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2021 The Rebirth of the Simsbury Bridge Club: Part 2

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SBC 2.1. Continue reading →

Wednesday evening, March 11, 2020, was the date of the last game of the Simsbury Bridge Club at Eno Hall before the shutdown necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Fred Gagnon played with my wife Sue. He regaled us with the story of how the week before he had played an event in Colorado Springs1 that Colorado’s “patient zero” also attended. He said, quite correctly, that he was very lucky that he had not played against her or in any other way associated with her. In those very early days the treatment methodologies were mostly guesswork. Dozens of other bridge players were not as fortunate as Fred.

At the time my wife Sue and I were scheduled to start a riverboat cruise on the Danube River2 the next week. We had heard that a few people had already canceled, and we half-jokingly asked Fred if he wanted to sign up.

The club’s usual director, Ken Leopold, could not attend on March 11. Margie Garilli substituted for him. As a result I ended up with all of the club’s bridge equipment during the pandemic.

Unless you were lucky enough to be stuck in New Zealand, you probably did not give much thought to face-to-face bridge for the next year or so. A few clubs in Florida reopened rather quickly, but some of them had to close because of transmission of the virus.

The Hartford Bridge Club resumed play on June 15, 2021. Several people asked me when the SBC was going to reopen. I told them that it was up to Ken, who was the director and proprietor. This was his response:

I’d like to see how live playing goes at HBC for a while. When we restart (probably sometime in July), I’m going to ask people to sign up on Mondays to see if we have enough people for a game. I think people should be vaccinated to play.

July was a bad month for Ken, and so I was not too surprised to receive on August 3 this email from Sally Kirtley, who had been the director before Ken took over in Simsbury and who had directed regularly for the Hartford Bridge Club before and during the pandemic:

I got an email from Eno that they are accepting reservations starting in the fall.  I forwarded it to Ken, who responded that he is not going to be able to run it this fall.  I don’t know if that means that he won’t be playing at all either.  Just wondering if you think that it makes any sense for me to try to start it up again?  Do you think that we will get enough players?  Will you play if we start up again?

I replied that I definitely would play, but I thought that we should try to gauge how much interest people had in the game. I brought my mailing list (described in Part 1, which is posted here) up to date, and sent an email indicating that Sally and I were hoping to get the game going again in September. I asked people to respond if they thought that they would play, and I received over forty positive responses. Quite a few players indicated that they would play often.

The next email that I received from Sally on August 14 included the following:

I will see how quickly we can get into the space, and will definitely ask if we can require vaccinations – it being a public building, I don’t know.  As a private club, we certainly could, but I will make sure. 

As to masks, I think that we need to listen to the experts at the time.  I am personally okay with people not masking if they are vaccinated, but I do think that they are probably a good idea.

I am also planning a vacation in October and will be gone 10/13.

Jeanne Striefler.

Jeanne Striefler, a long-time member of the Simsbury Club reported to me that masks were definitely required in public buildings in Simsbury with or without vaccinations. Moreover, other groups that used public facilities had had problems with attempting to require vaccinations. I did not want to be involved in something that caused even one person to get Covid-19. I was therefore adamant that we require vaccinations.

The missive from Sally dated August 23 contained great news.

The town has reserved the room for us starting September 9.  As of right now, masks are required in town buildings.  We can require vaccinations. 

I wasn’t exactly sure how we could check for vaccinations, but I thought that we should agree on a schedule and publish it as soon as possible. We had pretty much decided on starting play on September 15 when I received this email from Sally on August 27:

Eno Hall says we can’t require vaccinations on town property.  I think that means a no-go for us – unless we just ignore them and request proof of vaccinations anyway?

So, I was forced to send out an email to everyone on my list that we would not start in September. Here was the text:

I wrote in the last email: “I am assuming that Eno Hall will allow us to verify that all players have been fully vaccinated. I, for one, will not play in a game that does not do this.”

Unfortunately, my assumption was wrong. The people who run Eno Hall will NOT permit us to check that all players have been vaccinated. Under those circumstances Sally and I are not willing to run the game. The current form of the disease is extremely contagious; one person could easily ruin it for many. We will review this decision in a few months. Perhaps things will have changed.

Med and Kathy Colket.

I received a lot of sympathetic responses to this. The one from Med Colket, who had played at Eno with his wife Kathy for several years, included an idea that caught my attention. I relayed it to Sally.

