Signs of the Apocalypse

First, there was the mass insanity in Washington. Then there was the Norweigian Sky Spiral, followed by the inexplicable selection of The Who over the Blue Öyster Cult for the SuperBowl halftime show, and more recently, the Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

I mean, seriously, who names a volcano "Eyjafjallajokull"?

But these things alone wouldn't have me on the edge of panic all by themselves...after all, there have been other mysterious music selections (ie, Milli Vanilli at the Grammys) and other object-naming anomalies (ie, a group of fully-clothed men being called "Barenaked Ladies", etc.). And Heaven knows there has been insanity and unexplained phenomena in Washington before (ie, Marion Berry, the mysterious resemblance between Chester Alan Arthur and Captain Kangaroo, etc.)



And though it might puzzle me a bit, I really can't claim that it's an apocalyptic omen that Domino's hasn't yet responded to my request to put Spam n' Cinnamon pizza on their menu. But other events are afoot that have me freaking out like Jimmy Carter at the dentist.

Here's the story: It was raining as I drove to the gym. Nothing particularly unusual about that -- in fact, there was that Irish Spring fresh rainstorm scent in the air, my wiper blades were working well, and Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" was on the radio...so life was good. I was anticipating an excellent yoga class, and looking forward to a loose and limber day. But that's when things started to go horribly wrong.

This particular yoga class was mainly about balance; almost every movement required the ability to remain upright while contorted into pretzel-like configurations. And of course, since I'm still really new to this whole genre of exercise, about 90% of the instructions are Greek to me. (Well, OK, they're probably Hindi, but you know what I mean.) So...in addition to having to balance on dicey knees that are still recovering from track practice, I also had to look around the room to see what the heck the other people were doing in order to emulate them since I had no clue what the instructor was saying. And the moment I'd look up, I'd fall down.

I spent the majority of the class appearing to be a clone of Foster Brooks, only funny. Despite the contemplative and non-judgemental atmosphere they try to evoke with the John Tesh music in the room, I could swear I heard numerous giggles from the folks who effortlessly maintained verticality while I splattered and tumbled and toppled. It was so bad that the instructor felt compelled to come over and reassure me after class. She said "You did well!", but I could tell that she was suppressing the urge to pat me on the head and give me Kervorkian's phone number. Sigh.

But I digress; after all, me being clumsy is not particularly ominous, not even unusual. What I saw next, though, sent chills down my spine.

No, I'm not talking about the fat guy in the SpongeBob underwear, nor anything else in the locker room. I'm talking about what I saw when I got to my car in the parking lot. It was covered in mud! It was clean and shiny from the drizzle when I had walked into the gym, and now it appeared that someone had taken the vehicle to go 4-wheeling in the Mojave. From top to bottom, and on all sides, it was splattered with filth.


And so was every other car in the lot. Unless this was some hideously ill-conceived Ashton Kutcher prank, it had apparently rained mud from the sky. I quickly scanned the horizon to make sure that Skynet hadn't started the purge, but the surrounding buildings all seemed to be intact. It wasn't nuclear, then, so it must have been something Biblical.

I'm keeping my eyes open for frogs and such, and if the water in Chatfield suddenly turns red, I'm really going to start to worry. But in the meantime, I've seen no other omens, so perhaps it is just a global warming phenomenon after all. Perhaps instead of praying, all we have to do is dismantle industry, give up all our possessions, and go totally aboriginal.

I think I'll wait a week or so before I jump on the back-to-loincloths bandwagon, though. Who knows? Maybe it was just that some dust blew through the area, and we have nothing to worry about (except finding time to get to the car wash). In any case, I think I'll just take a chill pill and continue my normal routines. I may even work on my balance a bit, just in case the world does continue on for a while. Why not enjoy it while it lasts, right?

Back to the Track

Despite the perfect day Tuesday, I'd have to say that this hasn't been a particularly lovely spring. I suspect that there aren't many poets waxing rhapsodic about the beauty of Nature and the harmony of the Universe right now.



