Allison - Flight Zone Toptracer Driving Range

A Tour of Shingle Creek

Last week, I attended the annual conference for the National Golf Course Owners Association (NGCOA). It’s held every year sometime in February and is the perfect way to get energized for the upcoming year. There are golf course owners from all different walks of life. There are people who are like me. Family owned and operated. There are others who are managed, either a single course or multiple courses. Some people have 18 holes while others manage courses with 27 or maybe even 36 holes. There are private clubs as well as large management firms like Troon Golf or Billy Casper Golf. As you can see, there are many perspectives that all come together to better the golf industry. For me, the highlight of the conference is the tour. In previous years, I have learned more from the tour than any other class I attended. It’s so interesting to get to hear from the managers that are in place and actually see what they are doing to improve the golf industry. This year’s course that we toured was Shingle Creek located in Orlando, Florida. Shingle Creek is a resort golf course whose green fees are about three to four times more expensive than ours. It’s fun for me to get to see a different way of doing things. I don’t think I’ll use their tips on valet service, although, it was fun to listen to their system and I definitely have a huge appreciation for what they’re able to accomplish. Shingle Creek is owned by Mr. Harris Rosen. When we first arrived to the golf course, we were greeted with a pretty dense fog. I didn’t mind one bit. After being stuck in Iowa all winter, it felt great to be able to see someone mowing greens and smelling freshly cut grass! We were treated to a great breakfast. I had to take a picture of the cantaloupe turned into a flower for my mom. It was a beautiful set up near the driving range for breakfast. Bus loads of golfers for the day as well as attendees of the tour helped themselves to the food and coffee. After breakfast, we headed over to the driving range. For the golf course tour, there are many golf related businesses that are set up. Here’s a shot of a company called Birdie Ball. They have golf balls that are shaped like napkin rings. It is designed for beginners. Golfers use their own clubs, but hit the birdie balls off of a special mat and aim them at targets. Check out these fun targets! Once we made our way over to the driving range tee, we had the honor of listening to Mr. Harris Rosen tell his story and business philosophy. This gentlemen was an incredibly impressive person on all accounts. Philanthropist, businessman, family man, motivator. You name it. He’s done it and he’s done it well. He came from humble beginnings on the lower east side of Manhattan. His parents were immigrants from Russia. They preached to him the importance of education. He went on to earn a degree in hotel management while his brother became a doctor. He told the audience that he was living the American dream. When he got out of the Army, he had the honor of working and helping to start up the hotels of Walt Disney World in Orlando. After working there for three years, he was called into the office. He thought he would be getting a raise. His boss told him that he was doing a great job and they were very pleased with all of his efforts. Then, Mr. Rosen heard that one word. But. That’s right. He was released from Walt Disney World. This just goes to show you, that no matter what gets thrown your way, you always pick yourself up and try again. Shortly after that, he purchased his first hotel on International Drive. His company now owns seven hotels on International Drive in Orlando and basically dominates the conference and convention business. The most amazing part of his story is that he doesn’t have one ounce of debt. His grandparents always taught him to never take out a loan, so he never has. He always saves his money before he makes a purchase. The audience applauded this incredible feat. Mr. Rosen went on to explain how he has provided a medical center for his nearly 4,000 employees. He donated ground and built a school for underprivileged students as well as a college for hotel management. His healthcare model that he has provided for his employees has been examined by many large corporations including our government (obviously they didn’t pay much attention). It was just truly remarkable to listen to all of the great things he has accomplished as well as what he has given back to the city of Orlando. After listening to the ins and outs of how the Rosen Properties work, we separated into groups to tour the resort. Here’s a shot of the hotel portion of the resort. It has 1,501 rooms and attaches to the clubhouse. By the time Mr. Rosen was done talking, the fog had lifted and the sun was shining. Our tour group began with the maintenance facility. His superintendent, Ricky, was a class act. He was organized and appreciative of his staff. Part of Mr. Rosen’s philosophy is keeping everyone healthy on staff. That means everyone begins their day with exercises. Mr. Rosen explained that athletes stretch before they begin working, so why shouldn’t we? The outside crew lifts heavy pieces of equipment, the housekeepers lift hundreds of beds to change linens, so he has a company wide policy that the day begins with stretches. After the tour of the maintenance, it was time to break for lunch. Shingle Creek is a feeder to the Florida Everglades. Because of this, Mr. Rosen used a book titled A Land Remembered as the theme to the resort. This story talks about

