Farewell to Reno

Goodbye, Reno house.  Here's Kim and our rental car ready to roll on the final day (that started so well and ended so badly).  Turns out that I wasn't the only one to get sick and have to skip the final day.  By all accounts several people, including two I know well, had a problem.  I think it was the fruit cup served for hospitality on the Saturday evening.   Below is a view from the house earlier in the week.  You can see that there is still a fair bit of snow on the mountains to the southwest (Mt. Rose and its more northerly lieutenants, I believe).  Directly behind Mt. Rose and about the same distance beyond is the northern shore of Lake Tahoe.

The tournament itself was excellent.  No complaints (other than the smoke in the casino).  And the fact that it's impossible to walk anywhere from the casino (if you want to eat out, for example and don't have a car and don't want to take the bus).

But the tournament was well run and attracted a surprisingly large attendance.

So to mark what may well be my last ever visit to Reno, I offer the following rather bad limerick (stop reading here if you're squeamish):


There's a big little city called Reno,
That was host to the bridge players' beano.

Young Robin was given a fruit cup,
Which was unceremoniously thrown up,

That was the last time he was seen.  Oh.

The Return to and from Reno

Today I'm celebrating not only our safe and uneventful return from Reno but also the return of those harbingers of spring, the phoebes.  Well, to be precise I can only be sure of one bird but the others won't be far away.  In a few days, they'll be busy refurbishing their old nests.  It's 55F right now here in Carlisle and all the birds seem to be in full throat.  The sun is peeking through the morning clouds and it's a lovely spring day.

A very brief review of our week (plus) in Reno, including some comparisons with our visit in 2004 follows.  If you'd like to know more details on my bridge success (or lack thereof), see my bridge blog.

This time we went out together and returned together.  There was no Stephen, though (we missed ya).  Rather than stay in the host hotel (a smoky, overcrowded casino with barely adequate eating facilities) we rented a nice house about 10 minutes by car from the casino.  While not as luxurious as our "Vegas house", it was nonetheless clean and comfortable with everything we needed.  There was no food mixer but the landlord gave us $10 to go and buy one.  That seemed like a pretty reasonable deal (the one we bought [$13] worked really well and is now available for future guests).

Although this year's tournament was approximately a week earlier than that of 2004, we were slightly surprised by how much colder it was (and how much more snow there was on the mountains).  Actually, it was lovely weather this time (2004 was during a spring heat wave).  Even the casino was slightly less smoky than before, which is to say that the slot machines near the registration desk were in a non-smoking zone.  Otherwise, the air inside was as unpleasant as ever, with the exception of the playing areas which were of course smoke-free.

We barely made it out the day we left.  Around the time we were departing Manchester, NH, the New York airports were being closed.  There followed a storm which dumped huge quantities of water in the area with winds gusting to 20mph and 1.4" of rain just through midnight.  The following day 5.0" (!) more fell, then 1.3" on the Monday.  This caused flooding all through the region (see photo at bottom of this page from the Mosquito).  We were happy to be missing it all, especially when we heard that our basement suffered only minor puddles.

But our friends R & M didn't make it.  As a result, I ended up playing the first day with M's partner, T (we played very well in an open team game). Monday, I had to use the partnership desk.  The afternoon session was not a great success.  But in the evening, I got very lucky with my partner.  We ended up 2nd (of 98). 

This was more or less immediately followed by my one other really good session.  The first qualifying session of the (National) mixed pairs.  Kim and I were 5th (of 396) in this session.  Unfortunately, the qualifying sessions don't count for much in the final analysis (about 6% each, I think) and we didn't play very well in the other three sessions.  Provided that you at least qualify, it's best to peak on the second day, rather than on the first day.

Another highlight of the trip, not directly bridge-related was the dinner that we prepared for our bridge teacher and all-around guru and his partner.  This came immediately after our good session, so there were lots of jokes based on the students turn the tables on the teacher theme.  Kim's dinner preparations were nothing short of amazing.  I was in charge of grilling the chicken which I managed to accomplish tolerably well [actually, I did a pretty darn good job].  A good time was had by all.

These national events are (generally) open to anyone, or effectively so.  They give platinum points and, of course, are not "flighted".  If you play well against the best, you get rewarded.  Otherwise, nothing.  I should add one little caveat, though.  The mixed pairs is held simultaneously with the early rounds of the Vanderbilt teams event.  This means that the top players are not playing in the mixed.  But they could if they wanted to.  But the vast majority of attendees at NABCs never enter a national event of any sort.  We can't quite understand that.  Bridge is perhaps the only sport where you can actually play against the best in the world.  Why not take advantage of that privilege?

Thenceforth, it was pretty much downhill for me, bridge-wise.  And as of Saturday night, it was downhill health-wise too.  R and I played six sessions althogether.  Despite having spent a lot of preparatory time, when we sat down together it was almost as if we were coming from different planets.  We did play some really good bridge on the Saturday, in another national event, the Jacoby Swiss Teams.  But we started poorly and ended horrifically.  Playing well in between wasn't enough.