On the other hand, there may be songs written about all the stuff being tossed about by the windstorms. Wednesday could've easily been called "Winds-day." (Actually, that is how we pronounced it back in Kansas...unless we were hungry for hamburgers, in which case it became "Wendy's-day". We'd actually be more likely to go to McDonalds, but that didn't provide the proper proportion of pun, you know?)



Still, even with the blustery breezes, my brother did talk me into going to the track for a sprint workout. He wanted to do some short "burst of power" stuff, which I suppose will help my leg strength and quickness on the court. But I'll go ahead and admit it for all the world to hear: I hate sprints! I'm no good at them, have no talent for ever becoming good at them, and they just plain hurt!

Sigh. I'm afraid I was born a middle-distance guy, and will remain one throughout my entire lifetime, no matter what sort of training I do. Oh sure, I do understand that there's a place in the world for sprinters, God bless 'em. They have particular physical gifts that I can only gawk at in wonder, and they do seem to always be surrounded by supermodels and sycophants. But I suppose the world needs just as many tic-tac-toe players as it needs chess strategists...and I think I'll leave my comment at that and let you deduce what you may.

Anyway, the workout was hard and cruel...just like the wind. (And there probably is a poem in there someplace, isn't there?) Even though I didn't run very far in total, I was exhausted at the end of the workout, and was confident that it would help me improve in some very small and incremental (ie, unmeasurable) way. Similar workouts are on the horizon for the entire summer, I'm sure.

My brother has quite a fixation
On improving his acceleration.
So we went out to run
But it wasn't much fun
'Cuz the wind was a cause of frustration.

OK, so I'm not Walt freakin' Whitman or anything. But perhaps I'll be touched by the Muse when I have a nice middle-distance workout to describe. We'll see.

In the meantime, please try to keep a positive attitude about the weather. Despite Al Gore's efforts to the contrary, I'm sure there are some spectacular days on the horizon, and they'll be here soon. In the meantime, stay indoors if you must, but have a great day!

Baseball

There was snow on the ground Monday morning, but by Tuesday we've got perfect baseball weather. Ya gotta love living in Colorado!

But seriously, Mother Nature, we need to be swimming in the pond soon. It's definitely time to bring out the sun and put some of that massive space-borne fusion explosion mojo to useful work down here on the third rock. We need to crank up that water temp, and soon.

Anyway, because of the chilly wind on Saturday, Tanner and I chose to play racquetball instead of risking frostbite on the tennis court. I was sore and tired from the morning's yoga class, but not to the point where I felt I couldn't crush the youngster's self-esteem with my usual cruel dominance on the court. And for the first two games, this proved to be true. He rolled over like a fainting goat.

Yes, I know that a father is supposed to love and support and nurture his kid, and that some folks would consider me evil for continually thrashing the boy in sports. But remember -- everything I know about parenting comes from 1960s Top 40 Radio:


But in our third game, he was holding his own and I was only ahead by a couple of points. I was running backwards to get in position for a kill shot, and somehow, my foot got stuck on the floor. My body's weight rolled over the ankle and I took a spill. I hit the ground hard! From the size of the SPLAT sound, Tanner thought I had broken every bone in my body, but I was more worried about the torque that my ankle had taken. After a moment of lying there and doing a quick physical inventory, though, I was able to stand up, walk it off, and finish the game.

The poor kid. Not only did he have to watch his old man take a fall that would've killed William Conrad, but then he had to suffer the humiliation of not scoring another point, despite my tender ankle, sore shoulder, and bruised hip.

Hey, maybe he'll write a song about it someday and make a lot of money from it! You never know.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that it's baseball season, and we should all be happy about that. My brother has an extra ticket for the Rockies game, and Ubaldo is pitching, so I'm totally psyched (despite my bruised hip and sore ankle). And everybody seems to be getting into it:

I was watching the construction workers out my office window the other day and noticed a couple of guys who were digging a hole next to a new transformer they were installing. I'm not sure what they were doing with shovels, since the backhoe was chewing up the turf with grand efficiency, but they were down in the pit working as if they were closing in on buried treasure. Even treasure, though, cannot keep you focused on digging when it's baseball weather; at one point, they took a break and stepped several paces away from each other. One dude picked up a dirt clod and lobbed it at the other fellow, who swung at it with his shovel. Goodbye Mr. Spalding! (Or actually, it was more like "Dude, you got dirt in my eye!"...but the shovel-swinger made solid contact, that's for sure.)

