Tim's Travel Diary

Wednesday June 13
It is about 2:30 p.m. as I sit in Gatwick airport, waiting for our evening flight to Spain. Before I got on the plane in Phoenix, I made a point to stop at Denny's for my last American style cholesterol-soaked breakfast. If this trip to Spain is anything like my last, it's fruit, bread and yogurt for breakfast for the next three weeks. I relished that Denny's meal. I had a (you guessed it) French Slam.

T1, T2, IPC Controller  Brenda Reid, and Gloria, waiting to board the plane at Phoenix.

The flight over the pond was pleasant. One of the worst movies I've ever seen was interrupted by one of the best meals I've ever had on a plane. If I saw "Red Planet" in a theatre I'd ask for my money back. Yuck. Then they served dinner. Cheese and spinach ravioli gratinée with tomato herb sauce, prawn cocktail, dinner roll, and a vanilla cream caramel and walnut tart, all washed down with a little bottle of Chardonnay. Yummy. They do it right on British Airways. Next thing I knew, I woke up and we were landing at Gatwick.

View from the window in Madrid

Thursday June 14
After a fitful evening in a downtown Madrid hotel, we loaded all the omnigear into a minibus sent by the organizer and headed South for Granada. About five hours later we rolled into the air base where the meet will be held and checked out the facilities. Folks, I'm here to tell you that these people have done their homework. The judges' rooms are practically complete sans scoring systems; 50 small TV's and 20+ more big screens await DZTV setup. More on this later. The weather is sunny and warm. The Sierra Nevada mountains loom close to the South; still capped with long strips of snow, despite the month of June.

Waiting for the bus in Madrid

On the way to Granada.

After unloading the gear and spending time drinking coffee in the bar, we got back on the bus and headed for our hotel in downtown Granada, about 15 minutes from the air base. The hotel -- like the majority of buildings I've seen so far in Spain -- is butt ugly on the outside but downright swanky on the inside. I'm writing this in a small but very cozy room on the 13th floor of La Luz Granada hotel.

After querying the locals we headed a few blocks to the North and had dinner at an outdoor restaurant, the indoor part of which was in a huge bull ring, complete with fights in progress and a boisterous crowd cheering them on. I wondered if the steak I ate was a conquered bull from a recent fight. The matadors never lose, right? Hmmm...

Jet lag looms over me and a bed calls my name. Let's hope for internet access soon to get this up and running.

Friday 15 June
And just as I got to sleep the alarm went off, darnit. Breakfast at La Luz is La Good, a nice assortment of breads, fruits, and a soupy kind of scrambled eggs and skinny sausage. On the bus to the base we go.

In the DZTV room there is a network hub sitting there, so I plopped my laptop on the table and plugged the network cable into the hub and fired it up. I reset the network settings, crossed my fingers, and fired up IE. Viola! We have internet! Okay, tons of work to do here the next few days, so look for another update here come Monday or so. Ciao!

Saturday 16 June
I'm done with the travel bits for now; I'll have more here when T1 & I take a day off and visit the local castles and maybe catch a bull fight. Until then, you might want to check out the setup bits and see what's going on.