The SPICE warriors finally arrived in Washington, DC for the Final Four. We started the day out with big problems at the Lubbock International Airport. The DGT clocks did not pass security. The TSA agents said that the clocks are a problem. They kept checking to see if they are “dangerous” to the rest of the passengers. After checking and re-checking over and over, the TSA agents finally let the clocks through, with about a minute to spare before the gate close.
When we finally got to Washington, DC, we faced another serious problem. Our reservation for a 15 passenger van for whatever reason came up for a different airport instead of Reagan National. The rental car agents had a big problem finding any record of it even though we had a print out of the reservation in our hands. After nearly 3o minutes, they finally found us a suitable replacement vehicle.
By this time, we hit serious DC evening rush hour where many roads were converted to a single direction. This caused our GPS fit and kept sending us into a loop. After an exhausting long and troublesome day, we finally made it to the hotel. Tomorrow will be the opening ceremony and the entire Final Four will be played on Saturday and Sunday.
That is OK. Worse things could happen.
Good luck guys!
And if you guys were walking around carrying that trophy….haha..no wonder!
Mike M
I’ve always wondered how difficult it would be to get a chess clock past TSA. They do look rather suspicious to the non-chess-player eye (especially those expensive all-metal ones with the blinky LEDs).
It probably would have been better to ship them ahead by UPS.
Chess terrorism. It is a problem. Will the TSA be at the tournament?