Garbage Sorting

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Growing up on a golf course means you are often roped into helping out your parents. Even though you’re too young to work elsewhere. I don’t remember the exact age I started picking up garbage on the golf course, but my memory puts me at about eleven or so. I would drive around with multiple garbage cans in the back of the truckster (a golf cart with a small dump bed in the back) and sort through the garbage with my hands. In Iowa, we have a 5 cent refund on our cans. Although I was often mocked by golfers, I always picked through the trash and pulled out all of the cans. This is really hard to imagine now, (keep in mind, this was in the late 80’s early 90’s) but I had to literally count every single can, then I bagged them up and drug them through the store at Hy-Vee leaving a nasty trail of liquid behind me. I’m pretty sure I’m the main reason for the invention of those machines they now have out in the front of their building. When I think about this now, they had to have absolutely hated me. Once I could drive, I would load them all up and drive my grandpa’s old rusted out green truck. So rusted, that I could see the pavement under my feet while I drove. Anyway, I took all of the cans to a redemption center in Monroe. I loved them because I no longer had to count every can. They simply paid me in weight. So much easier!! My parents let me keep all of that money which amounted to a pretty decent sum over the ten years that I spent picking up garbage. I wasted it on stupid stuff that teenagers buy. As I think about it, I think most of the money went to my hobby of building and furnishing dollhouses. Obviously, I was strange child. It was a good job and taught me humility. There’s nothing like smelling like nasty garbage. Enter the modern era. Teenagers no longer like to get dirty. I can’t even talk my own children into picking up garbage on the golf course. They are spoiled by the cans that we now have at our tee boxes which have a spot for garbage and a spot for cans. The only garbage that we sort now are the cans that are around the clubhouse. We’ve had the same cans for probably twenty years. They look nice (still do), so there wasn’t a need to replace them. Our main need was that we needed more garbage cans, but they no longer make our style. I’m a symmetrical OCD gal, so I can’t have garbage cans that don’t match. My eyes would twitch. Luckily, I’ve been blessed with several amazing carpenters on my staff. We brainstormed a design for new garbage cans and came up with a good design. Complete with sorting holes. One for garbage and one for cans. You guessed it. Menards was having another 11% off sale, so off we went to purchase some supplies to make nearly 11 garbage and can sorters. They called me up to show me their prototype. Here she is! A completely enclosed garbage container that matches our starter hut they built for me last year! On the front side, they created two openings. One for garbage and one for cans. Oh how my teenage self was envious of this design! The base of it opens to reveal the trash cans inside. Now, they only have ten more to make! The power of optimism!

The Life of a Mower

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Winter. It’s the best time of the year. Tongue in cheek. There’s just nothing like waking up while it’s still dark out and heading to a shop that can’t get above 50 degrees because the windchill is -40 outside. Jealous? Unfortunately, it’s simply a job that needs to be done. Winter is time for us to pull some heavy maintenance on machines and equipment. Reels are removed from all of our mowers and their blades are sharpened and new bed knives are installed. These aren’t officially cutting reels on this mower, but I thought it might work to explain. The reels are the cutting mechanism. As the reel spins around, it cuts the grass once it passes through the bed knife. The whole thing gets rolled over by the rollers to give a nice smooth finish. The guys have been busy. Every day a new piece of machinery comes into the shop. This fairway mower wasn’t used much last year because it had a serious steering problem. As in, the person on the mower couldn’t mow a straight line because it weaved all over the place! Our crew never found the time to get it fixed in the summer months, so it was number one on the list of repairs. The seat was removed, so they could get a good look at what was going on underneath the machine. Once it was removed, they could give everything the once over. I won’t pretend to be a mechanic, so I definitely won’t be providing any details on the fix. I just know that the job often calls for some seriously dirty hands. I won’t take offense to this sign, but I’m pretty sure it was probably put up just for someone like my non-mechanic self. A little reminder never hurts! Our zero turn mowers have regular lawn mower blades. They all get either replaced or sharpened over the winter. They’re all removed and then sent through the grinder. Luckily our staff have a lot of fun together, so it makes the daily grind (pun intended) easy to bare! In the case of this picture, it looks like they also have fun supervising one another. “Yep. You’re performing some good work there, Doug. I’ll just stand here and hold up this mower.”

