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This is my very favorite tree in Ohio.
There are way more of these big sycamores in Ohio than up here in Michigan.
This tree, white against its darker neighbors, is on the outside curve of the road that leads from Mt. Vernon to Gambier. Kenyon College is mostly at the top of the hill directly behind this tree. To get to the pool, we continue around the curve, drive a little more east, and then turn onto the campus.
Swim meets can be very odd. Sometimes your kid swims the first 30 seconds of a meet, and that's it.
Our kid swam less than 30 seconds, the morning of the 5th.
We took her and two of her friends out to lunch in Mt. Vernon, delivered them back to Gambier, and then returned to Mt. Vernon to chill and nap in our nice hotel room.
I keep going on about the nice hotel because our hotel last year was Just Plain Nasty. We had to buy shampoo. And water (the hotel's water was totally full of sulfur and iron, so we wanted something else to drink and use for brushing our teeth). And we decided to buy towels, because the towels were thin. Scratchy. Stained with something that looked like car-engine grease. The floor was icky enough that we didn't want to go barefoot. "Eeuwwhhhh" doesn't really begin to cover it. We didn't spend an extra moment there (prefering the Millenium Athletic Facility, which has comfy chairs I didn't show you this year). (At least the bed seemed clean last year, as a sole saving grace.............)
Ok. Cleansing breath. That was then, this is now..........
There is a river behind the very nice Comfort Inn in Mt. Vernon, Ohio.
Please excuse a bit of anachronism as I give you some mise en scene (Saturday the 6th was snowy!). The next shot was taken from the car, in the corner of the back part of the hotel parking lot. The low dark thing at right (behind the telephone pole) is the top of the stone bridge, which carries a road over the river.
Ok, back to Friday the 5th. The cool parts of the stone bridge, without the boring cars going across the top.
Yes, the white stuff is snow. My bare hands were Really Cold when I went in just after looking at the leaves in the grass.
We snoozed a bit, and ate something. The sun sank lower in the sky. This tree was in front of the hotel.
Back in Gambier, swimmers got ready for the evening session.
This is a heat of the women's 200 (4x50) free relay. I like the splash in the calm water.....
Once you are done swimming for the session, you can shower and dress. It was cold on deck; I'm sure it felt good to be dry.
Cheering for a medley relay. In a medley relay, one swimmer does backstroke, one does breaststroke, one does butterfly, and one does freestyle (each goes the same distance).
Backstrokers can actually see their teammates cheering for them.
As a last taste of swim on Dec. 5, I offer you a heat of the men's 50 free. It is kind of astounding how fast they go, how hard they kick, how much of a "bow wave" they generate....
This is not the fastest heat (which, for reasons that escape me, had only 6 swimmers, and so wasn't as impressive as a pool-ful).
Almost all of these guys swam 50 yards in under 21 seconds..............
After the meet, we delivered swimmers to the dining hall at the top of the hill (which was very close to where they were staying), and then we went back to Mt. Vernon. We decided to pick up salad and bread and cheese at Krogers.
(When we have a car, we bring a cooler packed with paper plates, plastic cereal bowls, napkins, plastic silverware, a paring knife, scissors, twisties and clothespins for closing up open bags of whatever......... I tend to bring a hot pot and ceramic cups and tea bags even without a car, but those things come with the cooler, too. So we are set up to eat whatever we may like to acquire at a grocery..... Sometimes we need the cooler to be a cooler, but the rooms in the very nice Comfort Inn in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, have fridges *with* freezers, and microwaves......)
I was caught by the flowers near Krogers' entrance, and my DH went in search of provisions.
I wouldn't automatically think to put chartreuse with red, but ... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
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