BARI - captains log, stardate: day1

After a long night of putting the finishing touches on a few bits of gear etc and the tedious business of actually flying here through Milan, the Turkish squad has arrived in Bari this morning Thursday the 26th of July.

On the flight and connection in Milan several groups of mainly blonde people joined the flight, in varying states of uniform or casual dress ranging from bizarre loose lycra tracksuits in hideous colours to men clad in nothing but gym singlets and tight stretchy shorts... as we came off the flight into Bari and waited for our luggage and all the Monofin bags started to be picked up off the conveyors, our suspicions were confirmed... the Russians had arrived. ...And the Ukrainians and the Polish and a few others to boot.

That was a deviation from the normal WC scene for me, but more so was the cameraman and journo/reporter type who were creeping around the area behind passport control to document the athletes arriving. These guys did a few brief interviews with players while they were waiting for their bags and gave the comp something of an official flavour right from the word go.

When we came out with our bags we were loosely grouped by Games officials who rounded up everyone until all the players had arrived and then herded us onto coaches which ferryed us to the accommodation. That treatment was for the teams and athletes staying at the official accommodation which is a university dorm, i can't say what the arrangements were/are for the many teams organising their own beds but while slow, the organisation was efficient.

At the dorms lines formed at 3-4 admin desks while team managers doled out passports to the officials for recording of names and allocation of rooms and keys. Once finished everyone was admitted into the lunchroom which has a large catered buffet, basically what you'd expect of a dorm canteen. ...the ritz it is not but i know there are millions of starving kids somewhere who would kill for what goes on the trays there so it's not my place to complain. Highlights include a finswimming squad from Venezuela, a few Chinese, Ukrainians and just basically tonnes of strangers here for fin-swimming. At this stage uwh is a solid minority.

Player packs were handed out to each player which consisted of a wee bag with a tonne of crap tourist brochures about Bari and a tourney polo shirt. Missing from the pack was a program with any kind of schedule unfortunately. Here's where some negativity creeps in...

I asked about a program and was told nothing was set yet. and now for a little background...

over the last few days some concerned uwh players and management (largely driven by the french and organised by Romain the fantastic Belgian who has stepped into a co-ordination role) have taken it upon themselves to draft a decent draw and arrange warmup pool schedules for the teams in the absence of anything from the tourney organisers in these areas (and apparently after months of hounding by the french to no effect)

Laurent (a frenchman) has drafted and re-drafted a draw 4-5 times (very time-consuming for those that have experience in this area) to try to come up with a program which allows a double round robin for each grade... this is because the proposed draw from weeks ago was single round robin and after serbia bailed in both divisions a few days ago we are now left with 6 mens teams and 4 womens. It's been a challenge as the french booked their flights as late as possible at the tourney organisers direction and then the draw was moved up a day, catching them out. (even though they were "stick a needle in my eye and die if i lie" style promised that the schedule wouldn't move)... to be honest personally i think they were idiots to book so late and think they could waltz in without any training games or anything... it's hardly showing respect to the tournament or the opposition is it, but apparently the cost is very high for the french and they had to try to save money on accommodation. whatever the reason...

In the end something has just now been finished by Laurent which has approval of all the countries bar spain (awaiting a reply at this point, Romain has gone to a lot of trouble to try to keep all informed and behind the proposal in order to present a united front to CMAS at the meeting where it's proposed)...

This draw allows for france turning up late and extends the comp partially into the last scheduled training day to prevent 3 game days where possible. anyway, it's all provisional upon the cmas honchos agreeing to follow it at the meeting tomorrow morning anyway, so we'll see how that goes. i've been roped in a bit as well and have just finished putting together a rough schedule for the training day slots, which hadn't been done by the organisers... they did give us pool time but without Romain to nudge them along i think we would have had to ad-lib it on the first warmup day and probably would have wasted a lot of time there. anyway.

the pool is a fair way away from the dorms here, but it seems like we have buses on hand full-time, i believe they are going to be taking people to the venues every day... possibly this means teams spending full days at the pool as i can't see the coaches ferrying individual teams home but again it'll become apparent.

there's wireless internet here, on this floor at least after i re-started the wee server in the common room... the rooms are quite good, popular pastime seems to be hanging over the balconeys and yelling or perving at others who do the same... big dorm block with 3 wings about 6 stories high? good value, i see waterbombs coming into their own at some stage. the officials all look the real deal, bari logos in print on everything and wee bags and whatnot as well as poloshirts etc... even have big decals on their cars with the logo. will be interesting to see what the venues look like. theres also a big cafe area next to the lunchroom where you can buy crap and snacks all day when they arent serving... flags are up on many of the balconies already too.

it is STINKING hot here.

...biggest weird thing is no program so you cant have a nosey at the ugly mugs of the teams who are about to deal you or receive your pain... but maybe thats coming. the finswimmers have all trooped down to get their photos taken for something... i think i'll go ask a few questions once i've had a nap.

thats all for the first installment, theres a lot of background info here so i guarantee following posts won't be as long or boring...

oh yeah the number of just generally weird looking people we saw at customs in Milan was INSANE. the most beautiful stereotype computer nerds, both different flavours, bumped into each other just ahead of me in the queue, americans, and their conversation was awesome, they belonged in a family guy/simpsons episode. i'm hoping for more of that on this trip.

cheers, liam

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it's more polite on the grating than on the subs bench

Thanks, liam. keep 'em coming.
I'm also very interested in the success of getting all the sports together and if there ends up being a good amount of intersport socializing during the comp. Really the one reason I (on a personal note) would have wanted to attend Bari was to meet/talk with some of the finswimmers and apnea folk.
Updates on how the promotion/media representation is going, if you hear of video feeds or some such let us know.

