Home Again

We just arrived home from Vancouver.  Both Ray and I caught a bit of a nasty flu in Mission so the journey home was not all that pleasant although I have to say that West Jet tries hard to make their flights pleasant.  I know that there are more than the usual number of typos in some of my posts.  Thanks to everyone who sent me emails to help me fix them.  Unfortunately I wasn’t checking email on the road but tomorrow I will go back and make the changes.

When I was reading about the swine flu epidemic all the symptoms seemed the same as our illness as Ray was only too happy to point out.  This means we probably infected the people on the plane to Calgary and then the people on the plane to Toronto.  Poor souls.  I can see how it is transmitted.  From now on I carry a mask with me when I am on a flight in case my seat mate is coughing and sputtering as I was.

Tomorrow I will also take down the poll about system restrictions in the ACBL.  It does appear that an overwhelming number of you believe that there is a problem with most picking the worst case answer – badly.  I agree although I am not sure I am ready for unfettered conventions.   During the round robin in our women’s trials one of the pairs decided to play the second defense to MULTI provided by the ACBL.  Despite reading the same sheets they got confused.  They complained that they might have bid on if they understood what was written there.  The director had no patience for them pointing out that there team captains knew about MULTI 2 months in advance and had written copies of the defenses.  They actually got a normal result on the hand but I did feel bad for them in a way.  This should not be that hard.  We were only playing that MULTI promised a weak two in one of the majors not anything more complicated.

Looking back on the event I am really glad that I went.  Sylvia and I never had any misunderstandings or system confusion throughout the event.  She complemented me several times on my declarer play and I did feel like I had my “mojo”.  I realized that a lot of the problems I thought I personally was having were BBO problems.  I simply cannot concentrate on BBO properly.  I lose spot cards, I lose count.  I don’t know why this is but when I mention it to other people some of them seem to have the same problem.  Is this BBO syndrome?  Sylvia and I significantly exceeded my expectations during the entire course of the event although we did have one or two rough patches in the first round or two.   I liked our team and I remembered how much I like being part of a team.

I have a lot of pictures I took in Penticton and I will try to post some of them soon.  I wish all the winners well and I will be there to cheer them on in Brazil although Ray and I may do some touring during all or part of the Round Robin week.  So Canadian teams your job is to make it to the quarterfinals and from then on you can count on us to be boosters.  My plan is to blog about the whole event but I will be focusing on the North American teams.  Like last year we will also pick up blogs from others who are blogging the event.  If anyone is planning to write a world championship blog please let us know (or if you know someone who is doing it).  If any one would like to write a US focused blog we are especially looking for you.  Last year the Canadian teams were well covered but the US teams weren’t.  We can host you on bridge blogging and get you started or do it on your own site whatever works for you.

I come back with good memories of Penticton (except for that one sad moment when I came down after the compare to find we had lost) and wonderful memories of my time in Mission with Jennifer and Jason and my three grandchildren.  We taught the eldest two a simple version of minibridge.  They liked it so much that Jennifer’s threat was that if they didn’t finish their dinner they wouldn’t get to play bridge!