Bert and Ernie Walk into a Lounge

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When I was a young girl, my dad used to read me a book about Bert and Ernie. The beginning of the story featured Ernie who demanded that Bert put a pot on his head. When Bert asked why, Ernie replied, “Because I broke the cookie jar.” [youtube=http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_2Ky_nU2ys] The story goes on and on about all of the reasons why Ernie had to find a place for something else. That’s a perfect description for how it came to be that we decided to remodel the Golfer’s Lounge. The story goes something like this… We need to remodel the Golfer’s Lounge. Why do we need to remodel it? Because we have extra cabinets. Why do we have extra cabinets? Because we had to remodel our mini kitchen area. Why did we need to remodel the mini kitchen? Because we had new to us stainless steel tables and racks. Why did we have new stainless steel racks? Because we purchased kitchen equipment from a demo project. Why did we purchase new to us kitchen equipment? Because my mom is pretty awesome and we thought she deserved it! Why is mom awesome? Because she cooks and bakes for hundreds of people with only two helpers. Why does mom cook for hundreds of people? Because we have lots of events: graduation parties, baby showers, etc. They often take place in our Golfer’s Lounge. There you have it. That’s why we’re remodeling the Golfer’s Lounge. When you tell the story like that, it makes complete sense, right?

Chairs. Jason’s Nemesis.

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This is a public service announcement. If you’re one of those people who leans back on your chair, so that it’s on its two back legs. Break the habit. Seriously. Your mom will thank me. Businesses and school custodians will thank you. Chairs all over the world will thank you. We have about 250 chairs in our Events Center. Every winter, we spend several weeks repairing them to make sure they’re sturdy. The whole process begins with sorting chairs. We make several different stacks of chairs. One set of chairs are sturdy, but their cushions need cleaned. Another set of chairs are sturdy, but require the seat cover to be completely repaired. Yet another set includes chairs that need repair. Glue, screws tightened. Remove gum stuck to underside of chair. General maintenance. You get the picture. Before we got busy with reupholstering, we had our annual Resolve Party. That’s when we break out the Resolve to wash away all those stains. Jason and Theresa spent several days scrubbing on the seat cushions to see what they could clean up with a little elbow grease. Theresa even had to break out the big guns by using some baking powder to see if it’d bring out the stains. Sadly, even that effort wouldn’t get them all clean. It did leave a big baking powder mess. Although they put forth a valiant effort, we determined that we needed to completely recover about half of our chairs. Key Jason’s sad face. (This is after I said, “Look happy!”) We had a large numbers of chairs this year that needed the cushions to be completely reupholstered. This was depressing since it might be the job that my brother hates the most at the golf course. Keep in mind, he often does some pretty horrible jobs, so that’s a good indicator of how much he hates chair duty. He and Theresa recovered all of them about five years ago, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise that the job needed to be done. Again. They have thousands of people sit on them each year, so they are bound to get dirty. Jason got to work pulling all of the staples out of the backs of the seat cushions. He has a mathematical brain, so he timed himself and determined that he averaged about five minutes per cushion to completely remove all of the staples. Then, while he was working, he counted up how long five minutes times 87 chairs would manage to take him. Too long. That was his conclusion. No worries, though. Our super hero has forged on and is officially a staple removing mad man.

