Belgrade Day 2...

Well, it’s the middle of the second day here in good old Belgrade… Yesterday ended okay, and Sanborn was on top of the leader board for the Dorcol Cup, and Kagan had a good flight also… The flying ended at 7 (extended an hour since there was a lack of timers…) and after that we packed up and went back to the hotel to get cleaned up and then to dinner… Kagan and Sanborn decided to stay at the hall to practice until 10 instead of going back…

We walked a few blocks to a restaurant close to the hotel, and it was really nice… Air conditioning felt good after the hellish day in the hall, and the food was very, very good and rather inexpensive for what we had… would have been at least double in the US for the same thing… I had hard goat cheese (new for me there…) with bread before dinner, a bowl of some kind of chicken and something else soup, and then a filet for the main course… Wine was a local burgundy, and it was a bit different, but good…

The part that sucked was that at dinner I started to feel like I was getting a sore throat… and it kept on getting worse until we got back to the hotel… I went to bed, but was up in a few hours hacking and generally feeling awful… I think that I must have caught something, probably on the plane, and it is either a bad, bad cold or a moderate flu… probably the latter, since I ached pretty badly all night and even so far this day… Of all the things that I packed to make sure I had what I needed, cold and flu medicine wasn’t on the list… I slept on and off until around 11 and then decided that I might as well go in, as it wasn’t really getting much better… So I got a cup of coffee, and caught a cab to the hall… I must have looked like hell, since everyone seemed to notice, even the guys from other teams that didn’t know I was sick…

Fortunately, Nick’s girlfriend had some cold and flu meds, and I took two and felt a little bit better… and as the day went on, the sore throat diminished, and after walking to get some pizza for lunch I actually started to feel about halfway decent… not good by a long shot, but at least not hacking and sore like a few hours ago… Hopefully it only lasts today… Maybe one of the benefits of sitting around sweating continuously in 100+ temperatures is it sweats things out of your system… This is the hottest place that I have ever flown in… I thought that it sometimes got hot in Johnson City at USIC, or Lakehurst in the summer, but this isn’t even close… everyone is pretty much soaked all of the time, and the only relief is every once in a while walking outside where at least there is a breeze… But everyone is flying, mostly test flights, and it’s easy to see why this is one of the most difficult places to fly… lots of broken motors, and in certain areas it is very drifty… Nothing really to get hung up on, but the planes do tend to get sucked into the walls quickly in a few circles, ruining the flights…

Well, a few more hours to go here, and then I’m going to skip dinner and see if I can sleep this off until tomorrow… One more day of the Dorcol Cup, and then the World Championships start on Friday… Don’t want to be a hinderance running around sick… and I’m keeping myself pretty much quarantined and away from our team today so no one else gets sick…

(side note: I couldn’t post earlier since I couldn’t get on the wifi, but I’m not feeling too horrible right now, and I have some Serbian TheraFlu to try tonight… God knows what is in it (even the chemicals are spelled in whatever language it is…) but it can’t hurt… Just feel a bit tired and sore right now, but the coughing is less… Now to see if the bag is at the desk (said it would be there at 4…) with all the stuff we need in two days…