In which we don't go to CatNats

I follow forensics in a lot of places, including Facebook and Twitter. From the looks of things via these social media, no one is going to be at CatNats this weekend, because every flight known to Catholic and Heathen alike seems to have been cancelled. The only person who hasn’t yet posted a tale of travel woe is O’C, whose entire life is a tale of travel woe. Having decided ages ago to keep mostly to the roads and not the sky in my debate life is a decision I never regret making. It keeps the angst down to a manageable level.

Still, I’ve always had a bizarre fondness for CatNats. Granted, the grueling Saturday starting at about four in the morning was always a bit of a challenge, as were the strange venues in buildings without running water or surrounded by barbed wire and live mines. Then there’s the range in caliber of the debaters, some of whom fought with tooth and claw to get there and some of whom simply showed up to fill a diocesan quota, the unlikelihood of getting any food at the end of the day thanks to the league’s regular choice of cities that close at sunset (although Chicago obviously isn’t one of these—let me recommend a restaurant in downtown Rochester to you, as soon as I find one), not to mention the cold debate showers in the tournament hotels with their lobbies filled to overflowing with Speecho-Americans doing loud annoying Speecho-Americanic things that debate people can only shake their heads at. Does anyone else remember the hotel with the elevators that weren’t working in Detroit and the roving guerilla bands stealing one another’s cots? On the other hand, who isn’t fond of the quadruple checking system by hand in tab that means you’ll debate only the wrong people in alphabetic order, that you’ll inevitably get shafted by an input error, and that winning all five rounds isn’t necessarily a guarantee of breaking?

As I say, a bizarre fondness. Maybe it’s because each CatNat is memorable, whereas most other tournaments are the same old same old again, in the same place with the same people, so what’s the big deal? In any case, I hope everyone going arrives eventually, and that they have a fine old time. I sort of wish I was there with you. I could use a few new nightmares memories.