In which we debrief on the Hillbillies

Byram Hills was good on many, many counts. Most importantly, it was good as a tournament. The real action was in varsity, thus proving that Benk was right and that a lot of people would like a prep for Greenhill/Yale. They have a new coach there, and we met him and were forced to fiat that the only music allowed in the tab room came from my iPod, even if it was three hours straight of classic yodeling, and he seemed to understand, which was a good sign. I have a feeling he will be in for the duration. In a region plagued by coach changes, having at least one new one solidly in place is good.

Kaz and I were very happy to have at tabroom.com again before the big guns come out at Yale. After all, it’s been a while and we were rusty. We didn’t really screw anything up, but there were some new things that we had to solve with CP’s help (people not correctly filling in their TBAs with real names, which we’d never seen before but which is, apparently, not all that unusual) or without it (splitting flights electronically overnight without revealing the second flight so that 12 hours or prep won't occur). I once again had issues with coachovers, which we reckoned by the dozens, but been there, done that. Speaking of which, we closed out the last round of the day, in VLD, which is always a joy from the tabbing perspective. If it were up to the tab staff, every round would close out starting in triples and we would all go home now. As it was, Kaz was already on the road by then, leaving me behind doing Kenken puzzles waiting for semis to conclude. At one point the lights went out in the tab room while I was alone in there and people thought I had died, but I just hadn’t moved enough to activate the motion detector. I’m a pretty quiet guy, left to my own devices. I should have gotten up and danced a bit to the classic yodeling music. I’ll keep that in mind for the future.

While all this was going on, a host of Catholics met down at Iona to determine the fate of True Faith forensics in the region, and once again found no one better to handle the debate side of things, so I’ll be back in the saddle there. Good. It’s always fun, and it’s not terribly onerous. I’d like to do it until they excommunicate me. Unlike the belief of the Byram Hillbillies when the lights went out, I’m not dead yet.

I did get to see a few Sailors while I was in the Hills, by the way. They looked at me with fire in their eyes, but, let’s face it, I was almost dead, so they eventually took pity on me. They even had a newbie with them, a senior no less. Will wonders never cease?