Reminded me of swatting pine cones with a handy branch during a hike in the woods, or turning pebbles into fungos with two-by-fours...when you feel it in the air like this, any sort of wood and semi-round object will provide motivation for your inner Mickey Mantle. Anyway, I'm excited to see my first Rockies game of the season. I'll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, pick up a stick or something and swat a few rocks or wiffle balls or anything else that's handy. Better yet, get a real bat and ball and head out to the park. Whatever you do, though, enjoy the spring weather, and have a great day!

Musings

One more thing about my recent trip to Kansas: I booked our hotel on Hotwire.com. I'd never done that before; something about their "You can't know the hotel until after we have your money" policy bugs me. But it was SO much cheaper than booking directly with Super 8, and Tanner is a teenager who can sleep in a pile of cheeto-covered sweatsocks if it means avoiding housework -- so I figured we could stand whatever sort of dump they stuck us in. Turns out it was a fairly nice place, with a big room and a full kitchen, so I'm happy we took the risk.

The weird thing was that the hotel door wasn't open when we arrived. It was after 10pm, so that in itself isn't surprising, but when I picked up the foyer telephone to alert the night clerk to come let us check in, there was no answer. I let it ring a long time, but nobody showed up. Puzzled, I finally hung up and looked around a bit more. Huh, whaddaya know about that? There's a big sign with instructions for check-in hanging on the wall. Of course, it wasn't near the door or the phone or the much more obvious sign telling you to call for assistance -- but it was big. I'm sure I'd have noticed it sooner if it hadn't been so many hours past my bedtime.

The sign said "Find the lock box with your first name on it, and punch the letter buttons to spell your last name to unlock it. Your key is inside." Sure enough, there's was a yellow sticky note that said "Terry" on it, and the box beneath the note did indeed respond to my punching. The key cards let us in, and all was well.

[Side thought: Whoever thought to put Domino's ads on the back of hotel keycards was a genius. It's SO obvious in hindsight, but I bet those cards remained blank for years before anybody finally figured out what to do with that empty space. Tanner thinks it's just another sign of corporate greed and the decadence of American society, but he's an idiot. I think it's a sign of the American passion for helping hungry people connect with the providers of sustenance. It's definitely a win-win thing, and that's what this country is all about, right?]

I'm not sure if I like the idea of a completely self-service hotel. We had no problems, though, and there probably is a small extra sense of security knowing that the doors are never open to the general public. But sometimes you just like the comfort of knowing that there's a fellow behind the counter you can complain to if your toilet is running or your TV is stuck on CNN.

We left before the morning Housekeeping rounds, but I assume there were actual employees roaming the halls later in the day to change the sheets and stuff. I suppose the vacuuming could be done by an army of Roombas, but I don't know if bedmaking robots are commercially available yet. I'll let you know if I find out about that question.

OK, so here's another question, totally unrelated to anything. Over the last couple of days, I've heard multiple references to the Pied Piper. I'll defer the discussion of the appropriateness of putting creepy characters like that into fairy tales told to children (which would also lead to a discussion of why PETA doesn't try to ban animal mutilation songs like "Three Blind Mice", etc., and I just don't want to go there today), but I will express my curiousity about the word "Pied". It's one of those words that is never ever used except to describe this one particular pervert piper. Why should we keep a word active in the language if it's only used in one context?

It's like "petard", which is only used with hoisting references (or by people who mispronounce the names of bald Starship captains.)

The dictionary defines "pied" as meaning "multicolored", but nobody ever uses it that way. And I suspect that the piper was called pied because he wore multicolored clothing, in which case, he should've been called "The Piper with Pied Clothing"...and let's face it, that's just awkward. The only folks I can think of who could properly be called pied people would be these fellows:



But again, that's a pretty limited use of the word, and I don't see it popping up in our daily lexicon with any regularity. I'm thinking that the only proper use of the word today should be as the past tense of a verb. So if you want to talk about someone being pied, talk about this guy:



Yeah, I know; all of my English major friends are going to have a cow over the verb-ization of nouns. But I say it's time for them to re-paradigm themselves. Wouldn't you agreementize with me on this?

