State No. 27 - Wyoming

I apologize for the post delay.  I had some issues to take care of when I got home, but I think they are good now.

So it was an interesting start to the trip, which took place Nov. 7 - Nov. 10.  I flew in using American Airlines to Cheyenne via Dallas-Fort Worth.  Sadly, #thecurseofthetravelingKEC struck again, this time early.  While I made it to Cheyenne personally without a problem, my checked bag did not.  Now, they did find the bag quickly at Dallas-Fort Worth.  However, since Wyoming is a small airport (one terminal, only one way into the airport area in general) & American only flies once a day on this route, I had to wait until Friday 1pm local time for the next day's plane to bring my bag.  American was helpful as best they could throughout, giving me a bag of toiletries to use for the night while waiting for my checked bag to come in.  It should be noted, however, that the spare underwear, socks, & shirt in my carry-on saved me from further problems.

As an aside, the trend of everyone using roller bags as carry-ons really slow down getting on the plane.  It is of course, a byproduct of most airlines charging for checked bags & most people trying not to deal with the problems of checked bags in general (lost bag problem above, baggage mishandling).  Hopefully, I can resume flying Southwest at some point, even if it is only return flights, & not have to pay to check a bag.

I did take a photo while waiting for the American Airline Ticket Agent to finish the baggage handling from the flight (yes, ticket agent apparently does do that at CYS) of one of the many boots setup all over Cheyenne.  Cheyenne has an interesting program to set up development all over the City, & their project theme is, "If this boot could talk, what story would it tell?"

This hunt was similar to the Hunt for the Garfield Statues & the Hunt for the (I)ndy Statues in 2016. So there are 25 known boot sculptures on the map. One of them, #8, was in storage due to the area being under construction. However, I did find a bonus boot that was not on the guidemap.  The guidemap claims that the boots do change locations from time to time, but an 8 foot tall, 8.5 foot long, & 2.5 foot wide boot is much heavier & harder to move than than the (I)ndy Statues.

Guide map & other information about the boot hunt below, including the $5,000 cost for a boot.

https://www.cheyenne.org/listing/cheyenne-big-boots/263/

They also provide a telephone number you can call to hear the artist tell stories about 18 of the boots they made.  The lettered boots have not been added to the audio tour yet & neither has the bonus boot that I found.

Boot No. 11 - Blue Skies over Cheyenne - CYS Airport - by John Guthrie

Might as well start the hunt while waiting for the whereabouts of my checked bag.

Boot No. 18 - Milestones - Chamber 100th Anniversary aka We've Worked Hard to Get Here - in front of Cheyenne Depot Museum - by Jill Pope

Jill Pope had some funny stories about this & at least one of the other boots she made, including her dog running over the boot & spreading paint all over her living room floor!  I think she is now one of the two contacts involved if a business wants to commision a boot.

Boot No. 14 - Where the Deer & the Antelope Play - Cheyenne Depot Plaza - by Liz Gnagy

These two would fit in with my college friends playing spades & pitch!

Boot No. 03 - Licensed to Boot - Wyoming State Museum - Carey Junior High Art Club 

I have to admit, when I saw the title, my first thought was, "Is this a parody of a James Bond movie?"  However, this is obviously based on License Plates. 

  

Add. Boot G - Happy Birthday Cheyenne! - near the Cheyenne Municipal Court - Ross Lampshire

I found a knight parking post near here too.

Bonus Boot - Title Unknown - Wyoming Trust & Bank - near Boot No. 02 - artist unknown

This was the bonus boot I found while having difficulties finding one of the boors on the map.

Add. Boot F - Walmart Boot - Walmart Distribution Center - Amber Kubot

Location Note: Google Maps takes you down the truck entrance driveway.  Don't go there.  Use the associate/visitor driveway instead.

Boot No. 04 - Atmospheric Research aka NCAR Boot - National Center for Atmospheric Research Supercomputing Center - Ross Lampshire

Images based om computer generated images of atmospheric events like Hurricane Katrina.  More on this location in a bit.