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An aquifer is a water bearing layer of rock or soil. Aquifers are separated by impermeable layers of rock or clay called an aquitard. Aquitard, however may sound a bit offensive to some, and therefore we will be changing the name to Aquachallenge.

yeah just been down and got our player id's made... VERY time consuming process where each player/competitor has to produce a passport, have their details typed out, be printed off an inkjet, stuck in a sleeve and laminated agonizingly slowly and punched/tied with cord. took like 2 hours to do our 2 teams.

BUT was good cos got to talk to a few organisery types... one thought serbia was still coming but when we found another we got it straightened out... they arent coming. at the mo they are sticking to the original timetable as its been released to teams and the media (the media?) but they are flexible and open and happy for the countries to have input since there are such a small number competing.

not sure exactly hat the big deal was for the french guys and girls... all the french fin swimmers etc are here, there are heaps of them.

seems all the girls who finswim are

A - tall and lean
B - blonde or dyed blonde
C - fixated with wearing either sporty cycling short type gears or tiny tiny shorts all the time with crop tops.

...there is skin everywhere. at dinner was nuts. ...go finswimming.

oh, met an aussie, the only aussie, guy name of matt. poor dude has had his gear lost in transit and is minus his finswimming fin and stuff... hoping it turns up. man it was good to hear his accent, sounded like he enjoyed mine too. there are heaps more chinese now as well, they have a fair representation here.

tomorrow at lunch or dinner i'm gonna take a camera down and take a whole lot of photos to post. hopefully all the weird attire comes out again, it's good value.

liam

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it's more polite on the grating than on the subs bench

jealous.

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http://snorkelbattlesafari.blogspot.com/

Great work Atapene!

How about some photos or maybe even a Podcast or two?

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Slayer of Trolls amongst other things.
Made for the Love of a Good Woman, and not a bad little player too ;-)
Chumba Concept Salon
Professional Hair Stylist

i can do that,working on the photos, will have some of the pool and that tomorrow.

will see what i can do with a podcast tomorrow then too. fun!

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it's more polite on the grating than on the subs bench

Can you get on Skype?
We can interview you as well 'Live from Bari...'

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Slayer of Trolls amongst other things.
Made for the Love of a Good Woman, and not a bad little player too ;-)
Chumba Concept Salon
Professional Hair Stylist

i think a man here named volkan might be the most entertaining interview subject actually, i'll see if he's not too shy.

yeah we do have skype here carl, but just a lappie built-in mic so maybe won't be the easiest to do it here in the common room but could try. would be fun once things start happening.

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it's more polite on the grating than on the subs bench

heres a few snaps from bari.

special mention of the snorkels... the one is what we were going for. the other is one of my guys attempt to put bands on his snorkel in his national colours. so good i had to post it.

anyway, at the pool today was supposed to have been the first day of warmup games... we went along hoping that despite the lack of schedule we'd be allowed a slot as we were told we would have the pool. turns out they were just beginning to set up the warmup lanes and barriers are going in this avo so no space...we jumped in the uwr pool instead and had a splash, checked out the finswimmers and free divers which is pretty interesting too.

have now seen the spanish here at registration and now all countries have given the ok to the proposed draw... romain is sending it to cmas now, hopefully it will be accepted by tomorrow and we can get cracking with the warmups etc.

Attached Images

	accomodation.jpg (97.3 KB, 25 views)
	balcony gazing.jpg (96.5 KB, 25 views)
	the attempt.jpg (97.1 KB, 26 views)
	desired result.jpg (92.7 KB, 22 views)
	finswimming-pool.jpg (81.2 KB, 26 views)

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it's more polite on the grating than on the subs bench

...on the bus to the pool, which takes about 30mins, i actually saw a few big billboards in the city that we went past advertising the event.

here are a few more pics. the uwh pool sure enough has a 45 degree slope on the corners that sticks out about half a meter which the barriers will need to be installed inside... just makes the court a bit shorter and complicates penalty shots a tiny bit, no drama as has been made out ASSUMING the barriers are decent... fingers crossed. the pool tiles do look nice but they could be tacky we'll only find out when we are able to get in. there are a few grates and perforated steel plates collected in the corners of the pool which could make at least one of the corners interesting, taking up a lot of the space in the corner, could make it far easier for defending teams to slow the play in the corner but again we'll see.

(PS, for photo labels see the file names, hold mouse over the photo and it should popup)

Attached Images

	photo ids.jpg (81.9 KB, 33 views)
	ukrainians.jpg (83.3 KB, 28 views)
	uwh pool.jpg (86.8 KB, 30 views)
	uwr pool.jpg (94.1 KB, 26 views)
	volkan.jpg (44.1 KB, 32 views)

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it's more polite on the grating than on the subs bench