Knowledge Bowling

On Friday I was granted the privilege to leave school at lunch time. Why you ask? So I could go to the Knowledge Bowl state finals. Technically speaking, the finals were the next day, but given the fact that the place was about 4 hours away and the meet started at 8 in the morning, going on Friday was the only feasible option.

Granted, we didn't do much on Friday. After eating lunch at Tacos Guyamas (a local Mexican restaurant that serves very large helpings), we left on a 4 hour drive only punctuated by one rest stop. We stayed at a Comfort Inn in Vancouver, and went out to dinner at Red Robin. After eating 80% of the biggest burger I've ever seen, I spent the rest of the night lounging around at the hotel. Most of the lounging consisted of me playing either Final Fantasy or Tetris on the DS I brought whilst peripherally watching some TV.

While I was being driven to the precise location of the finals (Camas, WA) on Saturday, I was hurriedly devouring breakfast from the hotel and had one of my teammates forge my mom's signature on a permission slip that the adult advisors forgot to give us earlier. Ironically, the slip basically said that the people running the bowl could send us back home if we broke the rules.

The high school we were at was very nice. It has nice features such as covered hallways, multiple floors, a credit union, a logical layout, drinking fountains, and non-beat-up desks, all of which the school I go to mysteriously lacks. The only discernible flaw I could see with the school was its mascot: The Papermakers. Even the Borderites are better.

As for the meet itself, it was slightly different than the previous ones. Like usual, it started with an oral round of 50 questions, but that didn't determine what room we went in, because the room placement for the first four oral rounds was predetermined, meaning that we didn't have to spend hours waiting for results. Another difference with the oral rounds was that only the "team captain" could say the answer (or he could say "I defer to..."). After the end of the first 4 oral rounds, the bottom 9 out of 18 teams in each division were eliminated and got to go home early as a prize.

As far as our team's performance at the meet, I'll just say that it was horrible. I think we did pretty well on the written round, but we got more than 10 points in only one of the oral rounds. Most of the questions were quite hard and most of the other teams were very good. After the 4 oral rounds were over, our team was eliminated. However, I think that I have 3 things I can be proud of:

1. Our team made it to the finals.
2. We weren't the worst team there.
3. I managed to answer a question about Euler's identity before anybody else did.

Given the fact that my parents didn't expect me to return so early, they were out of town having fun, which meant that I had to walk home from the bus barn. Fortunately, at about the bottom of the hill my bishop saw me and was willing to drive me home. Coincidently, he has a brother who lives in Camas and he goes down to see him every once in a while. Whodathunk it?