Boot No. 02 - Springtime in Cheyenne - Random Businesses near the Bonus Boot - Rose Burrows

I had a very hard time finding this boot as it blended in and was hidden.

Boot No. 10 - Outlaws of Wyoming - Holliday Park - Cheyenne Artist Guild

22 members painted this. (!)

Boot No. 07 - LCCC Eagle Eye of the Future - Laramie County Community College, South Side of Campus - Ross Lampshire

Same location as the Wyoming Open Chess Tournament, school mascot.

It should be noted that Boot No. 08, LCCC 40 Years of Excellence, was in storage as the area on the north side of Campus was under construction.

There were a few other interesting pieces of artwork that I remember seeing during the Hunt for the Boots.

Artwork on a Traffic Signal Controller - George Cox Parking Facility

Knight post, Cheyenne Municipal Court (Near Add. G)

So, I did visit the National Center for Atmospheric Research Supercomputing Center during the Hunt for the Boots.  It was a fascinating place that explained how they used supercomputers to do calculations of atmospheric events from the past & how they try to model atmospheric events of the future.  While the museum part itself was not very large, they still had numerous stations explaining the atmosphere, the sciences behind the research, the calculation powers required, the methods of cooling the supercomputers to prevent overheating, & the supercomputers themselves.  They are in the process of taking the old supercomputer out, with the current one from 2017 fully in, & a newer supercomputer is scheduled for 2021 +/-.  I was unlucky that particular Friday as the main tour guides were traveling to do a presentation somewhere else and there might not have been a tour on that particular day, but the security guard told me that if you call ahead, sometimes they can do a tour on fridays at noon to bring you into the same room as the supercomputers.  And yes, there were actual people handling the process of the removal of the supercomputer when I was there.  

My original plan was to do the CrossFit Open 20.5 WOD at CrossFit Cheyenne at the 12pm local time frame.  However, since my athletic gear was in the checked bag, & I had to wait until 1 pm to retrieve said checked bag, this delayed my try at the WOD to the 4pm local time spot.  Coach King was very nice to me, reminding me that working out at elevation (Cheyenne is approximately 6000 feet above sea level), may cause additional difficulties.  

So I did 20.5 Scaled

Partitioned anyway you want.

40 muscle-ups pullups

80-cal. row

120 wall-ball shots

Ladies 14-lb. ball to 9 ft.  10#

Gentlemen 20-lb. ball to 10 ft.  14#

Time cap: 20 minutes

Tiebreak time awarded when you finish both the 80 calories & the 120 wallballs.

In this workout, there are many ways to attack this.  I chose this method: (15 Wallballs, 10 Calories, 15 WB, 10 Calories, 10 Pullups) x 4 Rounds

This gives your legs a rest while still doing work. If you struggle with 10 pullups, then stop and continue with next set of WB calories to try to reach your tiebreak time.

When doing this, A) I forgot about the pullups and kept struggling rather than advancing to the next wallballs, & B) the elevation took out my legs as the rowing was more difficult than it should have been.  I finished with 195 reps.

[I redid this when I got home & got 232 scaled reps with a tiebreak time of 16:20.  When I dropped off the pullup bar in the early sets, I went straight to the next set of Wallballs to eventually earn the tiebreak & then chip away at pullups.  I ended up doing 24 of the 32 pullups within that 3:40 remaining.]

The downside of working out so late in the day was that my first round started at 7pm, so I had very little time to shower & down some food before play started.  I remember my heart rate increasing when I had a hard time finding the tournament room at Laramie County Community College, but that's because there was an unintentional error & the wrong room was posted!  Luckily I called the TD Brian & he helped me out to get to the room.

I didn't play well at all in the tournament (Result Link: https://www.wyomingchess.com/2019WyoOpen.html), struggling to win the two games that I won in Rounds 3 & 4.  The TD admitted to wanting to publish my Round 1 loss when I said "Ouch." when I got checkmated by the top seed & eventual tournament winner, so I'll let him publish that.

This trip's game is from Round 3.  I just tried to use his dark squares against him & there wasn't much of an answer.