Med Colket had an intriguing suggestion. He recommended that we request that players submit proof of vaccination to me voluntarily. Then we only invite the people who have submitted valid proof. I would send out invitations every week, and people would RSVP. This will have the advantage of giving us a better estimate of table count.

A little later Jeanne learned that because we were a private entity we could require vaccinations if we wanted. The previous information that Sally received from Eno Hall had been erroneous. I decided to implement Med’s approach anyway. Our first game would be on October 20. I sent an email to everyone on my list:

We have used a suggestion from Med Colket to devise a way to reopen the Simsbury Bridge Club. We need a little time to get everything set up. Here is our schedule of games for the rest of the year:
October 20 and 27
November 3 and 10
December 8, 22, and 29. I am aware that some bridge players must cater to the wishes of burdensome family and friends during the holidays. However, I am optimistic about the last two dates because Christmas and New Years are on Saturdays this year.

Anyone can register as a vaccinated member of the SBC by sending an email or text to me, or leaving a message on my voice mail. You can register as either a player or a pair.
1) Designate the names of the player(s).
2) Provide proof of vaccination—either a photo of the card(s) or the date and time of a game played at the Hartford Bridge Club in 2021.
3) Pairs should designate whether they wish to be considered “recurring”.

On the Friday before every game I will send to all who have registered as vaccinated an email announcing the next week’s game. The deadline for responses will be the following Monday. People should notify me (by email, text, or voice mail) if:
1) They are a “recurring” pair that will not be playing the following Wednesday;
2) They are a registered pair that is not “recurring” but plans to play.
3) They want to provide proof of vaccination for a partner who was not previously registered.
4) They would like to play but lack a partner.

If fewer than twelve people (three tables) commit to play, the game will be canceled. I will send an email announcing the cancellation on the Tuesday before the game. I will also post a notice to that effect on the club’s website, which is at http://wavada.org/SimsburyBC/.

It was not overly difficult to implement this system. First I needed to add a field on the “audience” file for the SBC on the free version of MailChimp. I called the new field Registration. That part was easy, and I was familiar with how to do it. I then used a feature on MailChimp to designate two segments, one with a blank in this field and the other for players with a letter. I put an H in this field for those whom I had seen play at the Hartford Bridge Club and a C for people who had sent me copies of their vaccination cards.

The time-consuming part came next. I had to enter these by hand one at a time. I had to sort the file, find the player I wanted, select them for editing, scroll down to the field, enter the character, scroll to the bottom, and save it. The most annoying thing was that when I returned to the list of players, not only had my place on the list been lost. The records were also no longer sorted. So, I had to repeat the same process. After a while I had to add another step—skipping to the next page after sorting.

The good thing was that I could easily see a list of all the registered players and another list of the players who were on the master list but had not provided me with proof of vaccination. By the time of the first game seventy-two players were registered.

It has been well established that Ken and Lori Leopold had done a great job in 2019 of establishing a new standard for a small duplicate bridge club. One of the biggest attractions of the game—especially for those who often ate alone—was the wonderful spread of food and drink that Lori and some others helped prepare every week. Sally and I would have been happy if we could somehow have emulated them, but it was not really feasible for either of us, and the persistence of the Delta variant of the pandemic made it even a little dangerous.

Another thing that would be missing in this new version of the club—at least in the beginning—would be the lessons that I had presented. They had begun at 6PM or as close to that time as I could manage. Because I was still afraid of catching Covid-19, I intended to wear a mask, at least at first. I was fairly certain that one senior citizen struggling to speak through a mask to a group of senior citizens would not be very attractive. Also, the rest of the preparations would probably take up a good bit of my time, and I was quite busy with other projects, including these blog entries.

So, we would be relying on the wonderful game of face-to-face bridge to attract people to Eno Hall. We would also try to promote the same uniquely cheerful and supportive attitude among the players that the SBC previously boasted. We had strong hopes that those two elements would suffice.

Linda Starr.

As I mentioned, I had all the equipment, including the computer, at my house. Linda Starr, who had helped me in 2020 to use the Hartford Bridge Club’s Dealer4 machine to create the boards for SBC games, agreed to set up files for our first game and to give me a refresher course in how to create the boards. Actually, I had only the vaguest memory of how to use the the software that ran the dealing machine. She had to show me everything again. I took careful notes and promised not to lose them this time.

