Backgammon

For those of you that have either known us a long time, or vacationed with us, you know that we usually bring a couple of games with us when we travel. A deck of cards is usual. But what is always in the suitcase, or carry on, is a backgammon board.

John and I have been playing this game for over 39 years. We started playing when we were dating and have continued to play all these years. For those of you reading this blog, blah, blah, blah.....
you know that we moved and packed and I don't know where anything is. We have probably 10 backgammon boards, the travel kind (that pack easily), the beach kind (that roll up into a beach bag), the formal kind (that you can leave on the coffee table), and the ones with missing pieces and mismatched dice. DO YOU THINK I COULD HAVE PACKED ONE OF THEM?????? No, and I have no idea where they live right now, could be a storage unit in Lake Geneva or Milwaukee, have not a clue which one. So.....

We have to buy one here so we can play on the beach, it's tradition.

We looked at a couple of stores and finally found one at the Big W.

It was a combo, checkers and backgammon, a two-fer! We were excited to open it and play it on Elliott Heads Beach, photo below.

Elliott's Head Beach low tide

The Board

Now look carefully at the board. You will see there are some missing pieces that are replaced with coins of Australia decent.
The kit was missing 7-8 pieces but we made the best of it by using the coins. This is not the first time we have had missing pieces. We've lost pieces in the Smokey Mnt. National Park way back when John had a temper tantrum and flipped the board onto the forest floor, I made him find the lost ones, which wasn't easy considering his defect. He's color blind. the pieces where green and brown, he can't tell the difference and they melded into the back drop of the leaves and foliage. I just watched as he struggled to find them. He could tell I was going to be a strict parent, this was basically his "timeout".

The pieces have gone missing in Geneva Lake, as have dice, off the pier, never to be recovered. We have placed the new board and pieces in our beach bag, ready to play when we get the chance. We've played on a ship, on a plane, on a train, and every location where we've vacationed. It's one of things we enjoy playing, even when one of loses, which always happens. 

John has become quite the player as he discovered playing "online" with people from all over the world. He would get home from a long shift and switch on the computer to de-stress from the life saving and frustrations of his profession. I have to admit that his playing for hours after his shift did get under my skin.  I would wake up hours after his shift was to end and think "wow, he had a tough shift, so late getting to bed....feel badly for him".... only to change my mind when I wandered downstairs to see him glued to the computer playing and loosing track of how long he'd been there. He stopped this as we geared up to move and he needed the time to sort and pack, and here, well we pay for all our online time, so it isn't happening here. 

Maybe, just maybe, I can catch up to his skill level.