April 17 -- masters' swim -- state meet

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On Sunday we got up early, showered and ate, packed the car, and checked out of the hotel.  The rain had stopped, but it was *VERY* windy, and only in the 40s (F).  We dropped the swimmer by the pool door, and took the dog for a quick walk.  I was wearing a fleece jacket, and a wind-breaker.  My wind-breaker was not up to the task. I could feel the wind blowing right through it.

It was pretty nasty outside.

Luckily, it was much nicer inside.

This is a frame of video -- in the third lane from the left, you see my daughter on her way to winning (in her age group) the 200 yard freestyle!  Only a couple of women went faster than she in this event (and only a few men!).

Yesterday I mentioned a couple of differences between masters' swim and high-school/college swim.  I'll add that the average amount of time needed to get out of the water is much higher at a masters' meet, and also that a fast woman goes faster than a much higher proportion of the men than she did in high school or college.

As with practically anything, there is a vast dimension of skill and talent in swimming.  The heights are very high indeed.  A person can be very good, even extremely good, and there are people who are still better.

I have described our family experience with competitive swimming this way -- For an ordinary person, my daughter is a very good swimmer.  For a very good swimmer, my daughter is an ordinary person.

This reality is starkly clear when your high school team includes two future Olympians.

Some people can do things that we will never (ever) be able to do, no matter how hard and diligently we work........  Which surely doesn't mean that we shouldn't practice those things, hard and diligently, and do them as best we can, should we choose to!  Being fastest of all is not the only reward (improving our personal best is also satisfying)........



It struck me, on the 17th, that masters' meets are the first opportunities we've had to watch our daughter compete with other ordinary people.  No Olympians, nor current NCAA champions, in this pool, on this weekend.....

It is exciting to have such people on your team, and it is exciting to watch them swim.  On the other hand, it can be nice to have them be ... elsewhere, filling up the fastest heats of someone else's races.  It is rather excellent go to a meet where they are not present, and find that you belong in the fastest heat of all your events!

(Ed. note:  No Olympians in the pool, but there was an Olympian's brother.....  A name we recognized as belonging to four brothers who swam at boys' state meets we attended, when our daughter was in high school......  The brothers went on to swim for the University of Michigan.  All four qualified to try out for the Olympics in 2008, and one swam for the USA at the Olympics in 2004 and 2008.  It was the oldest of the brothers who swam at the masters' meet on the 16th and 17th.  You'll know I'm predisposed to find him intelligent and charming, when I mention he complimented my daughter on one of her swims.)



After the morning session, we went out to get some lunch.  Another chain restaurant, but this time everything was ok.  It is sad when "ok" is an improvement, and -- what a contrast to the food in France, where finding something good is so much easier (as the proportion of truly good food to the rest is so much higher)..........  Julia is right -- eating really is different, in France, from the way it is here..............  The French care about food to a degree that is rare amongst people here in the USA.

I do think this is changing, but it has an uphill battle, as I thought yesterday, when I saw a 49-cent loaf of what an awful lot of people here think of as "bread." If something supposedly edible is cheap and there's a lot of it, and better yet, it has a lot of salt and grease, most people here think it's "good."  Nevermind if the "bread" is tasteless and gummy, or if the "meal" is 80% fat, contains 273% of your daily sodium, and the sole spot of color is the ketchup.................

Thank you, Mom, for caring about nutrition, and for feeding us actual food rather than the stuff an awful lot of Americans eat!



After lunch, we went back to the high school.  We had some time, before the meet would resume.  The kid stayed in the wind-rocked car, reading, while my better half and I took the dog on another quick walk.

In the middle of one of the baseball areas, there was a goose egg on the grass.  It was still cold and still WINDY, but you knew I had to stop and get a pic of that.

I'd seen some Canada geese the day before, so I wasn't totally surprised to see an egg, but goodness.  It was on grass, right in the middle of the playing area.  Nothing remotely nesty anywhere near.

Perhaps it was laid by an inexperienced young mother.............  Or a thoughtless older one.  (This is making me wonder -- how much control does a bird have over when an egg is laid?  There must be SOME control, or more eggs would land in other-than-nest places.......  A puzzlement.)



Wilbur had NO interest in the egg.  I'm not sure he even noticed it.  You see him expressing his opinion that it is HIGH time to GET MOVING and get back in the car, out of the wind!!!!!!!

I asked to have a foot placed near the egg, so we could see how big it was.  I don't think you can tell from this, but I bet that egg was 4" in its longest dimension.  Large.

W. in the back seat, in his "room," in his towel nest.  On Sunday morning, I covered him in towels (and covered the side vents of the crate).  Just before I left him, I ran the car for a bit, to warm up the inside.  When I came out, he was asleep, and, when I checked, nice and warm.  I had wondered how he'd do, alone in the car while we cheered for swimmers, but he was fine.

Outside the car, it was still windy.  VERY windy.  But at least the clouds were breaking up.  With the sun shining, even part of the time, it warmed up quite satisfactorily in the car.  (The goose egg was actually visible from here, but I'm not seeing it in this pic.....)

Our swimmer didn't swim until the middle of the afternoon.  Wilbur and I hung out in the car.  He napped.  I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

I'd read it before, and enjoyed it.  My daughter checked it out of the library, and brought it to Grand Rapids.  I'd finished Julia, and hadn't brought a novel, so I read it again. And enjoyed it again. It's very nicely written -- smooth and clever and humorous. The dark parts (dealing with WWII, the occupation of Guernsey by the Germans, and the aftermath of the war) are handled directly but not harrowingly (all the bad things happened in the past, though some do come to light during the book's present).

It's impossible not to wish that I knew Juliet, and could expect a letter in response when I wrote to her......

I recommend it highly, as another book that takes you away to a different time and place.....  Guernsey sounds like a paradise.  In peacetime, anyway......

Where was I, over the weekend? Grand Rapids, a swim meet, France (especially Paris), London, Guernsey........



The afternoon was splendidly successful in the pool.

At about 5:00, we started eastward for home.

On the drive over, and back, we listened to podcasts from A History of the World in 100 Objects. What an interesting concept!!!

My daughter had downloaded a bunch of the 10-minute episodes to her ipod (which plugs into the car's audio system). We heard about an Olmec mask, a Roman silver pepper pot, a Chinese bell, a Peruvian embroidered textile.... Some of the "objects" weren't, exactly -- we heard the episode on pepper....

The BBC has done an excellent job of focusing on, and explaining, the way the objects were woven into their times and cultures.... Very interesting (though a bit frustrating -- I wanted to SEE the objects! They can be seen online, of course, so I am looking my way through them.....).



Where was I, over the weekend? Grand Rapids, a swim meet, France (especially Paris), London, Guernsey........  And Mexico, Britain, China, Peru.....

We drove home, through serious wind gusts, on dry (and not too crowded) Michigan expressways, learning about objects from around the globe that were 2500 - 1500 years old.

Snapping the odd pic, here and there, of Big Sky,

Big (apparently very productive) Fields,

and more Big Sky.

A safe and not-too-long trip (about two hours), lightened by edification.

We were all glad to be home, after a very good weekend away.



One more weekend thought -- I was reading a blogger who said she really didn't understand how people could be bored, when there was so much infinitely fascinating stuff to observe, everywhere. I have to agree -- not only the natural world, but the internet, and the library.............. Adding an interested and interesting 22-yr-old to your household is an excellent way to diversify the mix of things you notice and investigate. The books she's reading, the movies she checks out of the library, the podcasts, the music............ Definitely an enhancement to our lives.

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