Roland Garros 2008 - Day 16

The last day of the tournament, thankfully.  I was able to go in late, so I told them I'd be in around noon.  It allowed me to sleep late again (still no running since I caught this *&^%%$ cold) and when I got up, I took the opportunity to pack as much as I could of the remaining items in the room.  I am flying home tomorrow and I don't care what it takes.  I'll forgo sleep if it means I can get onto the plane Monday morning and back in my home Monday evening.  I miss my wife.  I love Colleen dearly, and this trip has made me miserable knowing what she had to go through here without me.  By the time I get home tomorrow, we'll be under two weeks until our projected due date.

The tournament is always so anticlimactic from a Web site perspective.  The first week there are kinks to work out, test plans to execute, and a ton of matches.  By this last day, there are 6 matches scheduled.  The men's final doesn't even start until 3 PM, but the first matches start at 11 AM, which means we've still got to get in at 10.  I love tennis, but the end of the tournament always makes me sick of tennis venues.  Still, it was some very good tennis and Rafael Nadal proved that he's head and shoulders above anyone else on clay by destroying World Number 1 Roger Federer.  Now, don't get me wrong, I have by no means written off the undisputed King of tennis and in my mind one of the greatest of all time, but he's got some sort of serious mental block about the clay.  Either that, or Nadal just has an air of invincibility when he's on this surface.  The media coverage said that it was Roger's worst defeat in 183 Grand Slam matches.  I can believe it.  He was thrashed.  I might have won as many games as he did, and I still can't serve overhead. LOL

The last day of the tournament is terrible for hosting, if we let it become terrible.  Everyone wanted to stay as late as needed to get everything done and shut down on Sunday.  Now, I had agreed to this premise, as Steve said I could fly home a day early.  I had even done 95% of my packing on the front end so that I wouldn't need as much time in the morning before leaving for the airport.  Little did I know what I had signed on for.  The first part is reasonable.  Writers need time to wrap up the tournament, so we have to be there to allow that content to reach the Web site.  That's a couple of hours work, no question.  Given the thrashing Nadal handed out, the tournament ran out of matches just after 5 PM CET.  I allowed for the writers to still be working until 8:30.  That would mean we'd need one or two hours of work and we'd be out by 11 worst case.  YEAH RIGHT!  The writers were done by 8:30, that was a good estimate on my part.  The shutdown and transfer of the publishing systems however, ran significantly over.  We didn't get out until after 1 AM.  Trains stop running from this side of town at 12:30 AM, so we were out of luck on that front.  Also, dinner would have to be Chinese at Opera Mandarin as it would be one of the few places open until 2 AM.

Got back to the room after 2 AM.  OUCH!  I was dead on my feet and I'd have to be up just before 6AM to get checked out of the hotel and onto the train by 7.  I didn't call Colleen, though I promised her I would.  That means I'll call her from the airport at some God awful hour of the morning for her, but I do need her to know I am getting out of Paris safely.

Cheers!