Most surprising things in Australia

We talked to lots of bridge players in Australia and there were two  things we kept hearing.  Neither was expected.  First they loved the book “Northern Lights”.  I think most of the sales of that book must have been made in Australia. 

The second was “Did we know Karen Cumpstone.?” And when we said yes, they couldn’t say enough about how much they liked Karen and what a good bridge player she was.  I wanted Karen to know that and I will email her in case she doesn’t read this post.  So G’day Karen.  It wasn’t once or twice.  It was over and over again.  You are an Aussie Bridge favorite. No worries at all. (I know this is no surprise to Piglet.)

A third surprise was the number of people that were playing a system similar to ours including Multi 2D, 2 of a major as a weak major-minor two-suiter, weak notrump, four card heart suits etc.  Although of course there were people playing every imaginable 2 bid (and some I wouldn’t have imagined).

Things that didn’t surprise us.  Everyone talked about:

Bobby’s book

Judy Kay-Wolff’s blog

And less but still frequent: My bridge blogs  they knew all my adventures with Ray, Colin and so on.

Now Ray and I have retired our bridge partnership again.  Ray just doesn’t want  to play any more.  The conditions couldn’t have been nicer or friendlier than the Sydney Nationals but you have to prefer playing bridge to finding geocaches (even on a nice spring day in Sydney) and Ray just doesn’t feel that way any more.  Who knows, maybe I will talk him out of retirement again.

We are at the airport in Sydney and I keep thinking that I can’t wait to get back home again.  To cold, Halloween, Victoria’s party, to the little ones, Marcus and Jessica, to bridge with my mentee Kathie, to practicing with Colin, to telling our poor friends like Fred, Margaret, Bill and Leah all about our travels and showing them all the pictures too.