Bridge Blog 589: Rabbit fever

October was off to almost as much of a jackrabbit start as September until the first weekend arrived and illness intervened. I was going to play the Airport Bridge Club’s individual game on Saturday, but club manager Bill Finkelstein wasn’t feeling well enough to run it. I came without a partner on Sunday to play pairs, but there weren’t enough people to make up even an individual game.

That night at work I came down with a nasty cold – my nose refused to stop dripping. Heavy doses of decongestants got me through the Monday morning half of the Columbus Day chicken barbecue event at the Airport Club, where Judy Kaprove and I came in second overall with 59.74%, earning 1.55 points. Though I was too miserable to realize it at the time, this pushed my lifetime total past the 1,400-point mark. In the afternoon, I was so wiped out I shouldn’t have played – I was making semi-conscious mistakes. Our game suffered accordingly – 44.96%. I went home, called in sick for work and crawled out of bed only to ingest some chicken soup and more cold pills.

Recovered enough on Tuesday to keep a promise to take a friend to the airport before the game, I went in to post a 53.94% with Barbara Sadkin, which was fourth overall and first in the B strat in our direction, good for 0.89 of a point. I was better still, but not fully cured, on Wednesday when I sat down with Celine Murray. We were flying high until we hit a couple bad final rounds, dropping us to 57.48%, third in A, second in B, for 1.5 points.

The cold evaporated at the office Wednesday night – I actually felt better when I left at 3 a.m. than I did when I walked in at 5:30 p.m. So even with a short night’s sleep, I was ready to roll at 10 a.m. Thursday for the first half of the week’s second double session – the morning pairs game. Alicia Kolipinski and I came in second overall with 59.43% and earned 0.49 of a point (this not being an extra-point game). The afternoon session, however, was very much of an extra-point occasion. Triple points with 5% gold, in an 18-board Swiss team event. Teamed with Ross Markello and Bruce Burr, Alicia and I tied for first, earning 1.94 points, plus .10 gold. (Last October I accumulated about a third of gold point this way.)

Meanwhile, Friday partner Usha Khurana called Thursday to say that she hadn’t realized that the wedding she was attending this weekend would get in her way. I got to play instead with the Friday substitute – Paula Salamone – and we reckoned (rightly) that we weren’t having much success. Even so, our 45.68% game put us third in the B strat for 0.79 of a point. Total for these occasionally feverish five days – 7.26 points, even better than last week. Thirteen days into the month, 13.30 points.