VA States

Reserved for a post about states.

I'm dead tired. Can't do it now.

It'll be my first real test, writing something that people who weren't there actually find interesting.
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I'll preface this story by giving a brief history of my chess career. I learned to play in 2nd grade, quit, played again in 6th grade and reached my peak, played occasionally over the next 3 years, and then quit. I figured since I'm going off to college and this would be really be my last chance to play in states, I might as well go for it.

The adventure began as soon as we got into Mr. Ero's car. Mr Ero is possibly one of the most care-free drivers in history. Not only does he seem singularly uninterested in remaining safe on the road, he seemed determined to make it as ... entertaining for himself as possible. At every curve he refused to slow down. Rather, he sped up, and accented the experience with a gleeful "WHEE!!!!" In addition, he swerved randomly in order to screw up our bridge game. Safe driving at its finest.

After surviving the car ride, we got to the hotel and congregated in Eric and Jacob's room. Since rooms were grouped by race, I was in the Indian room, Eric and Jacob were in the white people room, and A-rod was in the not-quite white room. I show up at my room to see what's what, and I am greeted by this Indian with a giant moustache. Slightly taken aback, I greet him with a casual, "What's up?" Apparently he understood what I was saying, but muttered some incomprehensible mumbo jumbo in reply. Resigned to the fact that I was not going to be able to communicate with my roommate (probably because his giant moustache blocked out all the sound), I left for the other room again.

So after Arvind and Lily decided to make a brief appearance in this story, I hung up and found Arod dancing to 60's music. He was incorporating classic moves such as the crotch thrust into his routine. At this time we decided to turn off the tv. Wondering what the hell we could do, we sat around and played bridge. However, at one point I had an epiphany. We could play chess! That game that we uh, drove 2 hours to play >_>

And so began roughly 2 hours of proper bughouse (read: with clocks), we decided to call it quits. "2 hours of proper bughouse" hardly does the time justice though. I really don't remember it too well. I guess I just recall pieces flying everywhere, shouting "STALL! STALL!" and sweating profusely. I'm pretty sure I sweat like, three times as much playing bughouse as I do playing tennis. Maybe that says more about my tennis than it does about bughouse >_>

Completely exhausted, we turn off all the lights and get in bed. I was relegated to the stupid rollaway bed, which was probably the most uncomfortable sleeping surface that the manufacterer could find. At no point did it occur to the maker that they should put some sort of cushioning surface between the springs and the place where the user is supposed to sleep.

When I said that we turned off the lights, I actually lied. Jacob had his laptop open and he was watching Lucky Star. For those who are fortunate enough not to know what that is, allow me to direct your attention to this. Eric asked Jacob if it was an excuse to look at underage girls. After insisting that they were in high school, he reluctantly agreed.

I don't want to get caught up in describing every moment of this since I'll get bogged down in moments only interesting to me. So let's fast forward to round one. I was paired with Andrew Freix. For those who don't know, Andrew is an 8th grader currently ranked higher than everyone except 6 people at TJ. When I saw that I was paired with him, it brought back memories of the good old days when we would have epic games every tuesday at chess club. Now he's improved and I haven't, and he's grown, and I have grown less. At least I'm still taller than him >_>

To summarize the game in an efficient manner, he absolutely sat on me. According to post game analysis I was lost after move 3.

After that game, I had to play two people that were ... not so good. Uneventful games to say the least. More interesting, however, was watching the little kids play starcraft :D They were really, really bad at it. I wanted to play but they never let me D: I'm pretty sure they were scared that I would just run them over.

For those unfamiliar with the way chess tournaments work, you're allowed to get up and go watch other people's games. Obviously you can't like, give them advice, but you can go watch. Obviously if your opponent moves while you're afb (hehe see what I did there? >_>) then you're losing time on your clock, but hey, it's totally worth it to see some of the games.

