Swim!

Drove to Ithaca, New York this past weekend for the State swimming championships. Jack had qualified in one event, the breast stroke, and so we drove four hours, stayed in a hotel, and fought through the masses of people at Ithaca College to watch our son swim for 25 seconds, after which we'd get back in the car and drive another 4 hours back home.

The first day felt like a huge waste of time. Directions were poor and our 4-hour drive ended up being 5 hours. We got to the college to watch Jack's team finish up its Saturday events, only to find they'd already ended and there was a 2-hour break before the next session. Skipped the team dinner because it was going to be late and we didn't want to keep Jack up. (Plus there was a Pizza Hut directly across the parking lot from our hotel!) We ate pizza, watched a TV Land Gilligan's Island marathon, and wondered why we were there. Throw in a really bad night's sleep (Jack and Kate, who had shared a Queen bed without so much as a cross look for a week at Disney World, bickered over who got to sleep on which side, fought over the middle pillow, and tossed and turned for enough of the night that we finally gave up and separated them around 3 a.m., with me moving over to Jack's bed and Kate moving into ours.

(They slept better after that, but we didn't. At one point I woke up to find Jack sleeping on top of my HEAD -- yes, he was using my skull as a pillow. C'mon, man!)

But the next morning we were starting to feel the enthusiasm, which continued and increased when we arrived at the college. We watched Jack do warm-up laps and dives with his team, both of which were shaky -- his dives are always shaky, and on the laps he seemed to have trouble staying in a lane, frequently drifting over to collide with people coming back the other way.

Half an hour before he was scheduled to swim, he was calling to us from across the pool, so I went to meet him, only to find he'd made his way up to where we were sitting. He was hungry, and had to go to the bathroom, and evidently didn't want to wait on one and couldn't find his way to take care of the other. We gave him a handful of Fritos, I took him to the bathroom, and said oh by the way Jack, good luck, you're swimming in 20 minutes!

As his event approached, Emily was getting more nervous. Me too, worrying about him missing it entirely by getting stuck in a bathroom or falling off the block and being disqualified or somesuch. But no; when it came time, he was there on the block, and started at the right time and everything. We were just hoping he wouldn't finish last...

And he won!

Afterward, we caught his eye across the pool. He raised both arms in the air in excitement and triumph. He ended up finishing 7th overall (he won his heat; there were three in total) out of 30 swimmers; safe to say dramatically better than we dared hope.

We drove home with an extra energy; the four hours seemed like a lot less. We were still excited about his performance; he I think was still excited about the cool new-fangled Soda machine at the restaurant we stopped at for dinner. I got 3 hours of great classic and alternative rock on upstate New York radio. Jack and Kate got a couple of hours of sleep. And we had a state champion (well, 7th) swimmer.