Wednesday, March 22, 2017

I feel I slept well despite getting up 3 times during the night.

I woke/got up at 8:30.

I left the apt at 9:45 and at the gym I asked Jeison if they have a scale anywhere in the building.  He took me to Consultation Room #2 and a young lady took me to their scale.  I told her in Spanish I’m probably 80 kilos.  I got on the digital scale and after bouncing around a little it settled exactly on 80.0 and we all laughed about that.  I left at 11:30 after an hour and 45 minutes, about 4 exercises short of my entire list.

Back at the apt Teresa made me lunch and I left at 1:05.  It was an overcast day but I wore my leather gym shoes and didn’t bring my sunglasses.  (I also forgot my Snickers bar that I left in the freezer but I didn’t discover that until later.)

I walked down to the metro and talked briefly with Herman.  On the metro not only didn’t I get a seat, it was cattle car full until I got off at Estacion Hospital.  Dario presented me with a large gingerbread cookie which wasn’t something I needed on an already full stomach but I ate most of it anyways.  We played 2 games, each winning with the white pieces.  I forgot to bring score sheets so I don’t have a record of the games.

I walked over to Aventura mall and took the escelators upstairs to their food court.  I read my Nook until 4:45 when I ordered a pork sandwich from Qbano for 17,100 (about $6).  I was good in that I didn’t order a large sandwich nor French fries but I did have a large Coke.  When I finished I made a trip to the restroom; thank God they had toilet seats and toilet paper because I was in there for about 10 minutes.

As I was walking back to the entrance it seemed my pant leg wasn’t hanging right over my shoe so I bent my leg and grabbed my pant leg and immediately got a cramp in my thigh.  Is that due to all the exercise, lack of having a banana recently or just a symptom of getting old?  At least it went away quickly as I straightened my leg and then I was back to normal.

I took the metro to San Antonio and transferred to Estacion Estadio.  I really needed to pee (Note to self “don’t drink large sodas when you’re not going to be near a toilet”) and luckily found a restroom that I hadn’t seen before on my way to the chess league.  I was about 5 minutes late but they didn’t start my clock because my opponent wasn’t there.  His name was Carlos Andres Lopez and he had a rating of 1617.  He showed up a couple minutes later and looked to be all of 15 years old.

I played my usual opening with White – English opening, Botvinnik attack – and he used lots of time figuring things out while my moves were almost automatic.  (Reminder: all the games are 60 minutes plus you earn an extra 30 seconds for each move.)  He did find pretty good moves but at the 12 move mark I had used 1 minute and he had used 30.  At the 20 move mark I had used 7 minutes and he had used 42 so he was getting close to being in time trouble.  At one point he sacrificed a bishop for a pawn and then forked my king and queen.  My initial reaction was “oh, no, not again”!  But I also could take his queen with my bishop and once again I could check his king and save my bishop.  The end result was, besides trading queens, he got a rook and pawn and an inferior position for a bishop and knight.

Soon his rooks were disconnected and I had a bishop and knight controlling the center and he resigned on the 47^th move.  (One thing that irked me a little is towards the end of the match he stared at me instead of the board so I put my fingers up on my forehead so I couldn’t see him with my peripheral vision.)  For the first time in this tournament my record is in plus territory at 3-2.  The last 2 games are next Monday and Wednesday nights.

Something I forgot to mention about last night’s game.  The young woman I was playing was wearing a low cut blouse over her large breasts, certainly a distraction if not an unfair advantage.  An interesting thing about chess is that you spend 2 hours looking almost exclusively at the board to the extent that later you might forget what your opponent even looks like.

By the time my game ended it was raining hard with dangerous lightning.  I waited a few minutes until the lightning settled down and then with my small umbrella I walked over to a bus stop on Carrera 70 – a pretty main road.  I was sure lots of taxis would come by but I was also sure that a lot of others would want one tonight also.  I almost immediately caught a taxi and it cost me 18,000 pesos for the ride back to the apt but it only took 30 minutes instead of the usual 90 minutes and that was important because I have a cold and I was wet from the knees down.  In Envigado it was only raining lightly.

T-shirt of the day: 7 days without a pun makes one weak.