Alpine Disaster

...the competition in Grenoble goes somewhat awry.

We were to travel to Grenoble on Saturday afternoon, the competition took place on Sunday, and so met at the club at around 2pm. Our chariot for the 6 hour journey to Grenoble was to be the US Metro minibus which is really more a converted van with a tractor engine and the most uncomfortable seats in the world.

We whiled away the hours playing incomprehensible (to me anyway) French card games like Bullet. As far as I can tell it's the equivalent if not the exact same as Bridge. A ridiculous scoring system, team play and completely arbitrary rules all explained in french made for a stressful journey for me. I sat there wondering what the Valeé that they were talking about was for a good while (it's the Jack). Eventually I played a hand so stupid that it spelt the end for my team. I was excluded to the relief of both parties I'm sure from the next round and dosed or played my DS for the remainder of the journey.

We stayed at the customary Hotel Ibis that evening; dined on a luxurious meal of spaghetti and ketchup in their restaurant; and spent a few restless hours sleeping before we were to leave the hotel for the venue for check-in at 8am!

The venue was a converted Ice-rink in the centre of the city. It was well laid out and well run as I've come to expect from a French competition.

The competition itself went terrible for me. Anxious to impress on the piste... I froze. My movements were non-existent and I ended up with a very poor single victory from the poules when I should have had at least 3. (No need to make observations about this in the comments, I've already looked at my attitude in great detail after the fact and have worked on improving it since).

So my seeding was terrible for the DE and I duly ran into the talented young Belgian fencers Laurent de Trog. The score at the break was reasonably close but he pulled away in the second half as I became more disillusioned with the tournament and felt my involvement in it slipping away.

So I spent the rest of the day taking photo of my team-mates who were still in the competition. I was finished with the competition by noon and it lasted till 5ish - the repercharge system they use for the last 16 dragging it out by at least an extra hour.

Another 5/6 hour journey back on the bus arriving in Paris at around 12 and a lie in on Monday morning dreaming about what could have been if I had just had my head sorted better on the day...