Cam's Chess Blog

Day 1 & 2 - Arriving in Caldas Novas

We left our house at 8:15 in the morning on Tuesday November 15. We arrived at SFO around 9:00 a.m. for our 11:00 a.m. flight. There was a very nice tail wind so we arrived early just under 5 hours of flight time. That was nice because it gave us time to switch terminals and have a nice dinner before our 10:30 p.m. flight to Rio. We had heard from Dad that our friends the Beilin's were having trouble leaving Kansas City to make their Houston connection to Rio due to bad weather in Houston. We wouldn't know if they made it our not until we see them in Rio.

At the Rio airport, we were excited to see familiar faces at the check in to our Gionna flight, Tarun Uncle and Tanuj were in line. Daddy Harry wanted to have a three hour training session in Rio during our layover and we kept waiting for him to arrive. We had no idea if he made his connection in Houston and we had no cell or internet connection in the Rio airport. Hours went by and there was no sign of him. Finally around 2:30 just one hour before our scheduled departure, the Beilin's arrived. We also met Jackie and Brandon from New York. Brandon is playing in the U10 section with Tanuj. The boys had a great time in the airport but definitely not having a chess lesson. Everyone was way too tired. Our flight was delayed for about an hour.

When we arrived in Gionna, the bus was waiting. It was full of members of the China Team and then Team USA took over the rest of the bus. We even picked up Michael Wang who arrived from Brasilia, their flight was delayed over 8 hours. It was grueling two and a half hour bus ride to Caldas Novas, which we finally arrived at 9:00 p.m. We checked into the room and hurried to the dining hall to have dinner before it closed at 10. That's about it, two days and all we did was arrive and have dinner. Lots of new faces and lots of familiar ones all speaking the same language of chess. We wish safe travels to all the rest of the travelers, may your journey be smooth with no delays.