I didn't think that I won a prize after coughing up the first two rounds, but the TD emailed me on Monday after I returned saying he needed my address.  So I gave him that & received a small prize check.

And this updates the win-loss state map.  Once I'm done with the original 50 states, I will make revisiting the states in red a top priority, saving New York & Pennsylvania for the last two (both are negative double digit differentials).

There's nothing more to report from Wyoming, so unless I take a quick trip somewhere else, I'll see you in Parsippany, NJ in 2020 for the 50th World Amateur Team/US Amateur Team East Tournament!

Note: 2020 may have less states than normal due to some obligations that may take up a big chunk of time.  I will still try to go to at least 2 states, but not likely to hit my normal 4 states that I visited in the last several years.

States No. 25 & 26 - Oklahoma & Kansas

This was a 10-day trip spanning Oklahoma & Kansas.  I'm very late (for reasons I shall not discuss), so let's do this.

I went to Crossfit OKC on Friday afternoon.  Coach Ginny was very good, checked on the athletes as we were doing the strength & then the metcon.  Programming made sense, movements made sense, strength & metcon were pretty good.  Staff & other athletes made me feel welcome.  This place was so good I revisited on Monday with a different coach & got the same results.  If you are in the area, I suggest you drop in!

At the Jerry Spann Memorial, the Tournament Theme was opposite color Bishops.  Each of my last 3 rounds had opposite color Bishops featuring prominently into the decision of the game, & one of the other games that affected the distribution of the Top A prize also had opposite color bishops.

(Note: For some reason, I am having difficulty getting the code to work with my game on the same page.  It has something to do with my annotations where part of the game will publish on my page & then cut off.  Please use the links to view the game in its entirety.  If I get a chance to fix this for good, I will.)

Round 5 - Jerry Spann Memorial, Oklahoma City, OK
http://view.chessbase.com/cbreader/2019/8/11/Game639909343.html

Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum.  This museum has exhibits, pictures, & videos detailing the attack that happened on April 19, 1995.  There is a lot of information covering the days before, the day of, the recovery, & the time period after the event.  One of the criticisms I did have of the museum was that a majority of the videos were too long.  There were at least three videos that I thought circulated more than ten minutes, & that seemed too long if you wanted to watch the entire videos.  I did see the Survivor Tree, the tree that survived the attack, but there weren't many good pictures I could take because museum staff was fixing a display about the tree.

There were quite a few murals & other pieces of artwork in the Bricktown section of Oklahoma City, but I only captured 1 mural & one bridge on my phone.

I encourage you to visit & see these & more.  Miniature golf is nearby, & if you hit a hole in one on #18, you get a free game of laser tag.  If you can, however, please change out of a lime green shirt.  It stands out alot in the dark...

On the next day (Tuesday) I traveled a bit on US Route 66, visiting the Nut House & the Blue Whale of Catoosa.  I picked up a new, neutral hat so I can go back to places where Giants & Knicks hats are not welcome. 

Useful for visiting places like Cream Cheese City, which is decidedly not friendly to Giants & Knicks items.

I also picked up a piece or two of some really good fudge.  Pretty good selection there & plenty of other fun items centered around US Route 66, make sure you drop in. 

The Blue Whale is best to bring kids around to climb up into the structure.  The only thing that would interest adults is the multiple town mileposts.

I just realized I have been to three towns on this post.

I would have liked to continue farther northeast to Mickey Mantle's Childhood Home & the Dairy King as other items/places to visit along US Route 66, but I knew the driving would have been too long for me on that day (6 hours minimum total, not including stops for food & such) & I was battling remnants of an illness. 

On Wednesday, I visited the Sedgwick County Zoo, the Nifty Nut House, & Crossfit Wichita.  For the zoo, a private tour was arranged by an acquaintance.  I loved the Zoo - I thought the zoo staff was delightful in explaining things. 

