Trivia tie

Monday I attended the trivia night contests again. Alan was already there at a table. Darrel from the SOL team was talking with Al when I arrived. Before the first contest began Rod appeared. Darrel went back to his table to join his SOL team while Rod, Al, and I made up our own team: Bicycle Built for Three.

Rod, Al, and I were in good form and we did relatively well in the first contest. While we only answered 14 of the 20 questions correctly, this was good enough for a first place tie. Still, it was a little disappointing as among the 20 questions was:

"Name the ABC countries of South America."

Initially I answered: Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Then I thought of Columbia. Hmm.. which one? I decided because Columbia was a larger country we should go with Columbia. Wrong! If we would have answered it correctly - and with my first choice - we would have won that game. *argh!*

The tie breaker question was:

"What year did the first American women, Sally Ride, go into space?"

I knew the answer was 1983 and my team accepted it. My team, and a team of two women, were the only teams with the correct answer. That team and my team had to answer another tie breaker question.

"How fast can a barracuda swim?"

I did not have a clue. Rod thought it was pretty fast and he answered 40 mph. I felt that was too fast but I couldn't come up with any other speed, and since Rod deferred to my Sally Ride answer I deferred to his answer. So we went with 40 mph. The other team answered 33 mph. The correct answer was 30 mph. The other team's answer was closer so they won. Darn! So close!

In the second contest we felt good about our answers. In the end we got 16 correct but this was good enough for only second place. The lawyer/judge team won with 17 correct. They hadn't done well in the first contest but then the judge showed up in time to play the second game and they did much better.

All the prizes for the 'quarters' contests were mystery bags. The contents were lame (how many anti-freeze testers does a person need?) so I didn't put any effort into answering any of the 'quarters' questions.

I stayed around after the trivia contests were over to socialize. Karaoke started and the first singer was very good. He could hit the high notes in the song and had the phrasing down just right. He sang a favorite song of mine, "Wicked Game", originally sung by Chris Isack. The video to the song is also a favorite of mine - it's so sexy!

Most of the karaoke singers this night were good. The Captain wasn't there but another old man sang well. And his song choices were surprising. This old bland looking retired man with short hair and glasses (a pudgy grandfather look) sang southern rock songs by Lynard Skynard ("Gimme Three Steps") and the Almond Brothers ("Whipping Post"). He knew the songs' histories and did pretty good at singing the songs. It was just there was a disconnect between his look and the songs he was singing. Wasn't it a requirement that only young long haired skinny guys be able to sing these songs?

When I couldn't take the smoky atmosphere in the bar any more I left. When I stepped outside I discovered light snow was falling.