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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Getting A Bit Balmy Some Use Simulated Sunshine To Brighten Bleak Days Of Winter

Eric Sorensen And Jim Lynch S Craig W Staff writer

David Sanford hangs his head over a 3-iron, and aims for the flag 188 yards away on The Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Course’s 16th hole. He’s focused. Two holes back, he double-bogeyed the floating green.

Knee-deep snow coats the real course, but at Spokane’s Virtual Golf, it’s shirt-sleeves, prime-time golf weather.

The mind-bending realism of computer-generated golf is one of a handful of activities offering solace to Inland Northwest residents craving sunnier times.

While most people navigate icy streets and shovel driveways, some desperate for summer shop for bikinis, tan and doing anything possible to create their own type of summer during the dead of winter.

Yet, summer fun can be frustrating. One frustrated duffer busts a club over his neck while cars skid past in the slush outside the building at 6512 E. Sprague.

Rich Gibson pulls off Division Street on Friday afternoon and enters the sunny fields of virtual bow hunting.

Birds and crickets sing as a life-size deer strolls through brush 20 yards away in the attic at the Outdoor Sportsman.

Gibson pulls back the arrow and waits for the deer to turn sideways. His blunt missile hits the nylon, computerized screen and the picture freezes. “VITALS,” the screen says and gives Gibson his point total.

He’s puzzled. It looked like a shot to the heart. Where’s the bull’s-eye?.

A large moose fills the screen. The sun is bright, the scenery serene.

“There’s something I’d love to shoot,” Gibson says, and does. “Whap!” The picture freezes. “Bull’s-eye.” The moose is dead.

In the next 10 minutes, Gibson bags another deer, a wild turkey, a lynx and a big horn sheep. He even skewers a wolf, a long way off, stepping across rocks.

Gibson can’t hear the honking and sliding of cars outside. It’s an Indian summer day. He’s hunting, and smiling.

“Last winter, I didn’t pick my bow up until June,” he explains. He now finds time to go bow hunting twice a week.

The Outdoor Sportsman at 1612 N. Division books as many as 20 bow hunters a day during this snow stretch.

Baseball fanatic Alfred Bevacqua can’t curb his longing to shag a few ground balls.

But he and a cousin do the next best thing: They trudge through three feet of snow in 30 degree weather to hit pop flies in a backyard batting cage.

It’s not quite like cracking the rock from behind home plate on a July afternoon, but it beats watching football.

“It wasn’t too bad,” the Rathdrum, Idaho, 17-year-old says. “It makes you mentally tougher. You don’t want to hit the ball because the bat vibrates a lot and stings your hands. But you do it anyway.”

Still other summer seekers flock past neon palm trees in search of artificial sun.

“We have a lot of people returning that haven’t been in since August,” says a bronzed John Bashore, at the Jungle Tan tanning salon along East Sprague.

Snow makes for a good season at the Fore Seasons Sports Dome at 7115 East Cataldo.

“The day after it snows is when it really starts to pick up,” says Doug Lydig, co-owner. “We’ll stay busy from now until the courses open.”

Inside the 36,000-square-foot dome, Gary Perala is busy sinking three 6-foot putts in a row.

“Jack and I have been sort of house-bound,” he says, referring to golf mate Jack Rich.

“It’s get away from the snow or get away from the wives. Normally, if we can see grass, we’re on the course someplace, but it’s hard to cut through this snow.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Eric Sorensen and Jim Lynch Staff writers Staff writer Craig Welch contributed to this story.