The Nifty Nut House  had all the main nuts in the center of the shop.  Workers would let you sample one, & then if you liked it, they would measure out in weight how much of the particular nut you wanted.  Warning: Lots & lots of nuts.  I didn't think 3/4 of the combinations I saw were possible.

CrossFit Wichita had a strange warmup: Row once, trying to get the display to stop at 125 meters exactly.  If you are off, the difference is the number of wallballs you have to do (e.g. 113 - do 12 wallballs because you are 12 away from 125).  Row twice, but blind - try to stop exactly at 125 without looking at the screen while rowing.  I was 15 over while sighted & 13 under blind.  Shows how much more I need to know for rowing.

For Thursday, the next stop on the trip was the Museum of World Treasures in Wichita, KS.

So there were interesting dinosaur skeletons that were found within the midwest in the first part of the first floor.  First floor also happened to have a section of the Berlin Wall, artifacts from the Chinese, Hindu, Buddhist, African, Egyptian, & Greek Cultures.  The second floor contained mostly items from various wars, & the US Presidents.  The third floor had items from the old west, but the sports & pop culture sections were sadly not there.

I didn't feel like the organization of the groups that they had was great...the timeline skipped & jumped in quite a few places.  Also, the disappearance of the sports & pop culture sections really was a letdown when I reached the third floor.

I did see an early version of the Kansas State Seal, which was fascinating.

The Keeper of the Plains is a 44-Foot Tall steel sculpture where the Big & Little Arkansas Rivers join together in downtown Wichita.  Recent Renovations, including two new pedestrian foot bridges, help people come to see the daily Ring of Fire show.  The Keeper of the Plains manually lights up for about 15 minutes at night & the scene is beautiful.

If you watched The Lion King back in the 1990s, you should know that the song came to mind when I saw this.

Daytime view of the Keeper of the Plains

Nighttime view, before the lighting

What a sight!

Even from the pedestrian bridge, you can feel the heat!

I struggled quite a bit in the second tournament.  I lost a pawn in Round 1 & had to fight hard to win that game against the same opponent who drew against me in Round 4 in Oklahoma City. 

Round 1 - Kansas State Open, Wichita, KS
http://view.chessbase.com/cbreader/2019/8/11/Game639982343.html

I got thoroughly destroyed in Round 2, using the Petroff Defense, as my kingside was ripped asunder & I lost in 22 moves.  I hung a pawn in Round 3, eventually losing, & may have stolen a theoretical draw in Round 4 in a Rook ending.  I was so tired from the remnants of the illness & my extended play that I offered a draw in Round 5 when I may have had an advantage!

I'll try to remember to put my reviews on Yelp in the next few days.  While I thought Raising Cane's was a disappointment, it should not have surprised me as I think Carl's Jr. & Hardee's have the same parent company.  However, I really liked

Hideaway Pizza, Oklahoma City, within a mile of the Memorial.

An appropriate use of Comic Sans Font!

Maui Magic with Parmesan-Herb Shake Added

Ziggy's, College Hill, Wichita.  Ordered the Costanzwich & loved it.  Also finished a pizza from someone else.

A specific size & the best 'Za in 'Ta?  I think so.

This is a nice piece of art.

Braum's, South of the Tournament, Wichita.  The chocolate Milkshake was heaven.  This is the fast food restaurant that I believe is better than: Raising Cane's, Hardee's, Carl's Jr., In-N-Out, McDonald's, White Castle, Wendy's, & Whataburger.  

Since I have passed the 25th state mark (actually 26), I will conclude this post with my normal updated map & a new map.

Updated #fiftystatesofchess map

New Map - States by Win-Loss Differential

And now onto State No 27, which I would like to do before Southwest Airlines leaves Newark International Airport in November, but the list of new states I can visit is pretty low and the dates I can do it are tight...

State No. 24 - Tennessee

Edit: I want to apologize for this taking so long, but things happen & you don't always get to sit down and tell the story when you want to.

So, the first place I went to was the Arcade Restaurant.  It is Memphis's oldest cafe, & it is turning 100 this year!  The food, while not must-visit quality, was still pretty good.  They had an interesting sign to remind employees & visitors that they do keep their customers in mind, so I thought I would show that here.



