(written Sun 28th, posted ??) - Trip over the pond was fairly uneventful - this is a good thing.  We arrived in Madrid within 10 minutes of every other overnight flight from the US.   So hooked up with Marsha who had flown over via JFK and had little trouble getting a cab to the train station.  Wait in the train station seemed to last forever (really only 2 hours).  Train ride down to Alicante was pleasant.  Didn't feel much like Europe, looked more like we passed through Nebraska, and then Arizona.  Seemed to be good healthy signs of economic growth in all the towns: lots of cranes building new buildings, many buildings looking recently renovated.

Connectivity here is a problem so far.  The hotel is bloody pulse dialing!  But once I get into AT&T's system, it wants only tone dialing, and, thank you Microsoft, the computer doesn't seem to have the ability to pulse dial some and then switch to tone dialing.

Hotel is right across the street from the club, the wind is mostly driven by thermal.  It was hot and hootin' when we got in. 

Additions to weak spanish vocabulary: cafe solo (coffee black).

Idarae was our advance crew, she got in on Friday and was out scouting the town and the weather systems.  We all hooked up the easy way: sit at the street-side cafe in front of the hotel drinking wine and see who shows up.  After a couple hours we had at least two sailing teams and a bunch of umpires.  Only rules was that the newest arrivals had to buy the next bottle of wine.  House red wine is a whooping $7 euro a bottle.  After three hours of between 4 and 12 people drinking we managed a tab that ran all of $47.  I like this!

Our main goal of the day was to make it to 10pm before crashing, which we did.