Embargo? What embargo?

The team is off to Havana, Cuba tomorrow for the last grand prix world cup of the season. I am not going to get started about the embargo but I think it's crazy that I am going to leave Rochester at 6:20am and I won't be in Havana until about 10pm. Why is that? Well, not only do I have to make plane reservations with an agency in Canada, but I also have to go through Cancun in order to get to Cuba. The lay over in Cancun for the one flight a day to Cuba is about eight hours.

Cancun for eight hours with the team isn't so bad. One year, one of the coaches decided to dare the rest of the team, for money, that he couldn't leave a slice of jalapeno pepper up his nose for the eight hour lay over. He's a bit insane and ended up winning about $40-I think we took pity on him three hours later and let him take the pepper out when his nose was inflamed and red. These are the things we do on these trips-very grown up and mature.

Anyways, enough about jalapeno peppers, this is supposed to be a serious blog about training for the Olympics.

The world cup in Cuba will be both an individual and team event starting Wednesday and ending on Friday. My hope for this year is that all the electricity will be able to stay on during the entire tournament. In addition to the intermittent electricity, there is intermittent/no air conditioning. The hotel turned off the air conditioning to the rooms in order to provide power to the fencing tournament that was taking place on the second floor of the hotel. The things we take for granted, like a working power grid.

As I think about how things were last year at this tournament, a few things come up. Cuba was my first world cup back and at that point I was still working on the Westly campaign in California. I feel like it's been ages since then and I am very curious to see how different I am and feel at this competition.

I also remember that last year was a bit of an administrative mess with the organizing committee of the competition. The competition ended up taking place in one day as apposed to two because they kept messing up the world rankings and names of the competitors. I ended up having to email the FIE (international fencing association) in Cuba for the Cuban federation because they weren't too sure what was going on. By email I mean, somehow send a message through the most archaic computer and email system I have ever seen. When I finished emailing the FIE, I was a translator between the Cubans and the Russian team. I spoke to the Cubans in Spanish of course and then I would translate back and forth to the Russians. And I wonder why I chose international relations as my collegiate course of study.

It's off to Cuba tomorrow. My schedule after the competition looks a bit like this:

6/16-6/20- training camp in Houston, TX at Salle Mauro
6/20-6/24- World Cup in Las Vegas, NV
6/24-6/28- home
6/28-7/5- National Championships in Miami, FL

The marathon continues.