Ramada Inn Bayfront

Running behind, but just had to post a little something about the hotel I first stayed at in Corpus Christi. My room at the Ramada Inn Bayfront lacked (a) a desk (though the manager kindly sent up a table from the cafeteria), (b) working outlets, (c) a functioning alarm clock, (d) a bed that wouldn't sag to the floor when you sat on it.

Did I mention there was only one working lamp?

Other teams staying at the Ramada reported malfunctioning locks, no running water and scary encounters with shabbily-dressed guards who were roaming the second floor. Basically, I think the place was haunted. It was built on the site of another hotel that burned down in the 1980s, so some poltergeist probably stuck around to irk the guests--which this weekend included not just Decathlon teams but a bunch of middle school teachers and a Catholic association that was offering confessions in the lobby.

I have to say, despite (and even in part because of, for reasons I will detail later) the ghosts, it was a wonderful weekend. I shared a floor with two amazing teams and had the chance to spend time with many others at competition, at an aquarium and even at the airport. I saw a giant alpaca on stage (and had nothing to do with it.) I hugged a sort-of-purple teddy bear. I met, in short, many many cool cool Decathletes, their coaches and their mascots.

More to come about Texas in the next post...

Meanwhile, in less happy news, I stayed up all night Saturday before the awards trying to write a column for the Stanford Daily. I'm still feeling it today. (I would sleep for ten-to-twenty minute snatches in my chair, getting little writing done but not much resting either.) My column's ostensibly regular theme is innovation, so this time I wrote about narrative innovation. The editor, DemiDec poet Chuan-Mei, chose not to publish it because it wasn't sufficiently in keeping with the so-called innovation theme. Anyway, I suppose I could post the piece here. The beginning should be familiar to those of you who read my original Ecuador posts... I still remember Jean-Luc Picard cutting off my leg at the knee!