That's all I have to say about the topic. Have a great day, my friends! And if you see any pipers (or stooges for that matter), please consider pieing them.

Heritage—The Ancestral Farm

I had been to my dad's childhood home at least once that I remember -- probably while I was in college. At the time, the house had been abandoned for over two decades, and was in poor repair.

Now it's gone.

I wish I had paid better attention during that visit. I wish I had taken photographs. There is nothing at all to document that home's existence. My grandparents lived there while earning a living from the land and my dad was born there, which makes it historically interesting (at least to me). If I could see that house today, I'd study it while imagining what life must've been like a century ago, and what my father's day must've been like as he grew up in the 1920s. I would love to share those impressions with you, and with future generations; but at the time of my only visit to that farmhouse, the entirety of my observation was "This place is falling down."

Here's the spot today:



My grandfather owned and farmed 1/4 of a square mile. I can't imagine how such a small plot of land could sustain a family, especially when part of that area was taken up by a house, a barn, and a duck pond. I suppose it's enough to raise an animal or two, and enough crops to feed the family with some left over...but the additional revenue from such limited acreage hardly seems adequate to provide the comforts of a home and a car, much less the farm equipment required to perform the harvest.

Times were different back then. And it wasn't as though my grandfather was a prosperous farmer; some years were very lean, indeed. I suppose you could eat the ducks from the pond...and a cow and a few chickens could feed a family of three for a long time. But still, it had to be a challenging life.

The ducks do seem to like it there, though. And the soil still seems to be rich enough for a good harvest. It's probably no different than any other 1/4-section farm plot in Kansas, except for the fact that my dad grew up there. Compared to the glory and majesty of the Colorado mountains, a little green plot of land in the middle of a zillion other little green plots may not seem like much...but while I was standing there looking at the pond where my dad used to spend what little leisure time he had between backbreaking farm chores, well, I felt I could really appreciate the beauty and appeal of the place.

In this photo, looking southwest from the pond, you can just barely see Stafford's grain elevator in the distance.



We didn't stay there long; there was nothing to do but look at the empty fields and admire the realistic decoys someone had set in the pond. My dad told us a little more about living there, but without any trace of the house remaining, it was hard to visualize exactly what it was like when he rode his horse to school, played at the pond with his next-farm-over buddy, and cursed the stupid cows he had to milk every evening.

We were able to fill in some of the gaps in my dad's autobiography. There's still some writing and polishing to be done, but the story of his life will eventually be available. The book will include more photos, maps, and details of daily existence as my dad went from small-town life to eventually attain his college degree and work as an engineer in the airplane business. I'll let you know when that project is finished. We're getting close.

There are still a few mysteries, though. We know that my father's paternal granddad served as the town Marshall for a while, and is reputed to have been on a posse that chased Butch Cassidy at one point. His other grandfather fought for the North in the Civil War, and reportedly met Abraham Lincoln. But my dad doesn't remember which relative owned the business discussed in this ad, nor what the heck they were selling. All we know for sure is that members of the family did indeed head for the mountains a couple of generations later.

In addition to touring the town itself and searching through newspaper archives at the library, we also took a trip out to the cemetery. I remember being dragged there as a kid on various Memorial Day excursions -- my Grandma called it "Decoration Day". At that time, my only thoughts were "This is boring," and "When can we leave?" This trip, though, I was fascinated by the family history represented by those stones. I took photos of every grave marker that might provide data for my genealogy research. A large percentage of the families represented here are somehow intertwined with mine.


We completed our visit to Stafford by taking time for a pleasant chat with a couple of my dad's cousins, Ozelle and LaVon. These amiable sisters still live in their old hometown, and brought us up to date on the latest happenings in steadily shrinking Stafford. Turns out that, well...not much is going on there.

And sadly, it appears that the names Ozelle and LaVon are not very popular with parents who are naming their kids today. (There aren't many Comptons or Clancys being born these days, either.) I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's a social tragedy or not. For me, though, it was a good trip and I learned a lot. I think my dad enjoyed revisiting his youth, as well. I doubt he'll ever go back again, but I'm really glad he took the time to share his memories (and those tangible bits of our heritage) with my brother and I, and with my son. Thanks, Dad!