I was able to create a set of boards and to photocopy the hand records. I remembered how to load the dealing machine with cards, but I warned Linda that the fine coordination in my fingers was terrible. I then proved my point. When I withdrew the very first hand from the very first board three or four cards slipped out of my hand and came to res behind the shelves on which the Dealer4 was positioned.

Left to right: printer; display, keyboard, mouse, & computer; Dealer4 on shelf.

This had happened to me at least once back in 2020. I just removed a box of who knows what from the bottom shelf and told Linda “At least I also have long arms and fingers.” I then skillfully retrieved all the missing cards. I counted them to make certain.

From that point on I created the boards and printed the hand records with almost no difficulty. I did not interpret this unexpected feat3 as an ill omen, but I probably should have.

Linda also created PBN files (needed to submit results) for all the rest of the games scheduled for 2021. She copied them to a USB drive that I had brought with me, and she showed me how to find them on the computer that ran the dealing machine. I should be all set for all of 2021.

By this time I had commitments from ten pairs. We were all set to have a real face-to-face bridge game!

On Tuesday, October 9—the day before the game—I received this depressing email from Sally:

We have a problem!  Eno Hall is telling me that they can’t accommodate us tomorrow.  We can start back next week.  I’m sure we could use HBC for one week if you want to tell people to meet there one time?  Or just tell them that we will start next week?

So, I had to send out an email announcing the cancellation of the first week. It frustrated and humiliated me to have to do it.

We later found out that the reason that they could not accommodate us was because they had not scheduled a janitor for that evening. That was what I had speculated was the source of the problem, but most people thought it must be something less mundane.

Donna Feir.

We had an even better turnout for the rescheduled first week—eleven pairs with a remarkably diverse level of experience. I came in early to the Hartford Bridge Club on Wednesday morning before the game. I planned to use the boards made for 10/20. I could see no reason not to use them. The only problem was that Linda had not copied that one file on the USB drive. So, I asked Donna Feir, the club manager and the director for that morning’s game, if I could copy that one file. My other alternative was to make new boards from the file for 10/27 that was already on the computer. That would take me about a half hour even if all went well, and then I would need another ten minutes or so to print the hand records.

I let Donna talk me into a third alternative—using the boards and the hand records created for the previous night’s game at the HBC. They were available because too few players had signed up. So, all that I had to do was to copy the PBN file from the computer used by the directors. I located the file without difficulty, put my USB drive in the port, and copied. I then put all of the gear in my car. Now I was ready.

My house to Sue’s.

I had arranged to take Sue Rudd and Maria Van Der Ree In my Honda to Wednesday evening’s game. I was supposed to pick Sue up at 5:30. The Honda and I arrived in Sue’s driveway fashionably late at 5:32. I honked my horn and waited a few minutes. Her house appeared dark. I honked the horn again. Then I took out my cell phone and dialed her number. It rang five or six times. Then a bizarre masculine voice identified itself as the “backup voice mail” for Sue Rudd. It then advised me not to leave a message because Sue does not usually check it!

Sue’s to Maria’s.

So, I called Maria’s number to see if she knew what was going on. It rang five or six times and then went to voice mail. I left a message and could think of nothing better to do than to drive to Maria’s home. I found her outside waiting for me. I tried to tell her that she couldn’t play because I could not rouse Sue, but she got in the car anyway.

At that point, I called Sue Rudd again. Three phone calls in one day was a personal record for me; the previous record was one. Sue answered this time. She was upset at me for not picking her up on time. I told her that I had been in her driveway at 5:32, and I would be there again in ten minutes. I was. Sue got in my Honda, and we took off.

I was not stopped by any policemen on the way to Simsbury, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I pulled into Eno’s parking lot at 6:45, fifteen minutes late. Jerry Hirsch was standing there waiting to help me with the gear.

Jerry Hirsch.

Everyone was playing by 6:50. The game itself went fairly smoothly. We were done by our mandated finishing time of 10 o’clock. Everyone seemed to have had a good time. “And the evening and the morning were the first day.”

The crowded room that greeted me when I finally entered the playing area made everything worthwhile. The two people whom I had never met—David Marks and Ann Sagalyn—introduced themselves to me while Sally, Jerry, and a few others set up the six-table Howell.

When, after the scores had been announced, I tried to transfer the PBN file from the USB drive onto the SBC computer, I discovered that I had copied the wrong file at the HBC. So, I had to promise Sally that, when I obtained a copy of the right file, I would send it to her by email.