National Civil Rights Museum

I visited the National Civil Rights Museum during my stay here.  Unfortunately, due to their social media policies and the fact that I am (however loosely this is defined) a blogger, I'm not allowed to post pictures I took from inside the museum.  To be safe, especially since I don't feel like fighting any legal troubles, I won't post any pictures too much from this part of the trip, even though I do want to.

The museum is really divided into two parts: the Lorraine Motel, which mostly covers the years up to 1968, & then the Legacy, which covers the time after 1968.  The Legacy goes behind the circumstances surrounding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s death & additional civil rights issues from more current times.

Metabolic CrossFit

I dropped in at Metabolic CrossFit on April 19.  Coach Chuck was pretty enthusiastic, & made sure to welcome me in.  I really felt like I was at home, & he gave additional pointers to help out on the clean & jerk.  There was a bit of a temporary snafu with the fact that they had run out of shirts, but Coach Cathy eventually sent me a shirt once their stock was refilled.

Ultimate Ballroom Studio
https://www.facebook.com/UltimateBallroom/

The only thing I forgot to do was take a few pictures here.  This was an amazing place to visit.  The social that I visited was about 1 hour & 15 minutes long.  All of my partners here were good, even if one or two admitted not knowing a few steps I led them through.  The interesting thing is, at the end of this social, they play an entire song for a traveling dance & the ladies line up in a corner.  The men pick up the ladies & travel one circle around the floor, then drop off to pick up the next lady waiting for a turn.  This cycle repeats until the last song ends.  It's an interesting custom that I had not seen before.

Games from the Bluff City Open have been published on the website below for my Rounds 1, 2, & 5.

http://www.memphischess.com/games2019b.html

Mr. Gary Pylant ran a pretty good tournament.  Games started close to schedule & the atmosphere was very similar to the good memories I had at one of my first rated tournaments.  I say close to schedule because there was a humorous delay I think on Saturday where they were trying to wrap up the U1000 section with blitz game tiebreakers.  The blitz went one win & one draw for each player, so they had to go to a fourth tiebreaker with black having draw odds.

I didn't play well at the beginning of the tournament as I had some headaches that bothered me through the first day.

Since Rounds 1, 2, & 5 are published, I'll do a light version of commentary from Round 3 instead.

As I don't quite know why the paste code isn't working, the game will open in a new tab in the link below.

http://view.chessbase.com/cbreader/2019/5/27/Game800933312.html

That concludes State No. 24

State No. 23 - California

I took the flyaway bus from LAX to the Van Nuys Flyaway bus terminal.  As I neared the terminal, I saw the price of gas in the $4 range for mid-grade & super.  Considering I'm used to the prices of gas being somewhere under $3 here in NJ, I'm glad I did not rent a car in California.  I am also glad I did not rent a car in California as there seemed to be traffic clogging I-405 frequently, even after 10am on the Friday morning!

One of the things that amused me on this trip was the stunning lack of LA sports team memorabilia actively worn by people.  Granted, the Chargers & the Rams are only back in LA within the last year or two, but I only saw one Lakers hat (at Eggslut Venice), one Dodgers hat, & no Clippers gear whatsoever!  By contrast, I saw at least 5 Packers gear (hat &/or jacket), three Celtics fans (The Local Peasant - Sherman Oaks), one 49ers fan (The Local Peasant - Sherman Oaks), two Titans hats, & one Trail Blazers hat.  I also saw a Falcons fan & a Patriots fan at Mel's Diner.

I went to Valley CrossFit on Friday morning.  Coach William was pretty good at introducing me to the class, pointing out where things are, & other introductory stuff.  Coach Kris (IG @cleverhandz) taught our 7 am class.  She explained everything that we did, from our warmup on the assault bike to the Lions & Lambs sprint work to the Muscle Ups & Progressions & even a little bit about trying new sports - she encouraged us to play basketball if we had time after class.  She also had a way of inspiring us as she explained things, & she gave pointers & tips through the workout as necessary.  After class, Coach William cleared the space & a few of us played several games of Knockout.  This was a really fun CrossFit visit & I recommend dropping in here if you can.

