Subject: Live from Rouen

Date: 20 Apr 94

From: Uncle Terry, 73060,2661

Greetings from Normandy. The Yanks have landed, and we're here in the stands watching the U.S. Men's team (score...1-0) play Belgium attempting to rack up the first U.S. victory of the tournament (score...2-0). Correction-- we're watching the U.S. Men's Team RACK up America's first victory. This would seem (score...3-0) like a good start, if the (score...4-0) Men's team, Women's team, and Masters team hadn't already played 4 games among them. Actually, the starting performances were better than they seem at first glance. The Men lost to South Africa (one of the tournament favorites), playing very closely except for a brief spurt (warning- always be wary of playing sports against people whose country is in the middle of a revolution) (score...5-0). The Women lost a squeaker to the Brits after suffering much confusion about which pool's signals to listen to, and an unreasonable penalty for splashing the deck ref, and the Old Farts lost to South Africa and Australia, holding their opponents to less than 23 points on the day. (score...6-0).

So far the trip has been interesting. We start with a lovely flight (score...7-0) on Delta. I knew we were approaching France when the stewardess no longer had an Atlanta accent while serving a breakfast of a croissant and Yoplait. I was eager to enter (score...8-0) the beloved land, almost as much for the coming adventures as the opportunity to leave the small child in the next seat who had been crying non-stop for the last five hours (score...9-0). The instructions were clear (halftime...)- grab a train from Paris to Rouen, and call the hotel. Pas problem. After getting some cash (charged 30 francs to cash a 200 franc trav check- I'm just glad I got Frogbuck checks- think what I saved on the conversion!), we hop on the Metro. Four trains later, we're at the train station.....

Excuser- Stacy here. Uncle Terry is being called away for official business; his team is actually making him practice -score- I'm sure terry would have wanted to tell you next about how he called us at the hotel, just like the directions told him to (he's so good at following directions), but that no one was there. Imagine that - we didn't have anyone sitting by the phone with baited -score- breath, awaiting the VP of fun's call. What callous teammates! Despite our abandonment, he succeeded in making his way to the pool, I believe spending all his money in the process. I think he had fun with the taxi driver, though. Hmmmm, what else. They've been drinking beer called 1664 (I think) -score-, Mrs. Dawn is having at least as much fun as Dawn, rubbing down players from teams around the world, the showers are co-ed, -score-, we spent the first two days getting lost for 2-3 hours every time we got in the car (they won't let me drive anymore), Joe -score- redecorated his room by inserting a screwdriver into a spray paint can, Woody spent days in a meeting with "20 people more anal retentive than myself", spending 30 minutes deciding if a sentence needed a semi-colon or a comma, and other *very* important issues. -score- Sheila discovered that even if you drive 160 kph, people will pass you -score-score- I think I better go find terry and give this back to him...I'm sure he can type and do dry land mock-ups at the same time...

Hi- I'm back. All of what Spacey said is true, so I won't repeat it unnecessarily. A bit about our accomodations. Most of us are staying (for now) at the Formule 1 (that's French for Formula One) Hotel, hosted by a charming French couple. The hotel is the epitome of modern architecture and efficiency. Perhaps you've seen Clockwork Orange? After we overcame the challenge of exiting the bathroom before the automatic hosing system takes over, we settled in comfortably. However, the boss man is not completely aware of how honored he is by being chosen as the site of Party Central. Even though Buddha Joe sacrificed his own body and clothing by diving on an exploding paint cannister (obviously a product of defective French manufacturing technology) so that only small portions of the attractive black substance covered the various walls, doors, and carpets, and Little Doug has been putting in extra time as a security guard protecting the hotel cash box at great personal risk, he still keeps attempting to enforce a 22:00 (that's French for 10:00) curfew. We've tried to explain about time zone differences, offered to make Formule 1 the official hotel chain of Fredland, and even offered him 17 year olds, but to no avail. Sometimes the language difference is just too much to overcome. We'll let you know where we land.

Well, it's now another day. The Masters team started off by holding the Brits to a score below our goals against average established yesterday, and the Women just finished a stirring victory against the Dutch. Before the Women's game a brief international controversy was stirred up as the Little Prince watching over the entry gate to the pool refused to let our heroes enter the unused second pool more than 15 minutes before the game. Officials were summoned, Spacey got pissed (but warmed up anyway- lots of French guys running around waving their arms), MoJo got steamed, and even Carol Rose yelled at the French guy in charge of the tournament (whose official response was "it's Monday and you're in France". Needless to say, our babes were psyched, and behaved accordingly against the unfortunate Nederlanders.

Well, time to sign off for now, so that I can work on the technical end of getting this onto FredNet. We'll keep you all posted on all the events as they happen.