldn’t have got out even if I had wanted to!!!

My first trip to Dallas for a conference.   An early arriving flight gave  myself and some colleagues time  to explore one of Dallas’s most  famous historical landmarks.   We visited the place where President John F Kennedy was shot to death in November 1963.

It was a strange feeling walking down the street , flanked by the “grassy knoll” mentioned in all the newscasts, and even more weird, seeing the two crosses marking the spots in the roadway where the bullets struck.    From where we were standing, we could see the Sixth Street Book Depository where the gunman was situated.  For a small fee, you can enter the Museum and go up to the Sixth Floor where TV , camera and radio footage of JFK’s trip to Dallas is shown. It is a museum  of memories  and you can even see the window where Lee Harvey Oswald stood and waited .

John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been President of the United States for just 1000 days, and some of his decisions had upset some of the various parties.  There had been some incendiary remarks made about the forthcoming trip, and there were some outspoken factions opposing the President.  However, the trip went ahead.

His wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy accompanied him for this trip on one of the rare occasions that they toured together.   Dressed in pink, she was at his side as the motorcade turned down into Dealey Plaza at 12.30.   Governor Connally and his wife were seated in the front of the open topped vehicle.   Secret service agents were alongside the car as it drove slowly down the street.  Suddenly three shots rang out , and in a matter of seconds President Kennedy was slumped in his seat, having been shot in the head.  Jacqueline was trying to scramble out over the back of the car, and Agents were trying to deal with the situation.  The Governor had also been badly injured , and the car accelerated away to the Parkland Memorial Hospital where President Kennedy was declared dead from a gunshot wounds  to the head and neck at 1.00 p.m.    Witnesses reported seeing a man in the Book depository and Lee Harvey Oswald was tracked down and linked to the rifle that was found behind the cartons stacked in front of the window on the sixth floor.  Other witnesses reported seeing a puff of smoke from the trees across from the grassy knoll.

The rest, as they say, is history; there will always be speculation about the true nature and reason for the assassination.

On a personal note, I can vividly remember hearing the news on the radio, and then watching the TV footage as it was run again and again over the next days and weeks.  To many young people of the time, JFK was a charismatic young leader who would change the world.   And the world stopped,  and everyone watched in horror on that fateful day as a young President was killed in Dallas, Texas.