Feb. 14

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Warm up.





Put your game face on.





Set world record.

Yes, people, that was our kid's name on lane one -- 41 seconds for a women's short-course yards 100 freestyle. The previous record holder was Lisbeth Linton, who went 51.7 at the Australian Short Course meet in 2005. That was meters; according to SwimmingWorld's converter: "0:51.70 in short course meters converts to 0:46.32 in short course yards."

41 -- world record shattered!





What really happened was that the scoreboard messed up. On the previous heat. That board doesn't reflect the swimmers who were in the pool when it froze in that position, nor any semblance of the actual swimmers' actual times.

It took quite a while to fix the scoreboard, too, which leaves everyone who was all ready to race twiddling their thumbs..........



Back outside, so someone whose kid hadn't yet swum could sit.











We looked at a lot of palm fruit in the Bahamas. The local critters must not favor this, or there wouldn't be so much left, I figure.





More excellent bark.







I don't know who these belong to. I wish I had picked one up and pried it open -- they look interesting inside, peeking through the cracks........... I did not enhance the yellow inside; what you see is precisely what the camera remembers.





I don't know who this belongs to, either. I didn't see until I got it up on the "big screen" that someone drilled through to neatly get at each seed.





Counterpoint to the extreme shagginess.

This has its own appeal. Love how every little difference is magnified by the otherwise-smoothness.









Across the street from the aquatic center (to the east) is a parking lot. The 14th was the first time we walked all the way through the parking lot to discover the very nice park directly east of the parking lot.

We won't be seeing any of these, here in A2, for a long time.





Leaves fall off the trees, in Charlotte, but its "winter" isn't like Michigan's!





It's not usual to find nice clean tree silhouettes in urban settings.









What a pleasant place to spend a little time!





At this point we got a phone call, saying it was time for lunch.

We took our swimmer, and the two girls with whom she shared a room in Charlotte, and went in search of food. I had done some hunting down of restaurants and directions before we left home.

Guy Fieri visited Charlotte for his Food Network show "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives," and went to Bar-B-Q King. The girls decided that they had to go there, so we worked on getting there. We knew where the road was, but getting ON that road is oddly difficult. We take that road into town from the airport, and have trouble finding it, and we had trouble finding it at the town end, too.

Strange, because it's a big road..............

Poor girls; we drove them all over the place. But we finally found it.

It is really a drive-in, which none of the girls had seen before. We made up our minds from the little billboard menu thing by the car, pushed the button on the box, gave our order, and a nice man brought out trays and trays of barbecue, onion rings, pie, drinks..........

Eating in the car was tight -- we were glad to have all those trays.

It wasn't the best food I've ever had, but it wasn't bad, and it was certainly an Adventure.



That night there was Senior Recognition before the meet started. There were a lot of seniors. It is rare for our daughter's team to have more than a couple of seniors. The class of '09 actually has more girls than they began with -- two transferred in and only one of the original five quit swimming.

I've been telling you how far away our girls were from spectators -- I was standing on the edge of the pool to take this pic. The boys in white you see behind our seniors are on bleachers just like the ones our girls used during the meet (and are beside the ones our girls used). Eight lanes of pool, between us and them. The pool deck was behind me as I took this pic, and the spectator bleachers are behind that, and up. Pretty far away from the swimmers.





In addition to the distance, and the backlighting, I think I must have had the camera on a weird setting just then. Nearly all of the pics I took were quite worthless. Very blurry and odd -- as though I had it on some sort of long-exposure setting. [annoyed sigh!]

For this purpose the pic is fine (faces decently obscure), and I like the reflection.....





After the meet ended, we all went out to dinner. This was problematic, because of the date. Apparently half of greater Charlotte takes their sweetie to eat at Outback on Valentine's day. It was very crowded, and if we hadn't had a parent with Influence, I don't suppose we'd all have eaten before noon on the 15th.

In past years the parents have eaten in the same room with the swimmers, if at different tables, but this year.... Not. Ah well.

After dinner we dropped our kid at her hotel. Spring break is soon; it won't be long before we get to see her again.

She sent her flowers with us, figuring there was no way she could get them back to Baltimore unscathed.

I found an appropriate vase in our room...........









I'd been looking at this motel-room lamp, plus shadows and reflections, and decided I'd better make an attempt to capture it. I like this lamp a lot better than most.





After visiting Charlotte three Februarys in a row, it is very likely that we'll never go back. Odd, spending that much time driving around, finding restaurants, art museums, etc., and then never again..........

Charlotte, from what we've seen, is a pleasant place. Not too big, not too small. There is a nice shiny new light-rail system, and all the construction makes it look like a city on the move.

Fare well, Charlotte. It's been real.

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