My Saturday in Colorado..

In 2017, myself and Ada were offered the chance to visit Colorado by a long time GOC Instagram follower @blaineryan14. After noticing Blaine on the GOC fantasy golf league, I first approached Blaine when I was setting up a world wide Instagram Easter egg hunt in 2016. Myself and Blaine have regularly kept in touch over the last 2 years, talking about everything from Golf to World affairs. Blaine is normally the first person to message me if something bad happens in London, making sure Myself and Ada haven't been affected.

The proposal was for myself and Ada to travel to Colorado, sometime in 2018 and spend 4 days with Blaine and his girlfriend Claire. With Colorado in mind, myself and Ada booked our Los Angeles Holiday for May 2018, we felt it was a great chance to visit California whilst taking advantage of Blaine's kind Colorado offer. Everything was in place and after 4 days in Los Angeles we left for Colorado on the 24th May. All 4 days in Colorado were some of the best experiences I have had through a social media meeting.

A few highlights were; couples Top Golf (My first ever Top Golf experience), turns out I'm not to bad!. Myself and Ada experienced our first American sporting event as Blaine took us to a Colorado Rockies Baseball game. Saturday would be the Golf day, I would get the chance to meet people I helped on Instagram, when they first started out. Unknowingly, I would also meet people that have followed my GOC story for years.

After 2 hours sleep from the Rockies game and Live music, my 4:30am alarm activated. Not being a morning person, I felt like I had been hit by a bus, I've not had a 4:30am alarm for social golf in a very long time! Other than playing golf with Blaine, the two people I was most looking forward to meeting were @coloradogolfblog and @jt_laybourne. Blaine Introduced me to Lee (Colorado Golf Blog) just before the Easter Egg Hunt in 2016, who in turn offered to put up a give away prize for one winner. It would turn out that I chose Taylor (@jt_laybourne) as the winner on their giveaway. It was a little surreal when meeting everyone over the weekend, as I only knew them from messages, videos and pictures.

We were heading to play at Kings Deer golf club, where a partnership between Colorado Golf Blog and Kings Deer has been a massive success over sometime now. It is quite the golf course to take in, spread over a vast acreage, an 1800 acre community according to Saddletree homes. The golf course is surrounded by some of the biggest Golf Course properties I have ever seen.

Greetings done and some range balls hit, we headed to the first tee. I couldn't have gotten off to a better start, nailing a drive on the first hole, flicking a wedge into 8ft and making birdie. For everyone that is not aware, Colorado is a state at altitude. Kings Deer golf club sits 7,400ft above sea level. Allowing for the altitude was an interesting take on golf, making 320yd holes easily driveable without having to crush your tee shot. I suppose the hardest part of adapting is from 140 - 180yds. I have my PW yardage of 124yds in England, in Colorado this rises to around the 145 - 150yd range. The front 9 was littered with some good drives and average play from there. As a team we felt we were a way behind the pace, with the 2 best scores from 4 counting on each hole, -2 didn't feel like we made anything.

I was paired up with Blaine, Rich and the Kings Deer general manager Jeff. Three players that have game, generally there was 2 or 3 of us looking at Birdie putts on most holes. After a slow start from me on the back 9, the guys kept us in it. They recorded at least 1 birdie, on I believe 10 & 11. The last 6 holes, I would show the guys a little bit of what I can do. The 295yd par 4 13th would be the turning point in our round. Blaine made an incredible up and down out the hazard whilst I two putted for a birdie, the first time we as a team made 2 birdies on the same hole. Jeff made birdie on 14, whilst I would birdie the challenging 210yd par 3 15th. Rich would birdie 16, whilst I then again recorded another birdie on the 18th. Recording -7 on the back 9, felt like we had brought some respect to our round. Everyone had played their part, whether it was holing clutch par putts to keep momentum, or birdies to keep the score ticking over.

Results

As the results started to come in, I started to get the feeling we had done a lot better than we presumed. Our -9 total ended up winning by comfortable margin. Another game that was going on that I didn't quite understand, was the 16 man skins game. The easiest way to describe it would be if you Birdie the 1st hole like I did and the other 15 didn't, you win 1 skin. Obviously with 16 players, halves can be a regular occurrence. The Birdie I made on the challenging par 3 15th, earned me $60!

Personally I walked away $140 up on the day, which I felt a bit awkward about. I'm never one to usually play for or take that kind of money off of people. I suppose entering into an organised weekly swindle where $40 a head is to norm, you cannot be awkward and refuse to enter as a one off.

The evening

The evening plans were for an American BBQ at Lee's house. This was myself & Ada's chance to get to know everyone a little better, aswell as meet the the wives & girlfriends (WAGS) for the first time. I met a lot of great people and was a bit taken back by people saying they had followed my story over the last few years and enjoyed my content. This evening would also be a first in food, where I had my first ever Taco! Shocked as everyone seemed, its not a food I had ever tried in America. We had Elk and Buffalo taco's and I can confirm I have been missing out all these years, they were delicious!

As you can imagine, there was a lot of golf & Instagram talk. I was also caught off guard by the genuine interest in myself and Ada, there was no point in the 8 hours we were there, where someone wasn't taking their time to talk to us about everything from Golf to English Life. My favourite comment has to one Todd (Oak & Anchor) came out with, "I would love to come over to England and get drunk in a buzzing British pub". I feel a pub atmosphere when an England Football game is on, would suit him right down to the ground!

There was a long talk at one point in the night regarding the Easter Egg Hunt in 2016. I felt a sense of pride when it was mentioned that there was a chance none of this might have happened, had it not been for the Easter Egg Hunt. I looked around at everyone there and saw how the chain came together. It started with me connecting to Blaine, who connected me to Lee, who I connected to Taylor. I would say this was the starter connections, I could then see Lee as the Hub of connections as he branched out to Oak & Anchor, Kings Deer G.C. & all the guys & girls sitting around the table. I'm sure there are other stories to how everyone got to this point, it was just a cool atmosphere to be around. We did speak about this a little more through the night and it confirmed what I already knew. The English social media culture is all about attending events where they can get something out of it. If its not going to gain them followers or boost their online awareness, then they are generally not interested. Everyone at this BBQ was just their because they enjoyed each others company and wanted to have fun, more of an Instagram family than business.

The whole day lived up to my expectations. Everyone myself & Ada met was for the first time. There were people I had made connections with 2 years ago, people who have followed me for 2/3 years & new people who I have now built strong connections with. I don't feel this was a conclusion to finely meeting this group, but a foundation for further meetings and collaborations.

My main thank you goes to Blaine, who made not only Saturday but the whole 4 days memorable. I'm hoping one day to get back out to Colorado as well as welcoming anyone we met over to London.

My only regret is that I didn't get enough photo's with everyone. Usually I'm pretty good at getting pictures for social media, it was just one of those occasions where I got so caught up in enjoying the limited time I had with everyone & building relationships, pictures never crossed my mind.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to read about my saturday in Colorado. I have used links on peoples names mentioned, they are all great people and worth following if you are on Instagram.

GOC