Heritage—Stafford

When you're a little kid, you just kinda go along with whatever your parents tell you to do -- including traveling over the river and through the woods to visit relatives. When you're in your twenties, you have a lot of other things on your mind (girls, jobs, motorcycles, girls, etc.), so you don't spend much time thinking about activities with extended family. In your thirties, you find a therapist to help you deal with the traumas you suffered from doing all the stuff your parents forced you to do when you were a kid...and you begin to understand the myriad ways your family has scarred you and kept you from achieving your full potential. And, finally, somewhere down the road after that, you begin to wonder why you didn't pay better attention to, and more greatly appreciate, the rich heritage spanning the generations leading up to your arrival on this planet.

My late-blooming interest in my heritage has spawned an interest in genealogy, and an accompanying desire to help my father write his autobiography. As part of that project, my brother, my son, and I drove my dad back to his boyhood home town, and spent a day trying to collect as much information as we could about where and how he grew up. (Tanner is still in the "Why are you making me do this boring stuff?" phase, but being the good kid that he is, came along on the trip with minimal protest. The one concession he asked for was the we stop in Hay, KS and eat at Al's Chickenette...which he had heard was the greatest fried chicken restaurant in the world. Not sure if it lived up to that lofty claim, but it was pretty good.)

I doubt that too many songs have been written about the glories and wonders of Stafford, Kansas, nor too many books written about its appeal as a tourist destination. It's a farm town, with very little going on other than providing the basic needs of the folks who work the surrounding land. My dad says it probably had twice its current population when he lived there in the 1920s and 30s, but other than the fact that his paternal grandfather's house was torn down and replaced by a more modern home sometime in the 60s, not a lot has changed. The streets are still made of brick, there's angled parking on main street, and the buildings of my father's youth are still standing.



Some of the buildings are empty and neglected. There certainly wasn't much activity; you could safely cross the street without looking both ways. And the few people we saw were...well, let's just say that the population was NOT dominated by skateboarders and frisbee tossers. There was definitely a bit of a geezer vibe going on.

Here's the building my dad worked in as a teenager. It was a hardware store then:



Tanner pointed out that there wasn't a single foreign car anywhere in the town. All Fords and Chevies. That may be due to the fact that there just aren't many auto dealerships anywhere nearby, but it could also indicate something about the local attitudes and viewpoints. This is America's Heartland, the kind of place that feeds the rest of the country. Most of the residents might be older and resistant to modern trends (like beatniks and hippies and such), but I suspect they remain fiercely proud of their country, and of their contributions to it.

I think my dad enjoyed himself as he ambled through the memories. And though I had been to this town many times as a kid, this was the first time I really tried to pay attention. It was fun to imagine my dad as a gangly teenager, walking to work and then selling hammers and new-fangled radios to the townsfolk. His days in high school were probably filled with the same test-taking and "I wonder if she likes me" anxieties that we all faced; but with no TV cartoons to watch when he got home. No diversity in the classroom, either. But I'm sure they talked about musicians and movie stars with their friends. They played football and baseball just like today's kids; it's just that their caps were worn with the bill to the front. Though the streets were empty now, I could imagine seeing them filled with happy kids running home from school and getting ready to do their evening chores.

The biggest culture shock for me was when we walked into the town's one-and-only diner...and saw people smoking at their table. It's only been a few years since such activities were outlawed where I live, but it's amazing how shocking it is now to be jolted back to the times when puffing cancer sticks with your meal was an accepted and expected way of life. But once that jolt passed by, we had a relaxing and belly-filling interlude. The walls of the diner were covered with interesting jigsaw puzzles to study, and the burgers were quite tasty.

Our other activities in town included driving by my grandmother's childhood home -- it still stands, but is succumbing to entropy. We also asked the local insurance agents if they knew where to find my dad's cousin (they did), and we spent some time at the library doing research. I'll talk about that, and our visit to the ol' homestead in a future post. Until then, thanks for dropping by, have a great day!