There was one other highlight in the middle.  As consolation for not placing in the mixed pairs, I at least won the St. Patrick's day limerick competition which was worth $60!  I am now the official Poet Laureate of Bridge for 2010 ;)  Here's my winning entry (I submitted five altogether):



This game of bridge is a breeze,
I bid six notrump as a tease,
    I sure got my kicks
    When I wrapped up twelve tricks,
Lucking into a stepping stone squeeze.

So, my grand total of masterpoints for the tournament was 13.9 (approximately half of these were platinum) compared with 41.5 in 2004 (but then we didn't enter any national events).

Glad to have gone.  Happy to be back!

Basquing in sunny Reno

We left the East coast in the nick of time, leaving our loved ones back home to face the deluge.  This is Cindy with her raincoat on (we don't normally live by a lake!).  Meanwhile, it is sunny here, there's snow on the mountains and it's generally very pleasant, if rather cool.  When we were here six years ago, there was no snow, and there was a heat wave.

Yesterday, between sessions, we went to Louis' Basque Corner, a bistro specializing in food from the Basque country.  In terms of value of money, this was by far the best place I've eaten out for quite some time.  Indeed, I think it was the best place, regardless of the cost.  We had a prix fixe meal for $23.95, sitting refectory style with eight people to a table (our party was only four).  I always find this kind of seating very friendly -- it takes me back to my boarding school days.  Here's what we had: a spicy pasta soup with excellent freshly baked bread; a platter of beans and chorizo; a really tasty salad; followed by chicken Basqué (I'm guessing on the spelling) which was really fantastic.  A mix of chicken, peppers, aubergine (egg plant) and various other things that I didn't particularly notice at the time.  These were all served family style.  Then came our main dishes.  I had chosen salmon.  This was the best salmon, and certainly the biggest portion, that I've ever eaten at a restaurant.  Seriously.  Two of us had steak, which looked incredibly good but would have completely knocked me out for the evening bridge session.  Our fourth, an adventurous gourmand, had the sweetbreads.  With a considerable experience of sweetbreads, she declared them to be "very good".  We finished all of this off with ice cream (or cheese) and coffee.  Did I mention the large carafe of red wine that was all part of the deal (as bridge players we wouldn't normally be ordering wine)?

I could happily go back there every evening.

Meanwhile, so far (one day) the bridge has not been entirely memorable for us.  We played in different events and didn't distinguish ourselves greatly, although Kim's team managed to scratch in the consolation Swiss.

Basque Cuisine and the French Connection

In preparation for our planned sampling of Basque cuisine, I thought I'd check up on Kim's connection with the le pay Basque.  It's not as close as I had imagined, but I did find some very interesting historical stuff.

Kim's great great grandparents emigrated from Doazon, in southern France (near Pau).  (Great) Uncle Arthur has actually been there.  That puts it in the historical area called Béarn, which forms part of the modern-day département of Pyrénées-Atlantiques (64).  The southernmost part of this department is made up (historically) of three areas of what was formerly the Basque country.  Other names for this part of the world are Gascony and the modern day région (and historical area) of Aquitaine (like the Boston restaurant) [the region includes four other departments in addition to #64].  We also (but only indirectly) get Bearnaise sauce from this area.

To be precise, there are three arondissements in the department 64.  One (Pau) where Doazon is located is entirely Bearnese: the language they speak there (other than French) is Bearnese, a dialect of Occitan. The other two arondissements are either totally or partially Basque-speaking.  So, it turns out that Kim's French ancestry is Bearnese, not Basque (I think it was I that first suggested the Basque possibility).  Here's a good historical map of the region.


While researching this, I discovered a good web site that details the languages of the world: Ethnologue.  My only complaint with this web site is that it doesn't seem to give examples of the language so it's hard to get a quick idea of how closely related to its linguistic neighbors it might be.

One particularly interesting historical fact of which I was sadly unaware is that the existing Swedish Royal family (the house of Bernadotte), is descended from Napoleon's general, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte who became King Karl XIV Johan of Sweden (he was also King of Norway, but that line didn't continue to rule Norway).

Penguin Notes

This week we saw March of the Penguins (at last!).  Like its compatriot Winged Migration (or Le Peuple Migrateur), I passively resisted seeing it when it came out.  I've no idea why.  And, again like W. M., I absolutely loved it.  This wonderful movie actually came out six years ago!  Now, I completely understand Happy Feet, which came out two years later and is so obviously based on MotP.  We loved Happy Feet and will be putting it back in our Netflix queue.

Going back to the real thing... the movie and indeed the story that it tells is absolutely incredible!  I had no idea what hardships these Emperor Penguins endure each winter just to raise one chick.  The colony that the French filmmakers filmed uses an ancestral breeding ground that is more than 70 (!) miles from open water in the depth of the winter: that takes them about 8 days to walk.  The fathers at one point have gone four months without eating.  Yet, they have a little meal for their chicks secreted away in a fold of their throat.


And is there anything on earth more adorable than these little penguin chicks bobbing their heads up and down and singing to their parents?
And like Winged Migration, the music is very good (although rather more repetitive).  Both scores feature the bassoon prominently.

Netflix is great!