I then copied the file containing the text version of the results so that I could insert it into the email to the registered members scheduled for Friday.

I brought all of the gear home except the very heavy laptop and its power supply. Sally took those with her so that she could send the results to the ACBL.

Don’t go this way.

I have driven from Simsbury to Enfield hundreds of times. I may have even bragged that I could do it blindfolded. On this evening, however, I was very tired. The adrenaline high had worn off. As I exited the parking lot, I turned the wrong way onto Station Street, which is one-way. This totally disrupted my perspective. I took Iron Horse Blvd. up to Route 10 without any difficulty, but then I missed my turn onto Wolcott Road. I could have salvaged a little dignity by turning onto Floydville Road, but I did not see a sign for it. Instead I drove all the way up to Route 20 in Granby. This little detour added perhaps ten miles to the trip.

I did not realize until the next morning that I had never eaten supper the previous evening.

I was still exhausted on Thursday, but I took the time to write up a Hand of the Week. It took me much longer than before because I had never precisely documented the php programs that I had written in 2019 to produce it. I eventually figured out how they worked, keyed in the hand and my ideas, and sent out an email to invite everyone to the game on November 3. This email included a copy of the summary of the results from the 10/27 game.

The file that I needed was stored on the HBC director’s computer, which is barely visible through the left armrest.

I obtained a copy of the correct PBN file and emailed it to Sally. However, I never received the email from the ACBL with a link to the Live for Clubs web page for the game. It turned out that Sally had never used the procedure for submitting results established in 2020 for submitting the results in the format required for the Live for Clubs software. She promised to figure it out.

The preparation for the second game went smoothly. The trip from Enfield to Simsbury was blissfully uneventful. Both Sue and Maria were ready on time. We arrived at Eno at 6:15, and we were ready to play by 6:25.

Unfortunately, Route 44 was closed because of an accident somewhere on or near Avon Mountain. The alternate routes were jammed with traffic. Two people from West Hartford—Felix Springer and Kathie Ferguson—arrived late.

When Felix arrived at about 6:45 we started the game. Al Gee and Kathie were assigned a sitout for the first round.

It was a near thing, but we got all twenty-four boards completed and scored so that we could leave by 10 o’clock. Some people had apparently doffed their masks at some point, and someone noticed them. Sally received an email on Thursday from Karen Haberlin at Eno Hall:

Hi Sally,

This is just a reminder that masks are still required in town buildings unless people are eating or drinking.

Thank you,

Karen

Meanwhile, Sally must have figured out how to attach the files; I received the emails for both games. I thought that something was still amiss. I noticed that the links to download the hand record files were missing from both the selection page and the results pages. I later determined that they were also missing on the HBC results. The software must have been changed during the pandemic.

I adjusted the emails in which I invite players to the next game so that the instructions for taking advantage of the feature for printing a hand record was removed.

1. On May 1, 2020 the New York Times ran a long article about this event and the popularity of bridge in general. It is posted here.

2. Our experiences regarding the First-Ever Regional at Sea on a Riverboat is described here.

3. The trickiest part of using the dealing machine is withdrawing the completed board from the machine. Cards sometimes get stuck. If you pull the board out a little and then push it back to adjust the cards, Dealer4 might start dealing the next deck. Then you have a mess to deal with.

2019-2020: The First-Ever Regional at Sea on a Riverboat

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Up and down the Danube seeing sights and playing bridge. Continue reading →

This ad appeared in the September 2019 issue of the Bridge Bulletin.

I was definitely enticed by the announcement from Alice Travel in my Inbox in the fall of 2019. Larry Cohen1 was planning to host a cruise on the Danube on a ship called Mozart from the luxury line Crystal Cruises. It seemed awfully expensive—over $6,000 per person for only a total of ten days. However, the details were definitely appealing to Sue and me.

  • It started and ended in Vienna, a marvelous city that we had always wanted to see.
  • An optional excursion to Mozart’s home of Salzburg, a city that I had long wanted to visit, was offered when the ship spent a day in Passau.
  • Social activities were planned in Budapest.
  • The ship also made a short stop in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. Sue was interested in going to the Pizza Slanec restaurant there if possible. Her family name is Slanetz, and the owners might be her relatives. I just wanted to check out the wardrobes of the current generation of Wild and Crazy Guys2 there.
  • A regionally rated bridge tournament was scheduled for the other days. Regional tournaments awarded gold points, and Sue needed twenty-some gold points for her Life Master rank.
  • Larry would be teaching bridge lessons on the ship.
  • The entire ship was reserved for the tournament. All 130 passengers would be bridge players or, perhaps, spouses who would be bored to tears by the conversations at the dinner table.
  • Everything except air fare was included in the price, even the excursions sponsored by the touring company.
Vienna was the starting point. The Mozart then was to sail west to Passau, turn around, sail east to Budapest, turn around again, and sail back to Vienna.

