I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
August 01, 2009 - 10:34 p.m.
I'm back. I'm out of the habit of writing. I have to get back into it. Let's see if I can actually remember what happened since my last entry.
I had insomnia on Monday night and couldn't fall asleep until after 3 AM. That wasn't good as I had to be up at 6 AM. I did wake up on time and made it to meet Roy at Penn Station at 7:35. The first bit of excitement was my first breakfast at the first Tim Horton's in Manhattan. I miss Dunkin' Donuts, it's better.
Roy and I made it to our train without a hitch and were on our way to Washington DC. I'll tell you why were going there as the train travels south.
chugga chugga chugga �
We were going to the Summer North American Bridge Championships. Before you ask; no, that doesn't mean that we are good players. Anyone can play in them that wants to. Each day there are multiple events. Some are designated "national," others "regional," and others "side games." We played in each type. We don't have much chance in national event but if you are traveling to an NABC it is wimping out to not try. So now you know out destination.
� chugga chugga chugga �
I don't think I could have made the trip without Roy acting as my valet. My elbow is still broken. I could have never lifted my luggage onto the overhead rack by myself. He helped me do almost everything. It was great having someone help me on with my backpack. I've been doing it alone but it is difficult and I risk injuring myself.
� chugga chugga chugga screeeee!
The train pulled into Union Station and we did not have a lot of time before our first event started. We hopped in a cab and took it to our hotel. We checked in but didn't go up to our room; we just checked our baggage and hopped on another cab to the tournament site.
We arrived in time to register for the Werher Open Pairs, a national event. It still counts as wimping out as the best players were all in the Spingold, a team game. That started on Monday so that wasn't an option for us. It is a two day event and you have to qualify to play in the second day. We didn't expect to make the cut and we didn't. We had a 47% game in the first half and a 46% in the second. Not too shabby against a national, unstratified field.
If you want to skip therest of the bridge results skip down to the horizontal line.
On Wednesday we played in a
Regional Bracketed Knockout Team event. The divided the team into brackets of 16, based on the number of combined masterpoints. We were in the 5th bracket. We met out teammates, Emerita and Cheryl at the pairing desk. They had just met each other there so my expectations weren't high. We did quite well. We won both our matches on Wednesday, making into the semifinals. We lost our first match on Thursday and were eliminated. That earned us 5.76 masterpoints.
On Thursday evening we played in the side Swiss Teams with another pair we met at the pairing desk, Mike and Tony. We finished tied for fourth and won 1.46 points.
On Friday we had to make an 8:45 PM train so we had to play in the regional Daylight Stratified Fast Pairs. We tied for fourth in strat C and won 3.08 points. So in all we entered 4 events and scored in 3 of them for a total of 10.3 masterpoints. You can find all these results on the website, Summer 2009 NABC Results.
Half the fun of the nationals is not he bridge but the people you meet. I was at my schmoozing best. People come from around not just North America but the entire world. I'd ask everyone we played where they came from; all around the eastern seaboard, Minnesota, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arizona, Californa, Nova Scotia, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, London, and Glasgow, to name a few. I had a conversational gambit for most of them. I talked about Natalie MacMaster with the Nova Scotian! She said I have to go up there in July when the big Cape Breton music festival coincides with their regional tournament. I talked about Emilie with the pair from Glasgow and London. I of course talked about Fr�vous with the Torontonians.
I had been wondering for a while if anyone else would go to both FRFF and the NABCs. I figured I wasn't the only one. I wasn't. on the first or second day someone comes up to my table and says, "Are you Gordon?" When said, "yes," she introduced herself as Meg. She camps in Shantytown with my friends and visited The Budgiedome! I was not only not the only one who went to Falcon Ridge, I wasn't even the only one that went to the Budgiedome. It's a small world.
I of course ran into Farley, Larry, and Diana. Larry and Diana did much better than we did. They finished 18th in the Werhner Open Pairs. That's a great finish in a national event that earned them more than twice as many masterpoints as we earned in the entire tournament.
We didn't have much time but we did some sightseeing. The tournament was only a few blocks from the National Zoo so we went there a couple of times for short visits. I finally got to see a live panda. Too bad the Komodo Dragons were hiding from us. Maybe they were playing in the NABCs. I was surprised to find the Invertebrate house a highlight. I'll talk about this more when I edit my pictures. That will take a while as I have to do Falcon Ridge first.
On Thursday morning we walked past the White House, through the Ellipse, and down to the Washington Monument. You need advanced tickets to go up it so we then walked down the mall to the Metro and headed up to the tournament.
Our other walkby was to the Naval Observatory, that is also the home of the Vice President. We didn't see Joe anywhere but it was fun onto the grounds and passing the official U.S. Naval Observatory Clock, the official time of the United States.
We then walked down Embassy Row. On the way back to the hotel on a deserted street in the rain we passed a woman walking. There was nobody else on the street and I couldn't resist starting a conversation. I'm a New Yorker, we talk to people on the street. She was from California and was visiting her daughter. Her daughter must be doing very well, those were expensive homes.
I'm a Nash so I have to talk about the food. We had great success finding places to eat. There was a great little snack bar type place on the first floor of an office building on the same block as our hotel. That is where we ate breakfast. It was cheap and good, what more can you ask for?
We ate only 2 deals a day until Friday. On Tuesday we ate at one of the three Indian restaurants right by the tournament. I had my usual tandori chicken and naan and was happy. On Wednesday we went for what the restaurant guide called the best barbeque in DC. It was a tiny place made for take-out with just a few seats but my brisket was delicious and cheap. There was a home-made ice cream place next door so I had a great desert. We took a cab there but walked back, that was when we went past the Naval Observatory. On Thursday we went for Cajun! No boring food this trip. Once again it was modestly priced but great. We had the Cajun equivalent of zeppolis for dessert. On Friday we had the early day. We had lunch at the highly touted pizza place by the tournament. That was a huge disappointment. The pizza was tiny and not particularly good and the place was dump. Things picked up for dinner at Union Station. I just had a flame broiled burger an Ben & Jerry's but it was relaxing and good.
Washington DC is of course in the deep south, practically the equator. The weather was certainly tropical. It was hot and humid. Most days the high was about 1500� F with 350% humidity. Good thing that I wore linen every day. I actually found it quite bearable, others didn't.
We pretty much just vegetated on the train ride home. We pulled into Penn Station at 12:13, a few minutes after the LIRR train that Roy needed left. He had to wait to 1:06 for the next. We went to the bathroom, said our goodbyes, and I headed on the subway home.
I couldn't figure out where to fit this in but it has to go somewhere. Roy and I never agree on politics and try and avoid the subject, sometimes we can't. While discussing health care I said that the so called "bipartisan" plan without the government option was just doing the bidding of the Health Industrial Complex that gives huge amounts of money to its supporters. Roy came up with a gem. "That's why they call it buy-partisan!"
I've been a busy bee this summer. I've gone to Toronto, Providence and New Bedford, Falcon Ridge, and Washington DC. I've loved every trip and I have loved coming back to my own bed after each of them.
I had insomnia again last night, I guess I was still wired. I didn't get to sleep to after 4 AM, maybe as late as 5. I slept till noon. That pretty much killed today. I'm not complaining.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
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Horvendile August 01, 2009
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