Preparing for a General Store

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My parents and family are so good to me. I often get some crazy ideas. I’ll look at something and my wheels start turning. Suddenly, I’m not sleeping at night and I’m making plans to execute my idea. The ideas usually stem from observations I’ve made from places that I’ve visited. Sometimes I fall flat on my face, where other times, they are great successes. Enter. The General Store. As I’ve mentioned here, it’s hard for a small business to compete with larger ones simply because we aren’t offered the same bulk rate. I’m purchasing one hundred shirts a year for re-sale where Golf Galaxy is purchasing shirts for all of their stores nationwide. I don’t know how many, but I’m pretty sure it’s several more than one hundred. That means they get a bigger discount which they can pass on to their consumer. About ten years ago, some of the companies, like Titleist, offered an exclusive option where only the Golf Shops carried particular items. Over the years, this practice is no longer in place. That means that we have a lot of square footage of space that doesn’t get used as efficiently as it should because golfers buy their supplies at Wal-mart, Golf Galaxy, Target – you get the picture. Then, I went to the Junk Jubliee and found Laura with The Rusty Pumpkin. I realized that I wanted our Golf Shop to look just like Laura’s displays with some golf supplies in amongst the mix. Theresa had already given our Golf Shop a fun vintage flare with her eye for display, like our Bridgestone Golf ball display she had made last year, so this was a natural transition for us. We hope that this will be a better use of our space, plus it’ll be a fun new store for our community! I came home and talked to the family about my idea. They were apprehensive, but the more they thought about it, the more they thought it sounded like a lot of fun. Let’s turn our Golf Shop into a Golf Shop, General Store, and more. Our General Store will also feature a Bakery where my mom (the kitchen guru) will be baking up lots of fabulous foods daily. If you need your cinnamon roll fix, it’s coming. Last week, I met Laura with the Rusty Pumpkin and our brains got turning as she looked around our shop. She requested more wall space, if possible. I started thinking about the flow of our operation and what we could change. This is the wall of our main food computer. It happens to be the main spot where golfers check in. That wasn’t our original intent, but is simply how the flow naturally evolved over the years. (Sorry, I didn’t get an official before shot with wall hangings and candy display). The trouble is that the golfer had to go into the Golf Shop to purchase tees, balls, or gloves. It wasn’t horrible to get in a few extra steps, but it was something that could easily be altered. I asked my carpenter if I could remove these upper cabinets from the Golf Shop without ruining them. Before I knew it, the screws holding it in place were removed. It was carried (on a cart) over to our main food area. Then, they hoisted it into place. Next up, they needed to remove the wooden paneling which required loosening the counter top, so it could be slid out from behind the cabinet. Here’s how our Golf Shop counter now looks. Kind of bare, but we have plans. Oh yes. We have plans. Here’s a peak at our new main food display. There’s plenty more to be done to finalize everything. The best part about this big change is my mom and dad don’t know anything about it. This post is their first glimpse because they left us to go someplace warmer for the winter. Have you ever done a crazy surprise on your parents? We’re known for them around these parts.

Let’s Get Busy

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We have so many projects going on right now that our heads are starting to spin. Let’s back up a little. In November, we bought a bunch of supplies from a kitchen that was being torn down. This brought us lots of fabulous kitchen equipment and storage opportunities, but also called for several massive overhauls/remodeling projects for the winter. Let’s start with our mini-kitchen. This is located just off our Events Center’s service doors. Our main kitchen supplies all of the food and then it all gets brought to this mini-kitchen where it’s ready for our event staff to prepare the food for display and serving. First up, we had to remove all of the stuff, er, valuable belongings out of the cabinets. Kim and I put everything on carts and stacked everything up to empty the room. We did our best to stay ahead of Jason who was removing the cabinets as we emptied them. Here’s a shot of the room empty. Although the cabinets were nice, they weren’t very logical. Things weren’t easily accessible, plus we had some new stainless steel tables and racks that were looking for a home. This was the place! We had a five days span in between events at the golf course, so we took advantage of those five days and tore this room apart. Jason moved around the room and removed the cupboards from the walls. Kim and I carried all of the cupboards down to the Golfer’s Lounge where they will be given a new life! Once everything was removed, we began assembling all of the new shelving systems. We placed everything temporarily because we had an event that we had to prepare for, so we needed work space before moving on to our next project. Kim and I played around with the stainless tables and shelving before landing on a good configuration. Then, we got everything ready, so we could host the event at our place. Unfortunately, this left our tables/chairs storage room looking like this. Trust me. The saga continues…

