Friday we slept in and then walked around downtown until we found a place to eat. We found a place called ‘Wich Craft which was pretty cute. They used the apostrophe as their logo. Very good lemonade.
We then went back to the tournament playing site and entered the Life Master Pairs event. It’s one of the “premier” events held at national tournaments, and winning this actually means something. Lots and lots of good players, many of whom are professional bridge players, entered this event. It’s four sessions long, spanning over two days, so you have to string four good games of bridge together. 360 pairs, total. Half are eliminated after the first day.
Well, we had a great start – our first two sessions placed us 25th going into the second day! A very respectable showing, and when we went to bed, we were hopeful that we would be able to finish strong, maybe again in the top 25.
Saturday morning we got up and found a traditional breakfast place called Mel’s Drive-In. It has a cute 50s theme with a jukebox that was playing fun old songs all the time. It was very crowded, so we accepted a place at the counter. The orange-juice i ordered was freshly squeezed – it was so good. I have had the freshly squeezed stuff before, but the oranges they squeezed this particular juice out of must have been super perfectly ripe, because i have never had orange juice that tasted more like a delicious orange.
Back at the playing site, we started sessions 3 & 4. Unfortunately, we didn’t do as well. We made a few mistakes, but most of it was just bad luck. In the wrong place at the wrong time, and the opponents were in the right place at the right times. So, the dream of doing well in a big premier event vanished. But we had fun. We played against several people who have written bridge books that we own – pretty neat.
I’m slowly adjusting to west coast time – still pretty tired at night as it gets past my biological bedtime. I hear that the adjustment back to east coast time is harder.