There are two things going on at every debate tournament. One thing is the debating. And since the debating by any particular individual is, at most, half of the actual time of the tournament because of double-flighting and general waiting around, the other thing going on is everything else. Depending on how skewed your vision of the world is, one of these two things is seriously more important than the other one. We here at Coachean HQ will let you decide for yourself where our skew is pointing.
Beginning our weekend, we listened to David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster” on the ride up to New Haven. I had read the story when it came out in Gourmet, so I knew what to expect, but I think the Sailors were a little taken aback as Wallace, who narrates his own story, went all the way from ligh, humorous travel writing to Peter Singer, complete with all the footnotes in a lower voice. On my own yesterday I listened to another piece on 9/11. And I’m beginning to realize how profound a loss DFW is.
Our little troupe was staying at the Clarion, which was fairly far from the campus but had a shuttle, which meant that I could travel on my own at the cracks of various dawns without worrying about the team. GOA’s mom was also with us, commanding the other vehicle. (I love people like GOA’s mom, who knows what she’s doing in a round and writes very good ballots but who speaks with an accent. There’s other folks like her on the circuit. People immediately assume that they can’t speak English whereas, in fact, they speak English, French, German, Russian, Czech, Prakrit, Klingon and a smattering of Gangsta Rap. These people are linguistic savants: all you have to do is make sense in any of these languages and you’ll pick up their ballot. What are chances of that happening? On the other hand, there are indeed a few people on the circuit who not only don’t speak English, but they also don’t speak the language of their own countries particularly well. They are another story entirely.)
Finding a parking space during any remotely peak hour around the university is a mug’s game, which means paying through the nose for a parking lot, but it’s worth it not to have to drive around endlessly in the rain on one-way streets littered with construction debris and drunken non-forensic Pups celebrating the weekend. After we got squared away Friday we headed over for lunch, and I learned that Robbie had been agonizing over either bulking up or going vegetarian, and finally gave the nod to the rutabagas, which may explain his new facial hair (Walt Whitman he ain’t). Anyhow, we hit that salad bar place with veggies aplenty (which sounds to me like a good name for something, Veggies Aplenty: a restaurant? A farm stand? A porn star?), after which the Sailors wandered off and I went over and started doing my job. Tab Friday was a few buildings down from SSS, whatever the hell that stands for. We were with Sheryl, who was masterfully handling policy (faster than we were, grrrrrr!). On this day we were of a single mind, to get ourselves free at around 8:00 to go over to dinner. And we did, ambling over to Scoozi for a little pasta. It is nice to get away from things when one can. Once a round is running, provided you’ve got a cell phone and don’t venture too far, why not take a break? We’d been working for hours while everyone else was soaking up the rainy splendor of beautiful downtown New Haven. We were just evening things out. And by the time we got all the ballots in after round two and I got myself back to the Clarion, it was after midnight, so don’t think it was all fun and games.
I woke up at 5:30, much to my dismay, but what can you do, so I got up and hit the road. I was driving around the campus looking for a nice cup of coffee and maybe the odd croissant, and every single possible venue was locked up tighter than the proverbial bongo. What kind of godforsaken town doesn’t sell coffee early on a Saturday morning, I asked myself. Oh, says I. A college town. Duh. Fortunately, as I said yesterday, the Pups arrived at Hell House with coffee coming out of every appendage, so I didn’t have to suffer long.
Saturday went well enough, aside from a couple of things, like our inability to get the best access rooms straight. We screwed it up once, for round three, and Zucker masterfully threw bunches of people around, and all was fixed, and I bent over the computer and solved the problem, which was that I had assigned all the best access rooms to varsity. For round four, we had a best access room carefully selected, and lo and behold, it was the tab room, so Zucker masterfully threw bunches of people around, and all was fixed, and I bent over the computer and solved the problem, again. For round five, we had a best access room carefully selected, and lo and behold, this time it was the cafeteria, so Zucker masterfully threw bunches of people around, and all was fixed, and I bent over the computer and solved the problem, again. If we have any more rounds tomorrow, I am ready for them (provided Zucker is hovering nearby, just in case).
We did have printer issues, and one of them was classic. For whatever reason, the paper wasn’t feeding without some occasional nudging on our part, which was annoying but not terrible. And then we had a serious paper jam, but we fixed it. Then there was almost immediately thereafter another serious paper jam, and we couldn’t figure it for the life of us. We tried everything, and saw nothing as we pulled and tugged and poked. Finally, after picking the damned thing up and tossing it around a little and turning it on and off, it got the message, or so we thought, and went back to business. We were printing schematics, and a schematic came out of the printer.
A policy schematic.
We all immediately—slowly and carefully—moved away from the machine. The gods were sending us a message. A policy schematic? This was absolutely impossible. We were about to send Zucker out for holy water and incense when we realized that our problem had been a policy schematic that had gotten jammed into the system the previous night when Kaz had used the printer for her division. This particular piece of paper had been lying in wait for just the right moment to show itself and scare the crap out of all of us. I have to admit, this was one of the strangest moments ever in tab; not since “96 debaters unscheduled” have we come so close to simply packing up and going home.
We could have, if we were so inclined, kept people locked up at Hell House way into the evening and held the varsity doubles round, but that would have meant that they would have gotten out at around nine and we’d still be there. As JV pointed out, people in the northeast think that they should just debate until they drop, whereas most $ircuit tournaments end in the late afternoon or early evening, allowing everyone to have a night of relaxation, good food, whatever. Considering that pairing doubles took about an hour, this also meant that the tab room got a night of, well, relative relaxation, plus, eventually, good food. After we got the list of breakers posted and the panels selected and the ballots printed, at around 9:00, we trundled over to Ibiza for some serious Spanish food and general tabbish hoo-ha. Sheryl and CP and Chavez joined us, and we all compared notes and told tales and a swell time was had by all, and I was back in my room asleep no later than 12:30 a.m. with a 6:00 alarm. But at least none of us were frazzled, just tired.
There’s worse things, I assure you.
No comments:
Post a Comment