Saturday, August 6th, 2016

At midnight I was awakened by a cramp in my left calf.  As soon as it calmed down it started up again.  I might need more potassium (a banana).

I woke up at 7am, left the apt at 8:15 and at the metro I bought a 10 ride ticket.

While I was waiting for the west bound metro in San Antonio I heard the Beach Boys’ Surf City playing over the loudspeakers.

I had breakfast at El Viejo y El Pancake with Jason, a young man I met on Colombia Expats.  He was from Chicago and had also lived in Mississippi.  He has been in Medellin a week, really likes it, and plans to stay for 6 months, return to the US around Christmas and then come back for another 6 months.  He already has met several young ladies.  I told him one gringo said the appropriate youngest age here for a man is to divide your age by 2 and add 7 years.  Dave, the owner of the restaurant, said that women here think 14 years difference is acceptable but anything above that is strange.  Btw, I had 2 eggs over easy with hash browns, sausage, and coffee.

My next opponent was a young boy on table 101 with a lowly rating of 1332.  Because we’re again using old clocks we played with 90 minutes on each clock.  I got to play my opening with white but couldn’t find a breakthrough against his king.  We opened up the center and went into an endgame basically even.  We each queened a pawn and I was closer to queening another but he kept checking me with his queen.  We both had about a minute left on our clocks, I had stopped writing down my moves and he stopped the clock and called the tournament director.  They found someone who spoke English and I was told I forfeit the game because I didn’t continue recording the moves.  If I hadn’t lost by forfeit the best I could have gotten was a draw for repetition of moves.

I took the metro back to San Antonio and skipped the next train so it wouldn’t be “cattle car” crowded.  On the metro bus up to Parque Envigado we were slowed by the fact that the 2 lane road up the hill had a truck and bus blocking 2 of the lanes because one probably bumped the other and they can wait for hours for the police to arrive.

I got back to the apt at 2:15.

I took a little nap for about 45 minutes but rested more than slept.

There were dark clouds so I took my umbrella and left the apt at 5pm for my 6:30 game.  After waiting 15 minutes for a bus I decided I’d better walk.  The metro ride was busy but not too bad.

Walking across the street to the block where the stadium is I saw what looked like a trolley car with 8 seats facing each other and people peddling to power the car.  Weird!  On the block was a long line leading towards the stadium so I decided not to take my new shortcut.  That was a LONG line (and 2-3 people wide) that stretched down the block.  (I think it was a concert rather than a football match.)

I arrived at the chess park at 6:10.  I looked up my opponent – a Joan Serano with a rating of 1263 to be played on table 103.  I had an empanada with a small bottle of Coke for 2,400 pesos (less than $1).  I wondered why they didn’t start the games at 6:30.  They were televising a close endgame in the headquarters between 2 masters.  At 7pm I finally checked my schedule and saw that my game was scheduled for 4pm.  I missed it so it would be a forfeit loss for me.

I took the metro and bus back to the apt.  I walked thru Parque Envigado but nothing special was going on.

Tomorrow’s games are at 8am and noon; yes I double and triple checked.  In between I hope to squeeze in lunch at El Viejo y El Pancake.

T-shirt of the day: Maybe we should kiss a little.