Getting All Decked Out

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We put in our miniature golf in 2004. Over the years, we have seen steady growth in miniature golfers. Sometimes it seems like customers are kind of like compound interest. You don’t start out with many, then you get a few, they tell their friends, then one day you wake up and there’s a line at the miniature golf course. That’s what happened this year. It really felt like the miniature golf had finally gotten really busy. As I mentioned here, we had over 200 miniature golf birthday parties. They have been steadily growing in popularity over the last few years. Throughout the summer, we were really hopping around here with parties, so it was time to start thinking about growing our party space. One day, my mom and I were looking out at the minigolf building and got to brainstorming. At the end of the brainstorming session, a vision of a deck couldn’t escape my thoughts. When we had built this minigolf hut, we had a vision of how it would be used. Over the years, that vision wasn’t a reality, so it was time to do some changing. It just so happened that Menards was having their infamous 11% sale, so we were sold. All of the lumber arrived while we were paving our parking lot, so we were a flurry of activity trying to get things done before the snow decided to make an appearance. Knowing we had lots of wires in the area where the deck was going to be built, I gave a call to Iowa One Call. It’s always best to be safe than sorry. I think we could probably mark these lines ourselves because we’ve had them marked on our property so many times over the years. Our carpenter marked out the spots where he wanted to put in deck posts. Iowa One Call came out and basically all of the telephone and gas lines ran nearly right along the lines of our deck posts. Rather than moving the posts, we decided that we’d hand dig the holes for the deck posts. By we, I really mean, the guys. I just showed up to take picture of the holes they dug. The posts also made nice hat/coat racks. Once the posts were in and surrounded with concrete, they added the support beams. Luckily, they never hit a wire or pipe. These guys are professionals! Once all of the post were in place, they got to work building the frame. It was kind of like a fun Christmas gift to all of our miniature golf patrons because Santa was one of the carpenters who built the deck! They spent a solid two days getting the decking in place. Without much time to spare before the weather got too ugly, they finished the deck! Here she is in all her glory!

Larch – Larix genus

Our Green Thumb

It’s been awhile since we had Tom the Tree Man provide us with an excerpt about a tree located on the golf course. If you’d like to read others, check them out: Sawtooth Oak, American Persimmon, Tulip Tree, and the Chinese Elm. Take it away, Tom! Author: Tom Brady Larch, “Larix genus.” Rather than write about a single species, I thought I would group them together. This seems like the thing to do, since even though I have at least six species of larch planted, I can’t tell them apart at their younger age. Even the “books” say that larches have many more similarities than differences. Larches are deciduous conifers. Their strategy for surviving the winter is to drop their needles every fall. Despite going through this “extra work,” they are relatively fast growing. I have a Japanese Larch (Larix kaempferi) that is 15 – 20 feet tall after seven years. Larches grow their needles in tufts of 15 to 40 needles on raised pegs sticking out from the stem. The young spring needles are light green which turn a darker green in the summer, and golden yellow before dropping in the fall. All of the trees I have show nearly perfect pyramidal growth with a strong center leader. Unlike most of the trees that I’ve written about, larches are generally native to climates colder than Iowa. Despite this, most will thrive here. I’ve not figured out how to grow conifers from seed, so all of my trees were purchased as seedlings from catalogs. If you want to plant one, give it room, for they range in height from 70 to 100 feet or more. We have many larches on the golf course and hundreds more in the CRP ground (the young forest between the golf course and NE 80th Street, north of number one and two) You can easily spot them in the fall because their needles turn gold before falling. There’s a larch between 13 green and 16 green. It has many small cones on it.

