OK, so our assessment of our first doubles match was way off. The old guys weren't our opponents; we played two B-division Navajo guys who worked us over 15-21, 15-21. I think that on a good day we probably could have beat them, but we couldn't seem to get our game together. However, it turns out that they actually ran a double-elimination bracket, so we got to play more games. Our second doubles match was against a couple of students from UNM who were green and we managed to beat them 21-11, 21-16. This put us into the consolation match for third place in the bracket. By the time this match came around, it was so late in the day that they decided to just do a single game to 31 rather than a best of three games to 21. Our opponents were a couple of older gentlemen who were really tired and we were able to win 31-10. So this means we took third place in B/C Doubles. However, at the awards banquet, they decided to split the bracket such that the winners side was referred to as "B Doubles" and the loser's bracket was referred to as "C Doubles," and they declared us 1st place in C Doubles. Yay

In singles land, my first game of the day was against a man who had just turned 80. My hat is off to this guy for still entering tournaments at his age, and he's still got a good shot, but he lacks the mobility to get to the ball. If I had played a position game with the intent to dominate, it wouldn't have been much fun, so we played an exhibition game where I was intentionally hitting to him with most of my shots. And they gave him an 8 point handicap in each game. Final score was 21-17, 21-18, which impresses me. I wasn't giving him points as charity, I just wasn't ever hitting it away from him. So he is fully able to return my shots and hit it in a way that I can't get to it. I hope I'm that spry when I'm 80.

This put me into the finals, where I expected to find a B-division behemoth. However, it turns out that only one person signed up for B singles, and that was Dick—my doubles partner. He won his side of the bracket and we ended up as opponents in the finals. The championship game never actually took place, as we were both totally beat from our 5 matches, so we agreed to play a singles match back at Los Alamos and phone in the result at a later date. But one of us is first in B/C singles and one of us is second. They split this bracket into B and C as well, which means that technically I'm either first or second in B singles, but... not really.

My prizes at the banquet included a tape measure and a tow strap. I traded the tow strap with Leeroy for a set of ratcheting tie-downs. All of the prizes were hardware store swag. The banquet was awesome; the guys who put on the tournament made ribs, brisket, and all manner of barbecue stuff. I stuffed myself, then drove the 3 hours home, arriving at 12:15am. It was a long day, but a great experience. I slept for over nine hours.