Flying High

Not everything about air travel is increasingly irritating.  Yes, we have more complex scanners to go through, and we have to pay for baggage.  And of course, meals are a thing of the past.  Long gone are the days that you could run to your gate with 15 mins to flight time and get on the plane.

But with laptop computers and, now, wi-fi on the plane, I can sit here at 34,000' a little East of Washington D.C. on my way to Orlando and the fall North American Bridge Championships and write this blog :)

I've been chatting to Miranda on gtalk, I've checked my email and facebook.  It's all good.

This is my first time flying with Airtran and the experience has been pretty good.  Also my first time on a Boeing 717.  Must be one of the shortest take-off jets I've ever been on.  We'd barely made it to the half-way point when we were up and away.  I tried to take a photo with my cellphone of downtown Boston but yesterday I upgraded the iPhone version and it took about 10 seconds to update my library - then the view was gone.  Oh well.

We're really looking forward to our bridge experiences this week.  This is the first time that we've planned to enter all "National" events.  Usually we try one or maybe two National events and spend the rest of the time in the Regional events.

But our philosophy is that we can enjoy regional competition at, well, Regional tournaments.  The only opportunity to go up against the best in the world is at one of these NABC tournaments.  Why waste it?  As I'm fond of pointing out, Bridge is one of the few competitive endeavors where you can find yourself playing against current world champions without any qualifiers.  Some claim that poker is like that, but I'm not sure if that's really true.

Kim and I are playing with different partners in the first event, the Life Master Pairs.  In fact, Kim will be playing in the Women's LM Pairs.  Our partners are a married couple, Dave and Donna.  Kim and Donna have played lots before, but I've only had four sessions with Dave.  It's going to be interesting!  The Life Master Pairs (and Womens) are four-session events.  About half the field will make it to the third and fourth sessions.  So far, we've always managed to get through but who knows.  The competition is tough!  The good news is that if you get any points at all, they are "platinum" points.

Kim is busily planning a day at DisneyWorld which is scheduled for the third day of the Blue Ribbon Pairs.  But if we make it to the third day (wouldn't that be nice), we would have to go a different day, I guess.

So, we have a busy time ahead and all so far augurs well.  We'll keep you posted.  I probably will be posting a few bridge blogs so if you want to stray into that territory, go ahead :)