TERRA ALTA, WV — (Originally Published September 2008)

The practice round for GXV is set to begin almost exactly seven days from right now. That means 168 hours, or 10,080 minutes, that we all must suffer the anticipation of waiting on the greatest event our creator has bestowed upon mankind.  But must we really suffer?  Time goes by fairly fast when you are doing something you enjoy, or something that requires your intellectual attention.  The toughest moments are the ones completely free of distraction, leaving you to wallow in the agony of the fact that you are not at the Wilson Cabin right now, telling Bro how great his Mom is at one sexual indiscretion or another.  If you think about the next week and stay focused, we can make it through this together.

Sleep - First, every man loves sleep, and it becomes a much more precious and rare commodity when you are 25 to 45 years old and raising kids.  If you are lucky, you get about 7 hours of sleep per night, knocking an easy 49 hours out of the park right off the bat. You'll be dreaming about skydiving, parachuting into a war zone, machine-gunning down hundreds of evil faceless enemies, perhaps taking out the last few with a sword, and then unwinding by watching football lying on a couch made of chicken wings and Cheetohs; of course, Maria Sharapova and that insanely hot intern in your office are bringing you beer and alternating between pleasuring you and pleasuring each other.  Yep, those are some easy 49 hours to get through.

Work - We all have jobs, and most of them require us to think for a good portion of the day. It's extremely difficult to concentrate on work when Golfapalooza is so close, particularly if you have unrestricted access to internet and email all day. But stay focused and get some actual work done.  Also, sometimes time spent just pretending to work goes by just as fast as time spent doing real work.  Like for instance, if you sit at your desk and write pathetically juvenile fake news articles for a golf trip website. When you factor in time for showering and commuting, you've probably easily made it through another 50 of your 168 hours.

Eating/Pooping - Hey, we are men, aren't we?  We don't just graze and snack all day like women and then just have a salad for dinner.  Eating is important enough to budget time for it in your daily planner.  And we're no less serious about the time it takes to relieve ourselves of that which we've consumed. Be sure to take a golf tip magazine with you when you visit the can, getting maximum value for your time investment.  By the way, congratulations! You've just killed another 22 hours.

Football/Drinking - fortunately, we do have an entire weekend of college and pro football between now and GXV.  If you don't like football, you are a big pussy and probably weren't invited to Golfapalooza anyway.  Frequently, watching football and drinking are a combined activity, but some may choose to get drunk without the football.  Whether you are drinking merely in preparation for GXV or drinking as part of an overall strategy to exacerbate a growing serious problem with alcohol, being drunk is a great way to kill a few of these waiting hours.  If you are a depressed drunk, you may want to consider quickly consuming enough to pass out. (See 'Sleep' above).  In all, you should be able to painlessly (unless you root for a team from Ohio) get through another 15 hours of anticipation; you've got just over 30 remaining.

Golf Trip Preparations - this is a really easy way to get through the pain, because it is usually overridden by the elation you are feeling from knowing that the trip is near enough that you must do things to prepare for it.  Checking email and reading the latest news article multiple times per day will probably take care of 10 hours for you. You also may get in that 'one last round' or 'one last trip to the driving range' that is finally going to fix your swing (Which, by the way, has sucked for the better part of 15 years; but go ahead and get out there! This is definitely the session that is going to fix it!)  Other preparations include shopping for your essentials and packing your vehicle.  If you also count the time you spend traveling to Alpine Lake, you've whittled away another 23 hours; only 9 left!

Daydreaming - that's right. Daydreaming. Go right ahead and wonder whether the toilets in the southern hemisphere actually swirl in the opposite direction.  Have a debate with yourself over which superhero power would be better to have: flight or invisibility.  (It's totally invisibility by the way.)  Imagine what that beautiful woman three cubicles over looks like naked.  Even try to figure out how hard she would hit you if told her that her dress was beautiful but it would look way better crumpled up at the foot of your bed. Hell, you can just daydream away a few hours imagining playing the course at Alpine Lake. Every thought is fair game, and you should have no problem getting from 9 hours down to 120 minutes.

Sex - I think it should go without saying that 110 out of those 120 remaining minutes are going to be reserved for your masturbating time.  If you have a spouse, girlfriend, life-sized blow-up doll, or any Loozer from Columbus's mom, you may get to have sex once in the next week, killing an extra 3 minutes.

So that's it.  When you truly analyze your time, Golfapalooza is really only 7 minutes away.  I know those 7 minutes are going to be filled with emotional distress, the shakes and cold sweats.  But fear not my brethren, as we will all make it through this together. As of press time, the GXV practice round is 10,080 minutes from tee-off.