Saturday, August 4, 2018

Last night I went to bed at 10:45, fell asleep quickly, got up once during the night, fell back asleep quickly and woke/got up at 7:30.  I hope that continues.

Today’s matches are at 10am and 3pm so I need to leave the apt just before 9am.  If the lines at the Envigado station are like what I saw yesterday I’ll just take a taxi.  I’ll probably take a taxi back home anyway.

I left the apt at 8:50 and walked down to the metro.  There wasn’t a crowd waiting for the train so that was a good sign.  On the train I didn’t get a seat but just being able to stand with some space was nice.  The trip on the west line wasn’t bad either.

I arrive at the chess league just before game time.  I had Black against a 15 year old girl named Isabela.  She gave me a hard time – finally won a piece and a pawn against me but couldn’t put me away and I finally got some counterplay in the endgame when she lost on time.  That made me 1-1 for the tournament.

Jose won his game also.  We took a taxi for the 5,400 peso minimum fare down to Avenida Ochenta to the Pizza Americana.  We each had a personal pizza and soda for about 15,000 pesos each.  We took a taxi back to the chess league.

We had to wait another 90 minutes for the next round to begin.

This time I had White against a young man Duberney Londono who was unrated.  The game was close until the middle game when he got an attack going and he ended up mating me in 42 moves.

Jose had already won his game against a low rated blind player.

We walked out to Calle 50 to catch a taxi but found a bicycle parade in progress.  There must have been thousands of bicycles decorated mostly with flowers and people in different costumes.  It was pretty amazing but we couldn’t get across the street to catch a taxi.  We walked to the Stadium Station and said goodbye as Jose was probably going to have to walk home and I would be taking the metro.

Jose informed me that he and Maria will be visiting the US for about 3 weeks starting next week.  They’ll be spending some time staying in a suburb of Chicago so I promised to give him a list of things they can do there.

I had no problems getting in and out of the metro cars although I still had to stand.  I was in the same car as some Girl Scouts with their leaders from San Antonio to Envigado.

On the bus from Envigado station to the park I called Teresa.  She said she was in the beauty shop and wouldn’t be out for an hour so I told her I was going to stop for coffee.

I had a pastel con arequipe (if I haven’t explained before it’s kind of like a soft caramel) with a café con leche at the bakery for about 3,600 pesos.

When I returned to the apt Laura was there but soon left as she was invited by John Joseph to party tonight on a chiva bus.

Teresa came back and after some deliberation we ended up ordering shish kebabs from La Casita Parilla.

Jose emailed me – he believes my opponent tomorrow morning is one of the blind players.  That could be a problem because of my lack of Spanish and also it’s inside a stuffy building with little to no air flow.

The Colombian Peso closed for the week at 2,900 to the US Dollar.

Tonight before going to bed I’m going to take both a Zopiclona (sleeping pill) and a Metocarbamol (muscle relaxant) and we’ll see how that works for me.

Today’s Step Count was 9,661.

T-shirt of the day: Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.