Tax Day

Yeah, I know -- you were expecting me to go into a big rant about taxes on April 15th. I think it's in the bylaws of the Blogger's Union that you have to post something on Tax Day regarding how lame the IRS is, or how complicated the forms are...or at least about how stupid Congress is for their continued insanity regarding how our money is being spent. (And don't get me started on the Administration's moronic plan to cripple America's technology infrastructure with the ill-conceived cuts to the human spaceflight program. I'll probably have to rant about that later, but the bottom line is that we really need to replace these twits with someone who isn't ashamed of America's history of leadership. There's nothing wrong with being good at stuff, and with being good in general. But we seem to be in a trend of legislating mediocrity, don't we? Sigh.)

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you, though; I completely missed my opportunity on Tax Day, and I just don't have the energy to go there today. Feel free to complain to the Union if you like, but today's topic has nothing to do with the productivity-killing redistribution of wealth, the disembowelment of industrial capability, or anything remotely related to the Washington housecleaning we need to perform in November.

Nope, this particular column contains nothing but random thoughts for you to ponder. Such as:

How come some oranges split apart into nice neat wedges, and others fall apart into shredded goo-blobs when you attempt to segment them? And why to the segments seem to re-attach themselves to each other when they sit in your lunch sack for a couple of hours?

How long do you think the Mythbusters are going to be able to keep coming up with ideas? I'm not sure what urban legends are still unexplored...other than the ones about the one-armed guy who loses his hook when the teenagers suddenly drive away from Make-Out Point. (There are enough movies about that topic, anyway.) So are they just going to do what my high-school science teacher did...keep repeating the same experiments over and over, just because they explode and keep the rabble entertained? Probably.

And what's up with the remake of "Nightmare on Elm Street"? Why is this needed? Gah. I have absolutely no interest in such a thing. [Random trivia: My college roommate used to work with the father of that bland curly-haired chick from the first Freddy Krueger movie. This fact simply provides more evidence that I am deeply connected to Hollywood, and that it's only a matter of time before I become a huge movie star. Right?]

Anyway, do you think the Mythbusters will start doing shows to investigate other real-life legends? Maybe some that aren't all that well-known by the general public...like how Roger Neugent jumped out the 4th floor window at Oliver Hall (carrying a fire extinguisher, no less), and only suffered a few cracked vertebrae. Or how Mickey Canaday rode a tandem bicycle for 15 miles while being towed with 10 feet of rope behind a Ford Pinto at 65 mph. Or how an irrestibly charming and intelligent marching band member such as myself could make it all the way through high school and college without getting a date. Many such mysteries exist, I'm sure.

And while we're on the topic of investigative TV shows, I find myself tempted to perform my own "Ghosthunters" experiment. It seems to me that if you collected a dozen hours of recordings (from anywhere), you'd probably be able to find a .5-second clip in there somewhere that you couldn't explain. I think I might go through some of my old video footage and see what sorts of spooky mumblings I could extract. I'm sure with the proper suggestive dialog, I could convince someone that it's from the spirit world. (It may just be the refrigerator compressor cycling...but if you have someone listen to it while prompting them that it sounds like a deep voice chanting "Four score and seven years ago", they'll probably buy into the idea of Lincoln haunting your pantry.)

Hauntings and problematic citrus fruit aside, I hope that your Spring is off to a great start, and that you are enjoying the nice weather, etc. I promise that I'll try to give you a good Tax Day blog next year, but in the meantime, enjoy pondering the mysteries of the Universe, OK? Have a great day!

COMSA State Championships 2010

Normal people spend their lovely Spring weekends playing outdoors, whistling happy tunes while they fertilize their lawn, sanitize their laundry, or revitalize their family with a lovely minivan trip up to Nederland or something. Me, I spend the entire time in a damp and noisy cavern with hundreds of dripping wet psychopaths who enjoy tormenting themselves by plunging into a chlorine-infested water tank to see how quickly they can propel their bodies back and forth for no particular reward other than personal pride, a tiny wrinkled ribbon, and the occasional opportunity to say "In your face, Jeff Maguoirk!"