One of the more painful games to watch was Eric vs Andrew (aformentioned 8th grader). After making my first 10 moves, I got up and went looking for games to watch. Sadly, by this time, Eric had already lost all his pieces and was basically checkmated. When I played Andrew my goal was to take 10 minutes off his clock - I ended up taking 15 minutes off. I'm pretty sure Eric did not achieve that goal. So ha :P

My last round was one of the most intense games I have ever played. It was against this random (actually not so random) player rated 1750. I played the Ruy Lopez, the only opening that I'm even slightly familiar with. He played the Marshall gambit, a counter infamous for its difficulty to defend against. The game was balanced on a knife's edge for the next 15 moves. We took roughly 2 hours combined to play those moves. In the end, thanks to time pressure (I never though I'd use all 90 minutes to make 15 moves but apparently I did) I folded and checkmated myself.

It was still the most satisfying game I've played in a long time. Probably not the highest quality game I've ever played, but to push yourself that far, calculating every step of the way is an exhilerating experience to say the least. Three hours of counting moves, examining squares, and anticipating threats. Three hours of brutal computation, never once thinking that it was too much work or that I was tired.

In the end, I lost, and when I got back to the team room Mr. Ero and company had decided to leave without me. Instead, Eddie and Aryan were there analyzing their games. After playing roughly 10 hours of chess, I was sick of it. Just kidding. I sat down and tried as hard as I could to follow their analysis of Aryan's game. I failed horribly.

Realizing that I hadn't eaten dinner, I followed the Khojandis into the Indian restaurant just outside the hotel. Everyone was there. It was ridiculous. The entire chess team was celebrating like we had won (we basically had >_>). Even Eric showed up! Yes, to an Indian restaurant! Eager to demonstrate his taste in foreign food, he promptly demanded the kid's menu and ordered chicken fingers. Later he criticized the food, claiming his chicken fingers were not up to par.

After 10 hours of chess and ridiculously good food, we went back to the hotel. Instead of being sensible and going to sleep, we elected to watch Commando featuring Arnold Schwarzenagger. That guy is a man >_>. Just ask Arod. He spent half the time giggling like a small girl every time the current governor of California exhibited his ridiculous strength of delivered a [less than] witty punch line. This occured more or less every 3 seconds.

I fell asleep in the middle. Apparently so did Eric and Jacob, who did not feel the need to watch Lucky Star or take pictures of me in my sleep. Yes, I deserted my country man Mr. Moustache again. That left Jake Brooks and Arod as the only conscious people in the room. I'm happy I was asleep, or I would've felt extremely uncomfortable.

I'm going to digress from my purely chronogical rendering of this tale to talk about Mr. Ero. Best known for teaching statistics at TJ, he's also an interesting person. He apparently lived in Hawaii and is currently a resident of Oregon, of all places. He's a funny guy at times, other times not so much. He did, however, provide us with some entertainment. Emma was in charge of the GPS system which was supposed to guide us. Unfortunately, when we asked Emma which direction we were going in and she expertly manipulated the GPS, the map zoomed out. It zoomed out to such a degree that all we could discern was that our location was somewhere along the east coast of the United States. Maine and Florida were quite visible in this view.

Using our ever-trusty gps, we began our journey heading west. Thanks to Mr. Ero's questionable driving sense, managed to take a wrong turn, forcing the gps to recalculate. After roughtly half an hour we succeeded in taking a wrong turn ... onto Braddock Road. I was wondering how the hell we had managed to do that.

Not one to accept the blame, Mr. Ero informed us of a boat he owned in Hawaii. Apparently it did not just possess a navigational system but also a self-steering system. Unfortunately, the system malfunctioned and set the destination to the state of Wisconsin (where it was manufactured). Given that it was self steering, they didn't realize where they were going for a while. They figured it out after they almost ran aground.

Anyway, back to the chronological rendering of my experience. Essentially TJ destroyed everyone. It's because we're just that good. TJ people took 2nd - 6th and 8th place. It wasn't even close. Eric and I escaped team pictures by leaving early with my parents.

While sitting in the Applebees (my parents are apparently aware of Eric's complete lack of taste) waiting for lunch, something sort of strange happened. The song "Best Days" by Graham Colton came on. I know it from pandora, but the reason I like it is for its striking lyrics. In particular, what stood out to me this time was

So don't wait
For someone to tell you it's too late
Cause these are the best days
There's always something tomorrow
So I say let's make the best of tonight
Yeah, let's make the best of tonight
Here comes the rest of our lives

Maybe these aren't the best days. We're going to have a great time in college. But these are the last days, and I'm so glad I'm making something of them.