We’re Eating. Again…

What's Cooking

When I meet people who work in a cubicle, they envy my job. I have a great view out of my office window, not to mention the fact that I go to a golf course every day. That is many people’s dream come true. The people who come to the golf course are happy. They are here to have fun! Although we work long hours, it is a fun job. I gotta tell you, though, all of those things I just listed aren’t really the best part of my job. The best part of my job is that we get to sacrifice our beach bodies to taste and sample foods that we’d like to sell at the golf course. This, my friends, is the best part of the job! Tasting food at Sysco. We have been to Sysco several times in the last year at their vendor fairs. These are kind of like a huge tasting where all of the vendors who distribute product through Sysco come to let us sample their foods. On a cold day in November, four of us went to Sysco’s test kitchen to have our own private tasting with Sysco’s chef. Before we got started, we adorned security vests and toured the warehouse. Sysco is located in Ankeny and has an incredible operation. The tour guide told us about how the pickers grab product to prepare the semi trucks. There are many things involved that you don’t think about at first. Product rotation is vital as well as food handling to make sure the food supply is safe. They had many aisles filled with food that was packaged on pallets and stacked up to the ceiling. They also covered many things that suppliers are doing to help prevent waste. Many of them use reuseable belts to hold the product on the pallets rather than the plastic shrink wrap. It’s the little things that add up to making a big difference. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures in the warehouse. You’ll just have to trust me that is was cool, both literally and figuratively. Once the tour was complete, we headed over to the test kitchen where the Sysco chef was getting ready to prepare us several meals which included skirt steak. That came by my mom’s request as she had been reading about this cut of meat and wanted some ideas on how to use it. For this tasting, we decided to focus on hors d’oeuvres for our wedding guide as well as graduation open houses menu guide. We wanted to see some fun options. As soon as we sat down, the chef threw a couple of steaks on the grill. He began his tasting with bite size quiche. Not surprisingly, they were delicious. Next up, he offered us bacon wrapped scallops. I’m not a fan of anything that comes from the ocean. I wish I liked fish because I know it’s good for me, but I just can’t do it. Since this was a tasting, I decided to try it anyway. Seriously, it was wrapped in bacon, so it how could it possibly taste badly? I was so proud of myself. I actually liked it! Chef pulled the steak off the grill and began slicing it into thin strips. He showed us how he made this delicious Remoulade. Its key ingredient was this Chipotle flavor enhancer. Let me tell you! This sauce would have tasted good on a piece of mud. It was so good. Here’s the skirt steak sandwich. He had used the remoulade on the shredded cabbage. There was so much flavor in this sandwich that it had my mouth singing. Those were the two main ingredients which were placed on a toasted bun. Next up, he used the same skirt steak to create some tacos. These tacos had that same chipotle sauce on them, but also included a pica de gallo. They were served on a corn shell. Our new best friend, the Sysco chef, then took some liberty to show us some other options that he thought we might enjoy using for our wedding menu. He served us some seasoned small potatoes over a demi sauce. While we oooed and ahhhed, I let a notch out of my belt. In addition to the potatoes, he also had made a stuffed pork loin. This thing was fabulous and was very easy to prepare. The best thing was that it didn’t take long to cook. It’s no easy task to cook for several hundred people and keep all of the food hot and fresh. This was a great option for us! Because we were still sitting up and able to speak, he also served us a meatball sandwich that he had created. It was made from a meatball that he had cut in half. It, too, was amazing. The four of us waddled out of the Sysco test kitchen with plenty of great ideas, recipes, and excitement to tackle some new items on our event menu. Sadly, we all had to go home to our families to prepare them supper. None of us felt like looking at food after sampling all those great meals! We’d like to thank Sysco again for treating us so well and serving us a wide array of fabulous recipes. They told us that they hold about two private tastings with businesses every day! That’s a lot of cooking!

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