The Mashie spent a year in my office in Cincinnati starting in early October 2014 - I'm not sure who had her before I did.
I strapped her into the passenger seat for a ride to the Twin Cities Mashie in September 2015, but she left me for a silver fox and I went home alone.
I feel like I say this every year, but one of the great charms of the Midwest Mashie's evolution is the way that it has come to highlight excellent courses that aren't already on everyone's radar. Mashies I've attended like the Twin Cities, Canterbury, Kingsley, and Broadmoor events have been consistently marked by incredible generosity from members and clubs to host us at courses that people cared about sharing with our group when they could have saved a ton of hassle by just letting us go fend for ourselves at any old course with openings available on GolfNow.
Vaughn and Cedar Rapids have put together a pretty killer tentative plan. Cedar Rapids is a classic Ross that recently completed a lauded renovation, in a wildly underrated Midwestern state that has never hosted the event previously. If we have local members at a private club working to host us and already penciling us in for a tentative date on a recently renovated Golden Age course that gets rave reviews, that gets my vote over any resort options. Not because the resort options aren't awesome, but just because any of us can go play them at any time and there's no sacrifice being made on the part of a membership to give up a few valuable weekend tee times to share a place they love with a rag-tag group of visitors who always go home from this event having been treated with far more hospitality than we deserve.
If I'm not there this year, it will only be because of obligations involved in getting a house built and moved into, which should happen right around the time of the Mashie. Pencil me in otherwise.