30 September
[T1 cracks his knuckles and admires his newfound FrontPage skills, while T2 stands by nervously across the Atlantic, in dread of what havoc will be wreaked upon his precious web page ...]

Tap tap tap ... is this thing on? (Screeching whine and a thud) Ah, here we go, ladies,  gentlemen and skydivers. Welcome to the Setup 'bits, my place to tell you about how things are looking before the dust gets kicked up and the teams arrive, as well as personal bits about my travel and experiences hither and yon. Please report errors, typos, omissions, and nonomissions to me here.

I arrived from Vienna early this afternoon, after spending 10 days there in support of the Artistic Events World Cup. Alas, that competition, while well organized, suffered some very unfortunate weather, and the medals were awarded based upon only two rounds of competition. I will have those results posted nearby as soon as I can get to the laptop computer that's locked up with the judging system, currently in storage around the corner. I can tell you, from my oft-questionable memory, that the Russians swept skysurfing and Alchemy and Arizona Freeflight finished one-two in Freefly.

Everywhere I go I learn something or three new, and one of the bits I picked up in Vienna was the correct story behind use of the word "Ye", as in "Ye Olde [insert establishment name here]". Well, there is no such word! The old English letter "thorn" (like a backwards "p") was used for the th sound, and when printing presses were brought into use in England in the 15th century, they were imported from Continental Europe and did not have the "thorn" letter. So typesetters used "y" which looked most like thorn in the handwriting of the time. Your useful 'bit for ye day!

But back to Empuriabrava. I was picked up in Barcelona by Alexei (sp?), who greeted me at the airport with a big sign that sported the words "TED WAGNER" in a blue 288-point sans serif. Woo-hoo, personal service!! We loaded up in a big white van and were at the hotel by 3:15, and the DZ by 3:16.

Yup, the hotel overlooks the DZ. Talk about your long commute! I can stand on my balcony and watch ye olde jumpers packing in the soccer field less than 100 meters away. And it's a very nice hotel. Not especially new, but very nice Spanish atmosphere with a very inviting bar and restaurant.

Alberto, the main organizer, greeted me immediately at the hotel. After a lunch of stuffed calamari, he gave me the grand tour of the DZ and World Cup layout. Boy have they pulled all the stops here! You'd think this was a full-on World Meet, with the team tents around a soccer field and Internet connections everywhere but the toilets and bar stools. (I had to request that the 'Net connections be removed from the judging rooms to eliminate potential security problems with the scores.) The early call is that if they have any problem here, it will be with the weather.

Well, maybe one other thing ... okay, two other things.

First, they're planning on doing the FS judging with a single team of judges. (Actually, the FS chief judge told the organizers that a single panel of judges would suffice.) I'm really curious to see if/how one panel of judges will keep up with thirty (30) 4-way teams. If they can, great; if not, there're going to be problems! We'll see. It'll certainly make DZTV a lot easier if they can.

Second, the chairs here are just horrible! Yeah, chairs, who cares, right? (Have I got one or two chair stories for you, if you catch me in the bar at the right time ...) Well if you're going to be sitting down and working 10 or 12 or 14 hours a day, having a chair you can't sit in properly is like walking ten miles in concrete galoshes. What they've provided (for now) are a gazillion freebie promotional portable fold-up beach/lawn chairs that are cute when you look at them and just miserable when you plant your backside in one and try to work at a table. I wonder how the judges will react to them ... I've been in one for two hours now and I'm ready to throw it out ye olde window. This has got to change ... Alberto! ...

[T2 jumps in for a nightcap]
Ugh...this is depressing...T1 is in Spain and I'm not...okay, life isn't too bad, because I GET TO SCARF UP TED'S DIAMONDBACKS PLAYOFF TICKETS! WOOHOO!...anyhow, I can attest from experience the excellence the competition host has demonstrated in hosting a world cup, I was there in 1994 as a member of the Army team. It's a great place to host a world cup, even if it's tough to find a comfortable chair...

 

The Judge's fishbowl, next to the landing area.

The landing area, under prep...

... and in the next field, a large packing area.

2 October
Not much to report from yesterday, other than it was Very Very Nice. After sleeping late and breakfast of buttered roll with honey, I settled into my portable container and got some OmniWork done. This time, it was getting the Pegasus results exported and e-mailed to T2 and to the Austrian organizers. I've never had a proper tool to do that -- only the thingie I've had for several years that reads the raw (binary) scores and creates a hard-copy that the chief judge signs. But that was all very intentional; I'm leery of distributing human-readable scores in electronic format because nothing is official without a chief judge's signature, and people have a tendency to believe whatever they read and get their knickers in a wicket if there's a mistake somewhere. But need is need, so now I'm going to distribute things like text files with results along with a disclaimer that says "Warning warning danger danger I'm not responsible for these scores they are unofficial results etc etc et al humma humma humma." But anyway I got the tool done, the results exported and they should be visible on our results page as soon as T2 gets a circular tuit and gets them posted. (Or when I get my graphical FTP tool working.)