I called Alice Travel, the New Jersey-based company that was organizing the cruise, to make reservations for us. They gave us the last available cabin that featured the lowest price. As usual, Sue and I had little interest in wasting money on a more luxurious cabin. I, for one, intended to spend very few of my waking hours there.

The cruise was scheduled for March 18-27, 2020. Sue and I decided to add on three days in Vienna at the end.

I ordered a guidebook for the city on Rick Steves’ website so that we could make optimal use of our time there. We had, of course, previously taken several European tours using his tour company. I also picked up another guidebook at Barnes and Noble. It had a lot of beautiful photos.

When I paged through the guidebooks, I was astounded at how much there was to do in and around Vienna. There were dozens of things that I wanted to do and places that I wanted to see. At the top of the list were these three:

Melk Abbey.
  • The world-famous opera house in Vienna, Wiener Staatsoper;
  • The Hofburg Palace, a museum that housed, among hundreds of other things, one of the relics that had been identified as the Lance of Longinus3 (or really the head of the lance0;
  • The Benedictine abbey at Melk, which had been the inspiration for the bestselling book by Umberto Eco, Il Nome della Rosa. which I had read in both English and Italian.

At first I made reservations at one of the hotels that the guidebook had recommended, the Hotel Austria. The attractions were its very convenient location and good price. The hotel had also confirmed via email that it had an elevator—one of Sue’s requirements. However, when we received the details concerning the room, we decided that it was not for us. Here is the text of the email that I sent to the hotel on January 29:

I need to cancel my booking. My wife vetoed the notion of the toilet and shower in the corridor.

Name: Michael Wavada
Period: Three nights starting March 27

.Please confirm that you received this.

Danke.

Mike Wavada

I received the email confirming the cancellation the same day. I then booked a room at the Hotel Zur Wiener Staatsoper. It was a little more expensive, but it was very close to the opera house, several other attractions, and a Metro station. The most important feature was the fact that its bathrooms were inside the individual rooms.

On December 27, 2019. I purchased our airline tickets on United Airlines. Most of my worst experiences in flying had taken place on United, but I had never taken an international trip on the airline. Perhaps the service on those flights was better. I also purchased the flight protection plan offered by Expedia. I figured that a large number of things could go wrong for a pair of septuagenarians planning overseas travel. Seldom in my life have I exhibited such prescience.

Two opera performances were on the schedule for the nights that we would be in Vienna. The first was Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, one of my favorites. Sue and I had even seen a production of it in Prague, as described here. The other offering was Tri Sestry, an opera written in 1998 by the Hungarian composer Péter Eötvös. Its Russian libretto was based on Chekhov’s play of the same name. I had never heard of this opera, and I was likewise unfamiliar with the composer.

I tried to order tickets for Le Nozze di Figaro, but it was sold out. My request was recognized by the company that sold the tickets, however. I was notified by email that my name had been placed on the standby list.

By the end of January all of our reservations seemed to be in order. I spent most of the time in which I was not playing bridge or performing various functions for District 254 trying to put together a workable schedule of activities for our time in Vienna. I carried one of my guidebooks with me most of the time, even when I drove to the Hartford Bridge Club. I needed to become familiar with the times in which the various attractions were open and the transportation needed to arrive at them. The excursion to Melk was more difficult than I anticipated because the period in which we would be there would be just before the tourist season.

Vienna Metro map.

In February of 2020 information about the outbreak of a new disease in China began to be covered in some depth by the major media. By the end of the month Covid-19 had spread to several Asian countries. The western country that was most severely impacted in February was Italy. Cases first appeared there in the middle of the month. By the end of February Italy had more cases than any other nation on the planet.

In contrast, Austria had only a few cases. I started watching the Johns Hopkins website every day to see the developments in the three countries that our ship would visit. I was still optimistic about the trip in early March.

