Sunday, August 7th, 2016

My alarm woke me at 6am, I showered, dressed in shorts, sandals, and t-shirt and had a bowl of cereal.  (It was a cool crisp morning but I knew it would be warm later.)

I left the apt at 6:58am.  I decided I would wait until 7:05 for a bus.  The bus arrived while I was counting down the last few seconds.

I arrived at the chess park at 7:50 for my 8am game.  Next to my name on the pairings list, instead of someone’s name, I saw “sin emparejar”.  Uh-oh.  That doesn’t sound good.  Someone explained to me that I don’t have an opponent.  I asked an official if I returned at noon would I have an opponent and he replied “yes”.

Out on the street I heard a parade – I think several marching bands similar to what we experience in the US on the 4^th of July.

I caught Alexander after he finished his game and invited him to my apt to play chess.  He said he would love to and we would communicate further by email.

I watched a few other games – most being previous opponents – and then left at 10:40.  On the way I saw a sign advertizing 6 beers for $9,600 pesos (about $3.30).  That’s a little over 50 cents each.  I don’t drink beer but I guess maybe that’s a good deal.  At El Viejo y El Pancake all seats were taken so I waited 10 minutes for an opening.  Just as I got seated Jason showed up.  We chatted a bit with each other and the waitress.  She said that Medellin isn’t particularly dangerous but after a bit more talking she admitted to being robbed about 15 times in her life.  Compare that to my 1 and that was in Colombia.

It took a little longer than usual to get my food but I still got back to the chess park by noon.  I ran into Juan Mejia, an opponent from 2 years ago, and he said he lives in Sabaneta so I invited him to my apt to play chess.  Again we’ll communicate by email.  I checked the list and this time my name wasn’t even on it.  I double and triple checked and finally just left.

And just to cap off a challenging 24 hours I bumped my head on the top of the door frame getting off the bus at Parque Envigado.

Back at the apartment I translated “sin emparejar” as “unpaired”.

I started watching some summer Olympics and then I watched Colombia beat Japan 1-0 in soccer.

Btw, the Colombian Peso closed for the week at 3,036 to the Dollar.

T-shirt of the day: Make better mistakes tomorrow.