I thought it would never get here this spring of 2018.

Yet at last a blue sky and temperatures above 50 degrees arrived. And on the Monday of my staycation week, no less. KP and I were ready, with tee times set up at Foxfire.

Yes, they said, the course is dry enough for the carts to be out.

The fourth week of April, and our golf season would start.

I arrived first, and gladly handed over the $25 for greens fee and cart the guy behind the pro shop desk requested. Good deal for this nice course, I thought.

Then I went out to hit some putts on the practice green to await KP’s arrival and our 2:02 p.m. tee time. When I moved to the side for some stretching, my pal pulled into the parking lot. I rolled the cart out to meet him.

Let the four-decades-long routine begin again.

KP got out of the pro shop and remarked how twenty bucks was such a great deal.

Huh?

I strolled back in.

The senior price is $20, the guy said.

I asked the cutoff age.

“Oh, 55,” he replied.

He believed me when I said I’d passed that years ago, and handed back a fiver from the register. I felt pleased in several ways.

My newly retired friend was thrilled to take swings on the first tee, which on this day we were told would be the Hole 10.

The course was crowded on the first nine. We weren’t the only ones looking to start the season.

There was time for me to shoot this shot at the tee of an important par-three, the 155-yard hole on which KP rolled in his hole-in-one a handful of decades past.

Things emptied out on the second nine, and KP phoned Timber Banks and secured our tee time for the very next day.

Yup, two guys with the afternoon free qualifying for the senior rate.