Ridge

Let's see. First of all, they still don't seem to get it. Lord knows I've tried. Tomorrow will be my last hurrah. If, after that point, my team wishes to argue against ED on face, it's their problem. I'll be bringing my measuring forceps, to gauge just how thick some of these skulls actually are.

Jeesh.

Ridge was a peach. It's not that bad a drive down there, about an hour and a half, which makes it just about the distance of Monticello from home base. Plus, it's on some road (287) that most motorists don't seem to have discovered yet. Aside from the occasional screech of the governor when we topped fifty-five, the ride was most pleasant and straightforward. Once there, Dario & Co pointed us to a nice registration room where Kurt and I collected money and names respectively. Turnout in the one division of novice LD was fine, somewhere in the 30s. Policy, on the other hand, was curious. One school that will remain nameless had originally registered about 145 teams and showed up with none, then four plus a maverick whom we immediately sent to the minors, then five after enough time had passed to make arriving something of a strategic error on the part of that particular pair of dawdlers. So, their 4 original teams hit 3 other teams with all the predictable byes, which was made even more interesting when one of the teams not from this school allegedly had no affirmative case and therefore forfeited to a team that had already bye'd. This being January, i.e., the year being half over, makes not having a case something of a curiosity, if you ask me. Anyhow, after round three Kaz and I were at the Excel spreadsheet trying to establish who conceivably could have won, what with all the byes and whatnot. Fortunately, two teams won 3 and no bye'd team won two, so there was no problem there, and third place similarly played out in a natural manner. Even speaker points didn't have to resort to too much magic. So we did it, but it was not without a little hi-di-hey and a little hi-di-ho, all legitimate but all of the seat-of-the-pants variety.

On the LD side, there were 6 undefeated teams, and Jeff managed to top them, meaning a nice first place for the good guys.

We returned home via the new Mexican restaurant. I'm going to come down negative on this one. The food is okay, but it's awfully noisy (beware of roving bands of singing guitarists) and expensive—especially when you're with our novices who have no idea how to wrangle a dollar bill out of their pockets, the cheapskates! YOU go out with them. I'm willing to gamble again, probably after Newark, but this time it will be at India House, and there will be a serious check of the check when it's time to do the rendering, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

And oh, yeah. Strangest event of the tournament. Some yabbo wanted an autograph. Mine. Apparently this yabbo collects debate people like baseball cards; I am considered a catch somewhere beween Marv Throneberry and Shoeless Joe Jackson. Go figure.