Third round from the
end of the morning session Thursday at the Airport Bridge Club and the place
suddenly goes dark. Since it’s windowless, it’s really, really dark. There’s
only one emergency light in the ante room to give us our bearings.
After a while, cell
phones provide little points of brightness around the tables. One foursome even
attempts to continue playing. Others, like me, use to occasion to wend our way
through the emergency-lit shadows to the washrooms.
Before long, it’s
determined that this is a widespread outage – 1,600 customers in the vicinity
of the airport. Traffic signals are dark on South Cayuga Road
Club manager Bill
Finkelstein calls someone in ACBL District 5 and determines that enough rounds
were played to qualify as a real STaC (Sectional Tournament at the Clubs) game.
He’ll tabulate the results Friday. He cancels the afternoon game, which is
supposed to start at 1:15 p.m., and we go to lunch. Around the time our fajita
orders arrive, he hears from the building managers that the electricity is
working again. It’s a little after 2.
Not a happy
development in my quest to reach Gold Life Master status before Christmas.
Although I haven’t checked my career totals lately, I believe I’m 15 to 20 points short and have hoped for a
big score during STaC Week to get me there.
It could happen.
However, as I watch people turn in games in the 65 to 70% range this week and
take away 10 to 15 points, I remember that I have reached this rarified status
only once in STaC competition, nearly 10 years ago with former partner Celine
Murray.
And then I’ve had
some anemic performances so far this week. It starts with some promise on
Monday, when I have 52.93% and 50.33% games with Judie Bailey, collecting
little scraps of points.
Things collapse,
though, on Tuesday with Dotty May (45.76% and 41%) and on Wednesday with June
Feuerstein (40.18% and 45.24%). When Thursday partner Marietta Kalman calls
last night to say she would only play the afternoon session because she doesn’t
have the stamina to do both of them, I have to accept the prospect that my hard
luck would continue with a substitute partner Thursday morning.
As it turns out, I
have three partners – club manager Bill Finkelstein for the first hand, my
Sunday unit meeting partner Florence Boyd for a couple rounds, then Ted May,
husband of my Tuesday partner and pretty much a novice, though I’ve watched him
improve. If we wind up with any points at all, I’ll consider it a miracle.
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