So, on this trip, I drove up to Rhode Island. Along the way, I stopped by the Merritt Parkway Museum & the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
The Merritt Parkway Museum is a free museum located in a multiple-office building. They have lots of pictures, artworks, & descriptions of the history of the Merritt Parkway, how it was built, and other interesting topics. The Merritt Parkway itself is on the National Register of Historic Places.
As many people driving from the New York Areas to the New England Areas may have discovered, the Merritt Parkway is an interesting highway with lots of great views of the countryside while one drives (hopefully legally) along. The Merritt Parkway has just two lanes of traffic in each direction & no trucks allowed as the bridges have lower height clearances & there are quite a few horizontal & vertical curves throughout this roadway.
The Merritt Parkway has significance to me as I have used it several times in my driving trips to the New England region & I always enjoyed this part of the trip on sunny days.
After the Merritt Parkway, I transferred over to I-95 & saw a billboard for the Pez Visitor Center. Since I had a late start, I calculated that I did not have time to take this detour, which is unfortunate. I do like Pez candy & I do have a Yoshi Pez dispenser that doesn't get enough use. I would love to visit this at some point one day. Maybe on my trip to New Hampshire or if I go back to Rhode Island at some point in the future.
After eating at Mystic Diner, it took me roughly another hour of driving to reach the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It seems to me only street parking is available for this place.
I have played & watched quite a bit of tennis throughout my life, so it was fun to go through the International Tennis Hall of Fame. I got to see different racquets, different cans of tennis balls, & other interesting facts & memorabilia, even of players I hears but didn't get to see play & players I was too young to remember that I saw play.
I shared some other pictures from the ITHOF on my instagram post here.
I did take pictures of a state route sign in Rhode Island. They pattern their state route signs with an R.I. on the top.
The tournament on Saturday was held at the New England Institute of Technology, East Greenwich Campus in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. It was a beautiful venue with lots of free parking, & the tournament was well organized by Frank DelBonis. The rounds were pretty much mostly on time (printer issue Round 1), the open section had only one board per table in the top ten plus boards, & equipment was provided for all of the open section & most of the U1600 section that I could see. Spectating was not allowed, so if you finished your game you have to leave the playing room. They did have at least one skittles room & multiple parent rooms around. (And yes, I was amused that one parent thought I had a kid playing in the tournament.)
I ran into some personal issues the night before & morning of the tournament, so my play wasn't as sharp as it could have been. (You can see it even in my two wins.) I lost to a 2007, then beat a 1399 & 1338 before losing to an 1896. As of the writing of this paragraph, I do not know how my 1867 rating will be affected. I do sincerely doubt that I won a prize, so I marked the chess maps accordingly.
I am going to show my second round game because I think it shows a basic theme that is helpful to know when first starting to play.
I also want to showcase something about trade offers & zwischenzug from my Round 3 game that I think you would enjoy.
Now remember, just because you are offered a trade, doesn't mean you automatically accept it.
In this first diagram, I wanted to trade light bishops so he doesn't have two Bishops, my pawns aren't in the way of my light Bishop, & I have greater chances of trying to control the e4 square. However, I don't want to develop his Queen to g4 threatening Qxg7 mate.
Now, there was a shooting at Brown University that Frank learned about during the last round of the tournament. Frank did a great job of keeping everyone calm while informing us of the situation, telling us that he contacted security & that they secured the building, & that everyone was able to watch the award ceremony after the last round.
Normally, I would like to stay for the award ceremony after the tournament if circumstances allow. However, I had a personal issue which necessitated me leaving & there was a snowstorm expected to hit New Jersey at around 10pm. I thanked Frank for hosting the tournament & explained to him that I had to leave for reasons not related to the situation at Brown University.
The drive home was interesting. I decided to put some gas in my car, just in case there was a detour I needed to take. While it ended up being possible for me to delay a gas station trip until returning to New Jersey, I did the prudent thing & put gas just in case. By the way, my out of state rant on gas stations continues: New Jersey gets it right. I really hated going out of my car to go inside the convenience store just to pay for gas in cash. Luckily, there were no food thieves of parents scolding kids for incorrect purchases like there were in my last trip in New Mexico, so I was able to gas up & leave the gas station without incident.
I tuned my phone somehow to listen to the Knicks vs Magic NBA Cup Semifinal game on my rental car's radio & listened to that as I drove back. I made it all the way to the northernmost service area on the Garden State Parkway before taking a break. After I decided to leave, I noticed it had started snowing so I took a detour to Applegate Farms so I could notch another winter of eating ice cream or milkshakes during a snowstorm. (I don't know how many times I have done this, but it's fun to stand outside eating ice cream or drinking milkshakes while snow is falling.)
I made it safely home shortly after the ice cream stop, & that concludes the post for State No. 44 for #fiftystatesofchess