After wrapping up the Pegasus export tool yesterday afternoon I moseyed into town and rented a scooter. Not that I need one ... but if you're going to spend 14 days in Empuriabrava, you've got to have a scooter. It's great for zipping over to the DZ's bar for a cup of coffee (or just parking outside the container and saying "Hey. That's my scooter!").

Just a few minutes after returning from the scooter rental store, my OmniMates Ken (Jones) and Lucy (Torva) arrived from Phoenix/Frankfurt/Barcelona. The rest of the evening was spent drinking Sangrias at the hotel, showing them the DZ, a few beers at the DZ bar, dinner, and a nightcap Sangria. (My first night here I tried to order a martini, "American, double-oh-seven style please, ... gin and a tiny splash of dry Vermouth shaken lightly ..." which wasn't going well until the pretty bartendress cut me off with "This is Spain. Have a Sangria!" And I'm glad she did :)

Woo-hoo! T1 proudly pins on his Expert FrontPage badge (with CC to Lucy). Took an hour or so to figure out how T2 did those cool tables and pictures stuff but there it is.

It's around 6pm (just after lunch, in Spain), and we're off to browse the crowd a bit prior to embarking on a cross-city voyage to a dentist for Lucy, what who broke a tooth on the flight from Frankfurt to BarTHelona. ("I didn't break the tooth. Something else broke it! The Loosetoofthansa bread, I'm gonna sue!" -- (very jet-lagged) Lucy). Tomorrow we have a new Secret Toy arriving that will alter our setup quite a bit (in case you're wondering why you haven't seen photos of our DZTV/Internet coverage work area yet).

Of course, if the Secret Toy doesn't arrive, well, we'll have some real scrambling to do. Stay tuned!

3 October
It is warmer and sunny today, I finally get to leave the sweatshirt tossed in the corner.

Yahoo, muchos gracias Alberto! We now have three good chairs in the OmniRoom. Small detail to some, but muy important to us.

Late start today after giving the liver a long recovery and the tummy a late breakfast. The OmniTeam got a clue on a good restaurant in a village nearby, and using Alberto's car (which I'd borrowed to take Lucy to the dentist earlier in the evening) and the hotel bartender's directions we found the place called Rhodas in the tiny village of Palau-Saverdara, built very shortly after Stonehenge. We got tucked into a corner of the main room and, just when we think we've made it to a Top Secret Place we can escape to in the future, guess who's seated at the table next to us ... everywhere we go, there they are!

No sign of the Secret Toy yet. (Gail says "Hi Keith!") Sometime between noon and midnight today. We have a corner of the room cleared out for it, all the skids are greased, fingers crossed, when It arrives It will cause great excitement around the DZ for what It will bring (:especially to me:).

And Ken is in bed sick this morning. He's been busy training and competing in bike racing the last few years, and is nearly skinnier than I was when we did 4-way together in 1997; if he sticks his tongue out and turns sideways he looks like a zipper. Well he picked a good day to get it over with, waiting for It; get well soon Ken!

Lucy & I were going to sneak over to the Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí museum in Figueras today but with Ken down for the count we'll wait for a day when he can join us.

Yikes! There's a skydiving competition coming up! I almost forgot. When the battery is done charging I'll drag the camera around for s'more photos. The facilities setup is almost complete and they've moved the competitors' landing area over to "this side", so now we have a boogie landing area over by the runway.

... and a few hours later ...

T2 informed me that my photo HTML/FrontPage technique was incorrect, so I just finished refactoring the contents of the last set of photos. Humble apologies to those of you tuning in on dial-up connections who had to wait for those large images to crawl through the pipe! Don't worry, I'll get this stuff down before the end of the competition ;)

Here are some aerial photos of the venue...

		Upper left and middle photos by Bruno Brokken. Remaining photos by Sean Capegreco.

And some more places and faces ...

Ladies & Gents, I think we may have Secret Toy arrival!!! ...

... not a rumor, the not-so-secret-around-here Secret Toy is HERE and it's HEAVENLY!!! :)

(Think of it as a really really kick-ass chair.)

Okay the OmniTeam is going off-line for a few hours while we move into our new home.

Toto ... we're not in Kansas any more!!!

We are operational and GO for official training jumps tomorrow. See you then!

(Tidbits resume on the 4 October page.)

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