After a weekend with my retired parents in a gaited community in Snowbird Central, California (aka the Coachella Valley), I’ve made a few observations.

But first, some background. The Coachella Valley is home to nine nearly identical communities, which bleed together from Palm Springs on down to Palm Desert and Indio. Cathedral City, Desert Hot Springs, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Coachella and Rancho Mirage are the other communities squished into this idyllic desert valley, though there are also a number of unincorporated townships spread willy-nilly about the place. Really, these municipalities should just give up the goddamn ghost already and merge into some form of real city, as the total population of the valley is still only half the population of Winnipeg, for fuck sakes.

Palm Springs and Palm Desert are the Snowbird hotspots, with nearly 50 per cent of their populations over the age of 55, though retired, middle- to upper-class western Canadians can be found scattered throughout the valley. Safely protected by gates, walls and paid security personnel (who surely must make up a good percentage of the valley’s other 50 per cent, along with Big Box store sales associates, hospitality industry slaves and golf course staff), the best of Canada’s aging population enjoy a life of tedious comfort that beggars all belief.

The particular gaited community I find myself currently residing within (“Sun City”) is only one of hundreds throughout the valley. The cute, spacious bungalow, complete with citrus trees, pool and hot tub, in which I am composing this post is one of over 5,000 within Sun City’s walls. The community boasts two 18-hole golf courses, over a dozen tennis courts and three “community centres,” which offer seniors all the programming needed to while away one’s twilight hours. From model train building to daily fitness classes, aquasize afternoons to snooker and 2pm happy-hour coctails, everything is available just a short golf-cart ride away.

Which is all fine and good. Unless, of course, you’re interested in getting seriously weird at a bar with some pill-popping locals. Or experiencing some culture first-hand, and not courtesy of the On Demand TV that comes included with each unit, or via the Donny Osmond impersonator the dinner club is bringing in on Friday. Or hanging out with anyone under the age of 55.

But if you really wanted to do any of those things, you wouldn’t have signed yourself up for a life in such strict confines in the first place. Which leads me to believe one of two things. First, that there are thousands upon thousands of people who have resigned themselves to such a pleasant, comfortable and generally uneventful existence. Or second, that this is an existence that thousands aspire to from the time they “grow up” and leave all that getting down and dirty and weird behind them in their early 20s, where it belongs.

The olds, it seems, are happy just to let the rest of their life pass by in a haze of booze, medication and expensive but inoffensive leisure activities.

Then again, I could be missing something. There is a grocery store just outside the walls of this compound where you can buy booze so cheap it could very well doom a hard-boiled alcoholic north of the 49. If, of course, one were ever to save up enough empties for a plane ticket down here. Bottles of wine for $1.69, 60-pounders of vodka for $14.95, and Burts-plus-sixes of Budweiser for $20.

Maybe all these old folks really have given up on the wilder, more exotic things life has to offer, and are content to a life within the walls, shopping at the myriad Big Box options available throughout the valley, and just sucking back the sweet, sweet booze. With booze this cheap, you’re losing money if you ain’t drinking. Maybe this truly is the best that one can aspire to?

Or maybe not. Time will have to tell. Until then, I’ll be waiting out this disgusting sand-storm that has whipped itself up over the past 48 hours, making my foray into the Valley’s biggest pastime — golf — impossible. With over 140 18-hole courses (of varying degrees of exclusivity) to choose from, the senior citizens of the Coachella Valley, be they permanent or part-time resident or visitor, would have to devote a serious amount of time and squirrelled-away cash to ever get sick of hitting the links.

If this goddamn dust ever settles out of the sky, I’ll be hitting said links with my old man. Old John Boy has sworn by golf since I can remember, and if there’s anyone to learn its Zen-like mysteries from, it will be him. Wish me luck, friends, for I have a short attention span, and a far shorter temper. Until then, I’ll be sucking back the Diesels like they’re free. Which, watered down or no, they practically are.

Sheldon Birnie is in California investigating the habits of elderly expat Canadians and Coachella attendees. While he waits for the second weekend of Coachella to begin, he has embedded himself with his parents in a gated retirement community to explore the rituals their kind enjoys, including expensive golf and ludicrously cheap alcohol. For more in this series, see the tag “America the beautiful.”