Area for Playing Basketball

For more pictures from Valley CrossFit, please check my Instagram post for the Valley CrossFit Drop-In.

I went to Eggslut Venice off the recommendation of a family member.  I thought it was overrated & wasn't worth the trip, though I was amused that it was popular enough for them to have a line outside the door.

Now, in planning this trip, I was delighted to find out that the end of US Route 66 is actually close to Los Angeles.  You may well remember that I visited the beginning of US Route 66 in Chicago back in 2015.  The End of US Route 66 is in Santa Monica.  The driving portion of US Route 66 ends at Lincoln Boulevard & Olympic Boulevard where you can see Mel's Drive-In Diner.  But, on the Santa Monica Pier, there is a signpost that says

I explored the Santa Monica Pier & found at least three shops that reference the end of US Route 66.  I may have gone a bit crazy, but I bought shirts for my immediate family & myself.

I saw the menu item for a Route 66 Concrete dessert, & I had to get it!

The Route 66 Concrete Frozen Custard Dessert

By the way, you can get this custard at PierBurger.

I did walk over to the driving end of US Route 66, which is only 1.1 miles to the northeast.  I took note of Mel's Drive-In Diner as a future eating spot, & then I ordered a Lyft to the La Brea Tar Pits.  The La Brea Tar Pits visit was very interesting.  It was fun to learn about the different animals that would get trapped, then the other animals trying to eat the trapped animals getting trapped themselves.

Statistical Figure of animals found at Pit 91.

Pit 13

I ran into a bit of an issue after the La Brea Tar Pits.  You see, I had left my phone location on because I was using it for Lyft & forgot to turn it off.  By the time I was done, my phone was only 28% - & I still had to go to dinner & back to the hotel!  I walked to the first phone store I could see, bought a battery pack that said it was fully charged.  Being that I have the best luck when traveling, it ran out just after I turned the corner.  I walked back to the store, & they said that they would charge it for 15 minutes.  So I sat & waited for that time, while simultaneously resting my feet after 8.91 miles of walking to that point.

After that, I walked to a restaurant that I thought would be a good spot to eat dinner, but the restaurant was closed due to an interior utility problem.  So, I decided to take a lyft back to the hotel, & eat dinner near there.

The driver was nice enough to charge my phone on the hour drive back.  (Yes, Los Angeles has traffic just about all the time it seems.)  I had started coughing before I entered the Lyft, & my driver explained that the air in Los Angeles was particularly foul that week.  I later learned that the fires up north may have had something to do with it.

I ended up eating at Costa Grande, a restaurant about 1.3 miles east of the chess playing hotel.  As I wrote about on my yelp review page, it was a very good place & I am glad I took the time to find it.

The rest of the weekend in Los Angeles was mainly spent eating at a few different places in between chess rounds.  Mel's Drive-In: Santa Monica was very good, In-N-Out Burger was not, & Dough Girl was divine.  I talked about the first & last of these three places on my yelp page.

By the way, walking around Los Angeles was more dangerous than I thought.  There is no space between the stop line & the crosswalk, the drivers here are even worse about not respecting pedestrians in crosswalks as compared to here in New Jersey, & the yellow painted crosswalks do nothing to help that problem.

I got off to a slow start, losing & drawing (where I might have been able to win the drawn game earlier), before charging back to a 3.0/5 round score.  It wasn't enough to win money, but at least I played better after Round 3 started.

