A Gaggle Of Golf Carts?

What do you call a large group of golf carts?  We know it's a gaggle of geese, a pride of lions, a murder of crows (yes, it is!) a sleuth of bears... oh, collective nouns are fun.  They define everything from a parliament of owls to a passel of possum and an ostentation of peacocks.  But I've gotta wonder - what's the proper terminology for golf carts?  There's a reason I ask...

As you may recall, yesterday I mentioned that we went to the nearby Japanese Steak House for dinner.  Since the sushi bar there was somewhat simplistic we resolved to try another Japanese restaurant tonight, this one located in the very popular Lake Sumter Landing town square which is part of The Villages.  This restaurant had a nice website and looked to be somewhat more, let's say sophisticated, so after taking a pleasant ride around the neighborhood for a while, Al and I decided to try this new place.

Now, I must admit that we've been a little bit spoiled by the fact that Al's knee infirmity has merited him a handicapped placard.  We've been used to getting the best parking spots everywhere we've gone however we hadn't ever lived before in a place so very densely populated by golf carts!  Plus, we hadn't given any consideration to the fact that down here in Florida it's "Snowbird" season and everyone from up in the north who hates the winter weather is down here filling the hotels, rental properties and RV parks.  Oh, and the restaurants and parking spaces, too!  With Golf Carts!!

Now, Sumter's Landing is an interesting place to begin with.  It's a town square surrounded by little streets filled with shops and restaurants and offices and golf cart sales places and so forth, and it's right there in the middle of The Villages, which is already well known to be the most densely golf-cart populated place in the country - probably the world.  So despite the fact that we'd been there a few nights before with Heather et al dining at Panera Bread (remember?) and had seen for ourselves how many golf carts there were, we bravely drove forth to try our luck at finding a parking space for our brand-new Toyota Camry.

HAH.

It was like trying to get through to Glenda the Good Witch of the North through a convention of Munchkins. Not only do these golf carts drive everywhere within the Villages (and the headlights on those things are BLINDING!) but they take up every spare inch of space in every parking area on the main streets of the square.  Yes, there are large parking lots BEHIND a lot of the stores but Al's knee problems do NOT allow him to walk from behind those stores and across the streets on the main drag to a restaurant.  It simply can't be done.

So we drove around and around and around, looking for some place to park our now-perceived-as-enormous Camry without running into golf carts disguised as 1920s Model Ts or tiny fire engines or '57 Chevys, or...or golf carts.  It was almost as though we were traveling through some giant beehive, looking at the rows and rows of tiny bees on either side, lined up like shopping carts at the biggest Wal-Mart parking lot in creation.

Time after time we circled and sought, only to be hemmed in once again by the tiny little vehicles.  After a fruitless half hour we just gave up and resolved to come back some time in April when the "Snowbirds" have departed.

Long ago we lived in New Hope, Pennsylvania, which is also a town whose population swells seasonally, though nobody there drives golf carts except on the golf courses.  This is a little different here - and of course we've arrived at exactly the wrong time of year for trying out popular restaurants and destinations.

Oh well - sooner or later we'll get our chance.  Until then we'll have to stick with the chain restaurants or just plain stay out of The Villages and their town squares.

Tomorrow the moving van comes to deliver our stuff into our new house.  We spent a little time there today, trying to figure out what to do with "this" piece of furniture or "that" one.  9am Eastern time, the moving van pulls up to the house and we start the next adventure - that of sorting everything out and moving in.

Wish us luck - and if you have a nice box of dim sum lying around, just send it along...