Yesterday, I had my first gara with people from other teams. At about six thirty, Matteo Lucaroni called me telling me that they were about to be at my door, so I should come down. As Daddy was just was just tying the strings of my costume up (there seem to be six million of them), it was perfect timing. I grabbed my belt and ran downstairs. Matteo, Alessio and their father were all wearing sweat clothes. I, of course, asked them where their costumes were. Matteo reassured me, they were going to change when we got to Fossato di Vico.
In the car I was told about all the crazy people I was going to meet that day, the one who made the biggest impression on me was the one nicknamed Bob, after the Simpson character (who I had never heard of) because of his bright red bushy hair. He was really fun to be around. I was also told that you can request people that you want to be on your team, and Matteo had been sure to ask for me to be on his team, both on the form and in person, which was really nice of him because there was very little chance that I would be with someone I know otherwise.
When we got there, there were people all over the place, but we managed to get a parking spot right up against the city, only a couple of meters from where we were shooting. We unloaded what we needed, and the Luceronis changed in the middle of the street (there was nowhere else to go). They made sure I had a bottle of water (I didn't, so they filled one up for me). Then Matteo showed me the gathering point for the archers (there were about 240 of them). My sort of nightmare, being in a crowd of people that I don't know. Matteo was really nice and introduced me (very proudly) as his new student. Eventually, Alessio and his dad joined us, and we milled around for a while before splitting off again.
After a surprisingly short milling around time, a microphone was rigged up and different groups were called out. My group was 17 (considered to be an unlucky number here in Italy); originally my group was supposed to have 13 people, but someone brought his son along and he shot with us, so there were 14 of us in the group. The way things were arranged, each group started at their number's target (as in we started at target 17, group 16 started at target 16 and so on).
The targets were varied and cute. I don't remember exactly what all of them looked like but I'll describe some that caught my memory. The first one (for us) was shaped like some wine barrels. Another one was real interesting. You had four arrows (instead of three, the usual number). The target itself was a piece of paper with a spiderweb, a spider, a fly and a ladybug in it. First you had to shoot at the spider, than the fly, and finally the ladybug, for a total of 30 points (the spider was 5, the fly 10 and the ladybug 15). There were targets placed uphill, targets placed downhill. There was one target placed well above our heads. For one target you had to shoot at a tower, through a window, on your knees. I didn't get a single point on that one. One target had a leafy wall (or more like wooden fence) in front of where you were shooting, so you had to shoot around the wall. On one target, I learned why it is a bad idea to put a target in a gravel pit. The target was about two stories down, and about the size of James when he is curled up. I missed twice, and hit once. One of my arrows survived the encounter, the other two are missing the points. Some of the targets were set up in the dark. One of the targets in the dark was a "special target" meaning the bullseye is not inside a ring worth fewer points. Matteo scored 30 (the maximum) on that one. Some targets were set up in alleys, making them look farther away than the were. For one target, you had to stand on a a slanted board, on another you had to stand on a box. There were all sorts of targets (except moving ones). Some you got points for how quickly you hit the target (if you hit it with you first arrow it was worth 15 points, than 10, than 5, if you didn't hit it in 3 arrows, you got 0).
After we had gone around all 20 targets, we went for lunch. Lunch was very slow and long. A course came out about every forty-five minutes to an hour. During lunch lots of people came up to me and called me brava. When Matteo told me that I had one third place in my age group, I thought he was pulling my leg. Nope. He wasn't. When it came to the prize giving, there was a little glitch. I couldn't be given a medal because I'm not officially enrolled for the real competitions (as apposed to when we are just showing off that we can look cute in costumes and shoot as well). They didn't want to turn me away, because I had done really well (239 points). I got a salami. Problem solved!
We left very soon after the prize giving, well, as soon as I had my salami, we had talked for a bit and they had changed. Everyone we met thought that a salami was a much better prize than the medals that everyone else got. In the car we talked for a bit, about how it had gone for Alessio and his dad. Matteo was prouder of me than he was of himself (he had had a bad day). I was pleased, but at that point incredibly tiered. At one point or another, we all started to nod off.
Then we got to the apartment and I put down my things, changed and ran off to Cavour. All in all, time very well spent.
Ciao,
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