I was actually surprised by how many other people had the same idea. There was literally a line of people wrapping around a whole wing of the mall. It was the longest line I have seen since waiting for hours in the Macworld 2008 keynote line.

Prior to opening the doors, there were employees in various colored shirts running around and getting the crowd excited (for a shirt?), while others took official pictures and video of the event.

Once inside, I headed right to the Genius Bar, and I was unofficially the very first Genius Bar customer. After all, the only legitimate reason for going to the store was to have my MacBook Pro’s screen problem diagnosed. They told me it was a likely a pinched cable, which they estimated as a $300 repair (out of warranty).

I recently ordered the cable itself for $30. For $270, I’ll do it myself.

Our “Ford Taurus or Equivalent”

My day would last much longer. Kim and some other Maine people passed the time with card games as I waited for postings after every round. I broke with both my prose and expository after round 2, and with my prose after round 3. If I was able to last one more round in prose, I would have been able to continue with it into Thursday. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen, but I was glad to last 4 rounds nonetheless. Between rounds, I was also able to hang out with some people from James Logan High School (the Skowhegan of nationals).

I didn’t get out until around 8:00, when we decided to go to the top of the Stratosphere. It is a really tall tower along the Strip, with some scary rides on the top. We avoided those rides, but we got to see the great view from the top of the tower. From that height, you can see all the desert lights.

During the next day of consolation events, Kim and I only lasted one round in our respective events. My storytelling piece was up against converted HIs and children stories, which was unfortunate. Kim was also stuck with really bad Vegas-themed impromptu topics. Oh well…

After breakfast, we went to Greenspun Middle School for our 4 rounds of Duo on Monday. Rounds 5 and 6 would be on Tuesday

The first thing we did was practice the entire Duo (with blocking) for the first time in one of the competition rooms. Something about the nationals atmosphere made that practice run just about perfect. We remembered every bit of blocking, from start to finish. This greatly helped our confidence.

We took a lot of pictures between rounds, but here are some pictures from right before our first round…

…and a picture right before our sixth round.

I have to say that I was generally underwhelmed by the competition. Perhaps I had expected that every single Duo would be at the same level as the finalists, but many were fairly basic with just a bit of tech. I was also surprised by how much the tournament felt like any regular tournament, except with many more people. I got to see a lot of the people from last year’s final round, and some of them were even in rounds against us. We still believed that our Duo had more literary merit than the majority of our competition, which was confirmed by a qualifier from Pennsylvania. He thanked us for actually having a serious piece.

After the sixth round, we had to wait outside for almost an hour, waiting for them to post.

Ultimately, we didn’t break, but we had a lot of fun during the six rounds we competed in. We went to the Schwan Party, which wasn’t very exciting at all and featured a terrible Elvis impersonator, but we both registered for supplemental events. I’ll be doing prose and expository. I should actually be memorizing right now, so I’ll post more later.

Much later, we ended up on a JetBlue plane named “Do-Be-Do-Be-Blue.” Apparently, they name all of their planes.

Here is us, before the first flight.

We were sitting in the first row, which means there was absolutely no “under the seat in front of you” to put our bags. We had to stuff our bags overhead for the short flight to JFK. Every seat had video monitors, so I could be geeky and track the entire flight.

I got this really cool silhouette of Kim.

When we got to JFK, Kim and I practiced awkwardly in the airport as other people wondered what we were doing. Right before we boarded our plane to Las Vegas, we managed to point at the sign while security wasn’t looking.

Once we got on the plane, we were left on the ground for an hour as we waited for clearance to take off. We got bored so we took pictures of ourselves and the plane.

Kim saw a Pac Man pattern on a field below, so she took a picture.

While over Arizona, we drank Arizona iced tea. I think it tasted slightly better because of this.

Almost there…

We finally got there. Stepping off the plane, we got our first real experience of the desert heat. It’s a different sort of heat than summer in Maine, and not just because of the temperature. It is a dry heat, similar to the kind a furnace blows in the winter.  When the wind blows, it feels like a hair dryer. It was definitely hot, but bearable.

Here is us at the airport.

Right after, we went to the Cheesecake Factory, where we met up with all the other Maine qualifiers and judges. The Cheesecake Factory always has the best food. That pretty much ended our day. The three hour time change was very easy to adjust to, so we saw it as a few extra hours to sleep before the competition begins.

Oh, and the countdown has been modified to reflect this change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmG-fO81Wc