The little mountain

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve got a feeling that Big Bronx isn’t happening this year. Last year I got so many preliminary messages from Cruz that I had to open a new email account. This year, relative silence. In other words, it’s quiet out there. Too quiet.

This last weekend was Monticello, a tournament that seems fixed in the forensic firmament for the region, in that it is one that never seems to change, although thanks to global warming, it’s now at least not snowing when we get up there. Otherwise, to begin with, there’s always wonderfully concerned parents making sure the judges get nice homemade food, while I have no idea what, if anything, the debaters eat, although there’s meal tickets for them to prevent some other horde of junior-lawyer-looking people from coming in and stealing whatever it is. I’ve never understood meal tickets as much of a barrier to pilfering, because at most tournaments there is generally nothing worth pilfering and no one around to pilfer it. The thing is, these tickets come in a set of about 5000, so I guess they’ll be using them until they run out. Meanwhile, at Monti the ballot table is the furthest distance possible from the tab room short of locating it in Toronto, but I have to say that we never felt as if we weren’t getting our ballots in as timely a fashion as if we were on the spot. Although I will say, if walkie-talkies had not been invented, I wouldn’t miss them. Then, adding a new wrinkle, it was the first time strikes were used at the Kaiser, which was sort of good news / bad news for the debaters since while they had some strikes, they hadn’t all taken in TRPC. Go figure. I’m not sure why, and I’ll eyeball this much closer next time out and doublecheck them all carefully. It’s been a while since strikes have disappeared on us like this. There were other TRPC oddities, too. We merged the JV and V policy fields on tabroom, and for some reason the resulting TRPC file refused to accept rooms, not any way, not no how, and I assure you we tried everything. We finally ended up creating a new TRPC file altogether. Then about halfway through the tournament, TRPC decided to forget what schools all the policy judges were affiliated with, and paired accordingly. Needless to say, that was a nightmare. As Kaz and I said, and as is said often at tournaments, the combined experience of the tabbing team is usually inclusive of hundreds of tournaments, yet somehow TRPC always manages to come up with some new weirdness. At least we have the experience (and the transcendental calmness) to solve the weirdnesses. I can’t imagine how people start up on this program. For that matter, I can’t imagine I ever did. Go figure.

What we did have in abundance at the Kaiser was good judges. The break round panels were quite solid, and the bid round panels would work anywhere. It’s nice to have enough experienced folks to get the job done.

Capping it off, the People’s Champion managed to win the tournament, a nice little bonus, to put it mildly. Of course, that means he’s got to dig in to get that second bid, the poor devil. Two bids is good, and no bids is not good but relatively common, but one bid is a bee in the bonnet that will not stop buzzing. The Panivore also has one bid. Which means the angst level on the team is now set at 11. Fortunately it’s still early in the year. For that matter, Jake is this weekend. If it’s really happening. That dearth of emails is awfully uncharacteristic.