In which we duck out at the first opportunity

Bigle was, well, different.

Friday night we had a nice dinner: myself, Catholic Charlie, Kaz and CP. Charlie being of the not-drinking-much persuasion, I had a designated driver, something I am always fond of. Good food and wine and friends—what's better?

Kaz had spent a lot of time paring down the tournament to a one-dayer. It mostly went off without a glitch. Unfortunately, the room pools were a bit off in round one, but that was on the back end, and by this point, I can room whisper till the cows come home. (Yes, I've even gotten out of the habit of sending out pairings without any rooms at all, although I think CP might have written code that keeps that from happening just to protect me from myself). We got it all sorted out quickly enough, and things went fine. The key thing was getting rounds started and ended without any hoo-ha. This happened, and that's because the participants were behaving nicely. Of course, I do harangue them with endless pokes, which I'm sure is annoying, but if you haven't started your round, you are unable to cast the Defense Against Annoyances spell.

There were all kinds of novice and varsity debates. Catholic C and I did the LD ones. Novice just had as many rounds as could fit. Varsity had 5 breaking to octs, to accommodate a quarters bid. When all was said and done, the numbers still warranted that bid, as did the competition. We lost some strong local schools, but all the distance travelers had flights that bracketed the storm, so they were not deterred.

We had originally planned to come back on Sunday, but the forecast was pretty icy for driving. I kept looking at the weather, and eventually found a gap in the precipitation from around 6 to 10, so Charlie and I made a run for it. We would have liked to join the Saturday night party at the Marriott but sleeping in one's own bed, and not having to attach skates to the car on Sunday morning after chipping off the iceberg surrounding it was even more likable. For most of our trip it wasn't doing anything and the roads were clear. Near the end the snow started, but the traffic was light and we made it without incident. Along the way we listened to Audible's Bob Newhart talk show, and since we're both fans (although, unlike CC, I haven't memorized all the albums and TV shows and movies), it made the time pass easily.

In the end, I don't think Sunday was all that terrible, but Kaz made the right call. And, probably, all the local schools that would have come probably made the right call based on the info that they had at the time.

And thus another Bigle X goes into the books.