Still under construction.

The first tournament of the year was held in Johnston, RI, on the weekend of February1-2. I had no interest in playing in the pairs game on Saturday. Abhi Dutta asked me to team up with him and his partner, Vipin Mayar. I was pretty certain that Eric Vogel would not want to play on Sunday, and so I asked John Lloyd again. The four of us had played in a sectional at the same location in September 2024. That adventure has been described here.

John and I again agreed to meet at the Park and Ride lot on Route 32 near I-84, this time at 8:45. Since John had driven from there to Johnston in September, I volunteered to drive this time. I was a little worried about the return trip. My cataracts had recently been diagnosed, and some kind of precipitation was expected.

I arrived at the lot seven minutes late. It was completely my fault, and I apologized. I left a minute or two after I planned. I planned on stopping at the McDonald’s in the Scitico shopping center, but I missed the turn from Taylor Rd., and when I passed it on Route 190 there was a line. So, I decided to keep going and stop at the one in West Stafford.

Unfortunately, I found myself two cars behind a NETTTS truck². We only followed it as far as Somers, but its still cost us another five minutes or so as it poked along at 25-30 mph on Route 190.

There was also a slow-moving line at the West Stafford McDonald’s as well. I lost at least another five or ten minutes there.

The worse news was that they messed up my order. Instead of the sausage biscuit with egg that I always ordered, they gave me a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. The bacon was tasteless, I don’t like McD’s cheese, and the biscuit had been hardened by time under the heat lamp.

I drove as fast as I reasonably could the rest of the way, but I did not arrive at the parking lot until 8:52. The rest of the trip was uneventful, but it was 9:55 by the time that we reached the Johnston Senior Center. I gave my credit card to John and parked the car. I then got my materials from the back seat. The lunch that I had prepared was there, but I could not find my convention card holder, which contained our convention card, old scoresheets, and my mechanical pencil. I was almost certain that I had remembered to place it there, but I could not find it, and I had no time to spend searching.

We were, of course, the last of the twenty-four teams to register. After a fair amount of effort I found our table, which was U12. John gave me back my credit card, and I then went back to the registration area to obtain a scoresheet and little golf pencil.

One opponent informed us that he had only played in one or two previous team games. His partner did not even know how to keep score. We were scheduled to play eight rounds of six boards. In the first round they bid and made several games that seemed unremarkable to me. Afterwards I told John to compare without me; I intended to search for my convention card holder. My scoresheet was unreadable anyway. I could not write legibly with that tiny pencil on bare paper.

I could not find the convention card holder. Our second assignment was at the same table. I was shocked to learn that we had decisively lost the first round. Usually I am a good judge of our performance. We did, however, win the second round in a close match.

I could not believe the team that we drew for our third round—a team of A players from the Hartford Bridge Club. John and I played against Tom Gerchman and Lesley Myers. Our teammates faced Doug Deacon and Bob Hughes. I did not think that we played well enough to win. I was shocked that our teammates had scored +1700 on the first hand. Evidently Doug and Bob had a disastrous misunderstanding that got doubled. So, after three of eight rounds we had two wins.

We lost the fourth match. I made a serious error in the play. I then ate lunch by myself.

We won only one match in the afternoon. We played against two ladies. John was late getting to the table, and I had painfully shuffled at least one deck at every table. I refused to shuffle again and left the deck for John. He arrived a minute or two later, during which time I had to listen to my LHO declaim about shuffling in spite of the fact that she had arthritis.

That one victory was taken away from us by the director, Tim Hill. On the crucial hand John opened 1♥. The lady to my right bid 2♣. I doubled. When the arthritic opponent asked what my double meant, John hemmed and hawed and then said, “I think that that was a support double for my hearts.”

They ended up playing in a notrump contract. After the play ended, I announced that they had received erroneous information. I had made a negative double showing at least four spades, not a support double showing three hearts. I told them that they could call the director if they felt damaged. They did. Tim took the board to see if their claim as being damaged was legitimate. This took such a long time that we ended up playing on five of the six boards. The ladies complained loudly about this.

Tim later explained to me that there were so many ways that the hand could have gone that he could not determine whether they were damaged. He said that the law said that in that case the party that gave the wrong information gets an average minus. We ended up losing three imps and the match.

At the end of the last frustrating mach I was just ready to hit the road immediately. Fortunately there was no bad weather for the drive back. I had no difficulty whatsoever.

---

1. For the first time in recent memory the time for the Sunday Swiss event was moved from 9:30 to 10:00. So we arranged to meet a half-hour later than previously.

2. NETTTS is the New England Tractor Trailer Training School, which was