interesting weekend...

So I went on a trip to a competition in Milwaukee this weekend. A very sweet friend of mine gave me a four-leaf clover for luck. I don't "believe in" four-leaf clovers but I thought it was a really nice gesture so I took it, put it in a plastic baggie which I kept in my wallet...

So on Friday, when we were on the expressway on the way to the competition we hit a pothole and one of the front tires comes loose from the car, bouncing 20 feet in the air, and then bouncing across several lanes of traffic. The driver was able to maintain control and we reached a median strip on the expressway. We called several towtruck companies who said they wouldn't pick the car up from the expressway but we eventually found one who could. Our group of four was too big to all go in the tow truck so we split up. Two people went with the car in the tow truck to a mechanic where we could try to get it repaired. And the other two of us played a live-action version of Frogger and dodged expressway traffic to get to the street level, and then wandered around the "inner city" of Chicago looking for a public bathroom. Then we got on the L to meet up with the rest of our group downtown. We stopped to eat. Then walked several blocks in search of Union Station and wandered around a good chunk of time before we learned that the train we had planned to take wasn't running any more that night (one teammate had a friend in Evanston and so we were trying to reach their house for the night). So then we had to backtrack to an L station to find an alternate route to the suburbs. To make a long story slightly shorter, we were eventually able to make it to Evanston and crashed there. The next day we had to buy Amtrak tickets for the rest of the distance (which we had planned to drive). So instead of arriving at our destination at 6pm Friday we ended up arriving 10am on Saturday (So we missed some of the preliminary events on Friday evening)

Now comes the competition itself. Our team actually did really well. We made it to the finals. Except that in the finals, when it was my turn to go on, I got an excessive time penalty called which made the difference between winning the competition (and $500) and coming in second place (and getting "nothing"). A number of people told me that something fishy had gone on with the time keeping and so we got more of a penalty than we should have and so we deserved to win. (In fact, they actually had announced our team as the winners of the competition and it was only later that a "correction" was issued) The fact that there were even people on other teams who agreed that we were robbed made me feel better but we still don't get the $500 (which the team could have used).

On a really bizarre note, the afterparty for the competition was held in a bar named Mecca! One of my teammates remarked that in other parts of the country (like DC) the "Muslims" (including Sunni, Shia, Nation or 5%-ers) would have been more active and protested the choice of name but in this city apparently that wasn't the case here in Milwaukee.

Anyway, after a full weekend, we hit the road again on Sunday, taking the train to get back to Chicago where the tire had fallen off. Took the L and a bus to get back to where the car had been fixed. And went the rest of the way by car to go back home.

And on a final note regarding the trip, somewhere along the way I lost my cell phone and I'm still in the midst of trying to get it back.

I'm generally not one to complain so I'm not going to say whether I've been lucky or unlucky this weekend. But it was certainly an adventure.