The shocking spread of the disease in New Rochelle, NY, opened my eyes to the possibility that our entire vacation might be in jeopardy. On March 2 an attorney named Lawrence Garbuz, who lived in New Rochelle, tested positive for Covid-19. Within a week more than fifty cases in the town could be linked to him! Most of them could be traced to a synagogue that he had attended. This disease was obviously much more contagious than the previous pandemics, SARS and Ebola.

Fred Gagnon.

A similar outbreak occurred in Colorado Springs. CO. In this case the “superspreader event” was a game at the Colorado Springs Bridge Center. By chance a good friend of ours, Fred Gagnon of Springfield, MA, was playing there the day that “patient 0” infected a number of bridge players. Fortunately, he never played at the same table that she did, and they had no other interaction. On his return to New England Fred told us the story.5

On March 11, less than a week before our departure date, the World Health Organization declared that Covid-19 was a pandemic, a word that is never used without a great deal of justification. President Trump for some reason downplayed the effects of the virus, but the governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut issued stay-at-home orders. The hospitals in the area were flooded with cases, and they did not yet know the best treatment methods.

Stuart Rothenberg, the president of Alice Travel, sent an email on February 25 that reported that the cruise was still set to sail. He acknowledged the seriousness of the disease, however. “I cannot speculate on what Crystal would do if this trip became interrupted and for the most part, Alice Travel will be guided by Crystal Cruises’ decisions. I will advocate and fight for our group if need be.”

His second email came late on the night of March 3:

Like you we are quite concerned with the Coronavirus situation.

We are in touch with Crystal Cruises to see what alternatives or options we may have, if any. We are waiting for them to evaluate the situation and provide us with any new decision as to a cancellation or a postponement of this sailing.  At this point, they are planning to continue with this sailing as I wrote to you on February 25.

Further, we did check with airlines flying to Vienna, and all of them to our knowledge are continuing to fly and they have not offered any type of special waiver or refund should you cancel your flights.  Of course for flights into Asia and into Milan, the airlines have been providing refund and exchanges without added fees, though for Vienna that is not the case.

Once we receive any updated information from Crystal Cruises, we will let you know an update to the situation.

The next email, sent three days later, was at once encouraging and distressing.

As you certainly know, the coronavirus COVID-19 is causing wide concern and among many of you planning to travel to Vienna for the Crystal Mozart Regional on the River cruise. 

Wednesday, I had a conversation with Crystal Cruise’s management, including the Managing Director of Crystal River ships, and its Director of Sales, Business Intelligence and Analytics. I followed up this conversation with an e-mail yesterday as discussed below.  Crystal has not yet responded to the e-mail, so I will summarize the position Crystal took during our conference call on Wednesday afternoon.

Unfortunately, while the Crystal team said they are being guided by the health, safety and concern of its guest travelers, they are not willing to cancel this specific sailing, in spite of my requests.  Crystal’s position is that the areas where the Mozart sailing is traveling to are not under major traveler advisories and that all of their river ships are sailing as normal.

At that point ten people had already canceled. The email concluded with a description of a partial refund being offered by Alice Travel;

This past week, I have been in Sarasota with Larry and the current Bridge Camp. Together Larry and I have discussed as many options as possible while we were waiting to hear back from Crystal.  Given Crystal’s present position, and because we are less than two weeks away from sailing, we have decided to come up with our own two options for you.

Here they are:

First Option:

If you feel that it is in your best interests to cancel this sailing, we will provide a choice of a 25% refund of the Cruise Fare only or a 40% Future Cruise Credit. 

This offer is being provided by Alice Travel and Larry Cohen, not Crystal Cruises.

Second Option:

Join Larry Cohen and the ACBL Bridge Directors on this planned Regional on the River.  We expect to run this Regional with fewer people than originally planned.

As you may know, this cruise sold out quickly with 125 players, making for a wonderful Regional schedule. However, with a smaller turnout, we don’t feel that all of our scheduled 2-session events make sense.  Regionals with small numbers of tables are impractical. Accordingly, if needed, we would tweak the schedule to allow for more sessions of Larry teaching. We know that many of you might prefer more teaching, and we wanted to provide a “heads up” that the events may be “subject to change” based on the overall attendance.

Neither of these was even slightly appealing to us. We decided to wait for better news. It did not come in the next two emails, but an additional option was presented in the one sent on March 11.

1) On April 30 (give or take a week), we will know if the Mozart ship is available to use for our bridge exclusive charter in March, 2021.  If it is available, you will have a choice to keep your booking that you originally had with your stateroom suite remaining the same.  Should you choose this option, you will be under a full penalty process at this time though your trip protection plan will be carried over, unless you had made an earlier insurance claim.

