The friendship I’ve had with the reclusive and elusive Eat Golf has been one of mystery.  Digital.  Virtual.  Though I knew him online, I never physically met “Eat” a.k.a. Rich for years.  My relationship with this mysterious member of the original five golf bloggers was one of late night chat sessions about PHP code at 3am or the occasional email propping up cool golf blog posts.  But did Eat really exist?  Was he human?  Did he have seven inch long fingernails like Howard Hughes?  It took me nearly four years to find out.

I made some attempts to visit Eat in his “hood,” which is what they call cities or neighborhoods in southern California.  I was foiled two years in a row by bad weather, and the fear of hooking up with an old girlfriend who broke my heart who lived in the area.  Chicken.  I wondered if I’d ever meet Eat.  I wondered if I’d be able to actually verify that he existed.  Could I verify that he was indeed, human?  Could I indeed back up with my own empirical evidence that Eat wasn’t in the same class as UFO’s and Big Foot?

I meet Eat

Last month in Vegas much of the mystery was uncovered, yet much more mystery unfolded.  I did in fact meet Eat Golf.  I did in fact have several (dozen) beers with this mysterious web genius who, after days of endless programming without sleep, was able to brilliantly create mega cool and productive golf web applications which did astounding things, like telling readers the quality level of the range balls at every golf course in the country.  Despite that brilliance Eat was somehow too inept to backup his files, causing the loss of years worth of work and thus making his “current” blog post dated back on February 9th 2006.

I had a great time spending a couple of days with Eat.  He didn’t have a room so I offered up the extra bed in my room at the Luxor.  He declined.  He’d spent the first night at some odd, off the strip place in Vegas which was $50/night.  Is that where he really stayed?  Are we sure he didn’t stay at the Belagio or the Wynn?  Nobody really knows.

Eat Car

So do I have actual proof that I spent a couple of days with Eat?  Strangely enough, I have no photos of him.  I have a receipt from some bar in Vegas showing a couple of rounds of drinks.  I have nothing which could prove much of anything.  Why?  Why didn’t I get a shot of us together?  We’re long lost pals.  We’re joined at the golf blog hip.  We’re lost web geek brothers.  This is a terrible omission on my part, not getting a photo of us.  Rich is my pal and I f’d up by not getting a pic of us hangin’ in Vegas.

I did however, get one shot which may be proof enough.  One pic which may convince the sceptics that Eat really does exist.  I shot a pic of Eat’s car.  Check out the bumper stickers in the back window.

Eat Car

Sure this could be anybody’s car.  But who puts three Ron Paul bumper stickers on their car?  Not two?  One isn’t enough?  Then there’s the “other” Eat site, Speculative Bubble, a site which provided information which may have prevented and/or predicted the current mortgage and credit crisis.  If we would have listened to Eat, America might not be in this mess…  At least that is my motto.  But the coup de gras in my proof that I met Eat is the tiny little sticker to the far right:  “PHP.”  PHP is a server side dynamic hypertext protocol computer language.  Only the truest of the true geeks would have a PHP bumper sticker in their window.  Only geeks which have attained the level of geek greatness and psychosis, like Rich.  Like Eat.

I truly hope I don’t have to wait another four years for my next Eat sighting.