[Event "LA Open"] [Site "Los Angeles"] [Date "2018.11.03"] [Round "2"] [White "Oldham, David"] [Black "Chen, Kevin E."] [Result "1/2-1/2"] [ECO "C01"] [WhiteElo "1967"] [BlackElo "1961"] [Annotator "Chen,Kevin E."] [PlyCount "96"] [EventDate "2018.11.03"] [EventType "swiss"] [EventRounds "5"] [EventCountry "USA"] [SourceVersionDate "2018.02.10"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 d6 4. Nf3 Nxe4 5. d4 d5 6. Bd3 Be7 7. c4 O-O 8. Nc3 Nxc3 9. bxc3 dxc4 10. Bxc4 c6 11. h3 Bf5 12. O-O Nd7 13. Re1 Nb6 14. Bb3 Qc7 15. Ne5 Bd6 16. Qf3 Bg6 17. Nxg6 hxg6 {In this position, it is best for White to take advantage of the f-pawn being pinned.} 18. c4 $6 (18. Bg5) (18. Qg4) 18... Rae8 19. Bg5 c5 20. d5 {closes the diagonal for White's light Bishop.} ( 20. dxc5 Bxc5 21. Bf4 {allows White to use h2 as an escape square for his King. }) 20... Qd7 21. Re3 Rxe3 22. fxe3 $6 (22. Qxe3 Re8) (22. Bxe3) 22... Re8 23. Rf1 Be5 24. Bf4 f6 {with the Light Bishop blocked, I have no qualms about this move.} 25. e4 $6 Nc8 26. Qd1 Bxf4 27. Rxf4 Re5 28. Ba4 Qe7 29. Qg4 Nd6 30. Bd7 $6 {[#] I knew this move was wrong, but I didn't know how to exploit it as I was in time trouble & missed an interference shot.} g5 $6 ({Fritz 11 SE:} 30... f5 31. exf5 (31. Be6+ Rxe6 {is even worse for White}) 31... Qxd7 32. Qxg6 Rxf5 33. Rxf5 Nxf5 34. Qh5 Nd6 35. Qh4 b6 36. Kh2 Qf5 37. Qd8+ Qf8 38. Qh4 Qf6 39. Qxf6 gxf6 40. Kg3 Nxc4 41. Kf4 Kf7 42. h4 Ke7 {-2.92/26}) 31. Rf1 Rxe4 ({ Fritz 11 SE:} 31... g6 32. Be6+ Kg7 33. Rc1 Rxe4 34. Qg3 b6 35. a4 Nxc4 36. Qb8 f5 37. Rf1 Qf6 38. Qxa7+ Kh6 39. Kh1 g4 40. hxg4 Rxg4 41. Rf3 Qa1+ 42. Kh2 Qe5+ {-1.69/19}) 32. Be6+ Kf8 33. Qxg5 b6 34. Qg6 Rxe6 {time pressure issue} 35. dxe6 Qxe6 {I really just wanted to create some play with the Knight & Queen vs. the King} 36. Qg3 Nxc4 37. Qb8+ Kf7 38. Qxa7+ Kg6 39. Qa4 Qe3+ 40. Kh1 Nd2 41. Qg4+ Kf7 42. Rd1 Kg8 43. Qd7 Ne4 {[#]} 44. Qe6+ $2 ({Fritz 11 SE:} 44. Qd5+ Kh7 45. Qh5+ {wins instantly with either Rd8# or White playing a Rook vs. Knight ending.}) 44... Kh7 45. Qf5+ Kh6 $1 46. Kh2 {all other moves to avoid the repetition of position lose to a knight fork!} (46. g4 Ng3+) (46. Qd7 Nf2+) ( 46. Qf3 Qxf3 47. gxf3 Nf2+ 48. Kg2 Nxd1) 46... Qg3+ 47. Kg1 (47. Kh1 Nf2+ 48. Kg1 Nxd1) 47... Qe3+ 48. Kh2 (48. Kf1 Ng3#) 48... Qg3+ 1/2-1/2

I forgot to mention in the post-analysis that the ...g6 move was purely to avoid setting my king & f-pawn up in a pin.

I'm glad I talked to the concierge about the flyaway bus after the tournament, as that allowed me to sleep an extra half hour to take the 3:30am bus.  I wasn't happy about Denver announcing that the return flight to EWR has been delayed due to air traffic control, but there wasn't much I could do.  The delay was 2:30, but I still got back in time to do some stuff.

And that concludes State No. 23