I had not played in a Regional since 2017 and was not planning on playing in the Finger Lakes Regional this past August as I had really scaled back on my playing.  In April of this year I got a call from an ex co-worker that now lives in Virginia, who I had introduced to Duplicate back in the 1990’s – guess you could say he was my protégé.  He was wondering if I would be interested in playing the Finger Lakes Regional because he was coming up this way for a couple days anyways.  I told him that I was not “tournament sharp” but if he wanted to do it I would commit to two days.  So  I started ramping up my local bridge dates to get more practice and we spent time via email discussing our convention card and treatments.  Jumping to the end of the story, we had the good fortune of finishing first overall in the Mid Flight our first day and missed by three points repeating the following day.  It certainly exceeded my expectations!