2) If instead you would like the 25% refund offer, this option is still available to you and you do not need to decide on this option until we know if the Mozart ship will be available to us for next year (March, 2021).  

For either of these options, you will have until May 30, to make your decision.

3) Alternatively, you can choose the 40% future cruise credit as another option. If the sailing for next March, 2021 is not available as described above, then Crystal will supplement the cruise credit. At this time, we cannot provide you with an exact amount, though our best projections are that you would receive a total amount equaling 60 – 65% of your original cruise fare. Again, this is a future cruise credit. Once again, you can choose at that time to receive the 25% refund or the future cruise credit.

Meanwhile, the opera had been canceled, the hotel had sent me an email that it would be closed, and I had canceled our flights through Expedia. Our cruise no longer appeared on Crystal’s schedule, but the management was still insistent that its new refund policy would not apply to the bridge cruise.

On April 3 Stuart sent an email that said that Crystal would indeed provide refunds, but the details were still being worked out.

The final offer was included in the email of May 7, nearly two months after the scheduled sailing date. It included a few paragraphs that detailed the problems faced by Alice Travel. Stuart said that his staff and Larry Cohen had put in an estimated 1,400 hours working on this cruise. Here were the two options that Stuart provided to us:

Option A: A Refund in the amount of 75% of your original bridge cruise.  We anticipate sending this check to you the week of May 25, unless you prefer Option B.

Option B: A Future Cruise Credit at 100% of your original bridge cruise.  This future cruise credit with Alice Travel can be used through June 30, 2022.  Further, if you do not utilize all or part of this credit, beginning October 1, 2021, you can request a refund instead and we will refund 75% of any unused credit. In all, you have two years to use your full credit, or you can request a refund if you prefer.

Sue and I talked this over. Eventually we decided to select Option A. Who could say when the pandemic would end to the extent that normal traveling conditions were restored? As my dad used to say, “At my age I don’t even buy green bananas.”

So, we lost quite a bit of money on this trip, but Alice Travel did provide us with sweatshirts to commemorate the cruise that wasn’t. We ordered a large for me and an extra large for Sue. An employee of Alice Travel asked me if I meant to get the extra large and Sue the large, I assured her that that was not the case. She even laughed when I told her that we were like Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat.

Nevertheless they sent us a large lady’s and an extra-large man’s size. I have worn the former a few times. It was a little tight, but it did not really bother me much. I don’t think that Sue ever has worn the other one.

The inscription on the left breast is on the lines of a treble clef:
Larry Cohen
and Alice Travel
Regional on the Danube
Crystal Mozart March 2020

Getting the refund from AIG for the United flight took a few months, but they finally provided a 100 percent refund.

On November 2, 2020, I was surprised to receive an email from Expedia that I had a credit with them. I logged onto the website to see it. Sure enough, there were two credits there—one for me and one for Sue—for $903.29 each. So, we have until the end of 2022 to use them on a flight. Of course, we need to find some place to which United flies that we want to visit.

1. Larry Cohen was (and is) a famous bridge player and teacher. Sue and I had previously been on two ocean cruises on which he had been featured. Those experiences have been described here and here.

2. Bratislava was the original home of the Festrunk brothers, Georg and Yortuk, who chased foxes and enlivened late night entertainment on Saturdays in the seventies.

3. The Lance of Longinus is mentioned in John 19:31-37, but was overlooked in the other three gospels. Longinus was the name traditionally given to the Roman soldier who supposedly pierced Jesus’s side with his lance to make sure that he was dead. There are many historical references to the lance. My favorite is its miraculous discovery during the First Crusade in the floor of St. Peter’s church in Antioch by Peter Bartholomew. The story is recounted here.

4. In 2020 I was the webmaster and database manager for the New England Bridge Conference, the organization that manages District 25 of the American Contract Bridge League. I also wrote both the online and printed bulletins for the district’s tournaments. During January and February I was busy preparing for the six-day Presidential Regional, which was always held around the time of Presidents Day. In 2020 the hotel with which we had contracted, the Red Lion Inn in Cromwell, CT, went out of business shortly before the scheduled starting date. My notes for this hectic event have been posted here.

5. On May 1 the New York Times also ran a long article about this event and the popularity of bridge in general. It is posted here.