Yes, that's right...it's the annual Colorado Masters Swimming Association State Championship Masters Swim Meet. It began on Friday afternoon and continued until Sunday evening; starting with hope, optimism, and fire in the belly, etc...and ended with an overwhelming need for pizza, beer, and a good night's sleep. I was completely exhausted by the end of it.

And that exhaustion is all @#$%! John Tobin's fault.

Let me explain: The inimitable Mr. Tobin is a fixture within the Colorado swimming community, and is always full of energy, ideas, and the charismatic persuasiveness to talk other people into acting as crazy as he is. In the past, he has championed such traditions as the beer relay, the Brute Squad, and the rubber chicken hanging from the backstroke flags. This year, his dementia sprouted the idea of the "5050 Challenge", which urged participants to release whatever sanity they might have possessed and sign up for the maximum swim yardage allowed by the meet organizers. The total yardage swum by doing this is 5,050 yards (~2.87 miles), which doesn't seem like all that much. But when each yard of that distance is an all-out race against obnoxious rivals begging to be squashed (aka the aforementioned Mr. Maguoirk), well, it becomes a tad grueling as the weekend plays out.

By my last event, I could barely hoist myself up onto the starting blocks -- and when the 70-year-old geezer in the next lane zipped ahead of me at the 100 mark and I urged my muscles to the attack, they responded with a rousing chorus of "No más, amigo. No más." Sigh.

The good news is that everyone else on my team swam great, and I am intensely proud of them. Not only did they exhibit excellent form, power, and passion in their own events, but they also provided support for their teammates, as well as enthusiastic cameraderie on deck and after the meet. I am truly blessed to have such good friends and solid teammates, and I got a great kick out of their participation and performance.

The other good news is that I felt I swam pretty hard myself. I tried to pace well, finish hard, and leave it all in the pool. I can truly say that I put an intense effort into every race, and don't know how I could've gone any faster. (Well, except for training harder, improving my technique, and eating far less pie, of course.) And thanks to Mike Mann's magnanimous decision not to swim the 1650 or the 200 butterfly, I even picked up a couple of First Place ribbons. Whoo hoo!

The bad news...well, the bad news is that I came out on the short end of the rivalry stick. Just as Superman has Lex Luthor and Spiderman has Aunt May, I have found myself pitted against the evil and treacherous Mr. Maguoirk for the past couple of years. Oh don't get me wrong, I don't hate him, and I'm certainly not in a position to pity the fool...in fact, I consider Jeff to be a great guy and am pleased to call him a friend. But I still don't want him to ever beat me. Ever.

Last year, we split the meet fairly evenly. He won some, I won some. Good grudge matches all, and good fun for everyone. But this year, he totally mopped the floor with me. Oh sure, he gave me a couple of token victories (by .1 seconds in the 200 back, for example), but in most races beat me like a drum. The margins were large, and the humiliation great. If there'd have been post-race reporters on deck, they'd have been asking questions like "How does it feel to get your butt kicked so badly by this guy? How will you ever face your family again?", etc.

And to make matters worse, Scott Newcombe and Kent Carney also beat me in events where I should've been able to hold them off. So now there are a couple of new rivalries that are also begging for revenge. (And we're not even going to talk about that uppity 70-year-old speedster geezer...Grrr.) Ahhh, my friends, there is much work to do before the 2011 meet. Much work indeed.

So don't be surprised if you see me downloading MP3s of the "Theme from Rocky", slurping steroid-laced milkshakes, and running up mountainsides carrying huge logs on my back, etc. I am focused, man. I'm gonna be intense. Don't even think of tempting me with pie, OK?

Well, maybe just one slice...every now and then. But mostly, no!

Anyway, I was also going to tell you about some of the record-setting swims I witnessed at the meet. (There were some serious studs there.) And the venue was rich with visual delights, from the giant Dr. Phibes ventilation fans to the high quality of babe-a-liciousness wandering the deck. We had entertainment in the form of old guys who forgot what events they were swimming, cup-stacking competitions down the hall, Tobin's rubber chickens, and creatively-applied temporary team tattoos. But I'm out of time for now, so those stories will have to wait until later. In the meantime, thank you for your support, and have a great day!