I streamed live video of our workshops on Friday (using my trusty PowerBook and iSight), and also recorded it to the web. In the first workshop, I was the one talking about COPPA, which was sort of a bad idea because it was way over both of our heads. The second workshop worked out better though; I was talking about email obfuscation (nobody, including myself, can pronounce that correctly on their first try), which was ironically easier than the COPPA.
You can watch the second workshop below.
University and Macot name of every NCAA mascot designed by Disney
Brian Jones’ favorite drink. (Who’s Brian Jones?)
Middle names of all AEC members. (What does AEC stand for??)
Jamie Rauch’s wife’s first and middle names. (Who the heck…?)
Nate Rothman’s flight number.
Coasters from three different restaurants.
Signatures from all the BoD vice presidents.
Team picture in of artwork made of zip-ties.
Team picture with three Disney Characters.
Names of the two conferences that will be represented in the 2008 football national championship football game.
Name of the only Division 1A football program to lose to a Division 1AA football program thus far this season.
Four different matchbooks.
Learn and perform, as a team, the “Hotty Toddy”.
One pair of Mickey Ears.
One Mickey Mouse trap.
Gas receipt for $0.01.
One Halloween costume.
10 Facebook message posts on Ali Terry’s wall. (Nobody knows who Ali Terry is.)
Pictures of team with five different Mickey Mouse representations.
Picture of team at morning workout.
At least five different LSC pins.
Picture of at least one team member wearing Trent’s glasses. (Trent Staley is a vice president of USA Swimming.
Sand from Laguna Beach.
When Saturday morning arrived, my team had completed a whopping THREE tasks. But believe it or not, we won. All the other teams did even worse than us.
Note: at the time of this writing, we are sitting in the hall eating sugar and drinking caffeine. Oh, and the time is 3:30am. I’ll provide a full excuse for this in my next post.
You may think I’m just sitting around in workshops and meetings getting fat. But ’tain’t true: we (the 25 or so athletes) took the 5:15am bus yesterday to morning practice at the Janet Evans Complex, where the Olympics were held in 1984. It’s a big outdoor pool with yards and meters (don’t ask me). Swimming outside in the dark great fun.
When we got back, we all headed to the Athlete’s Room for FREE! food and beverages.
Later we went to a leadership seminar being led by Dwight Stones, who was an Olympic high-jumper, and the first ever person to compete and commentate in the same Olympics (not to mention the same event). One of the things he talked about was how he, in his Day, fought the organization for what was Right for the sport. He also talked about how winning a Silver medal as opposed to Gold means that you won a Silver medal — not that you’re just the first loser.
A few days ago, someone who looked sort of exactly like this said to me in the elevator, “Oh, you’re Eamon, I assigned you to your position in the committee.”
It wasn’t until the next day when I saw his name tag that I recognized him as Chris Thompson, the Olympic distance swimmer from Roseburg, Oregon.
I got his autograph sort of on accident, because as an activity to get to know people, we were handed out sheets with questions like, “Are you from the Western Zone”, “Are you from the Eastern Zone?”, “Have you been to Convention more than five times?”. And we were supposed to get people to sign their name on questions that are true for them. Well, I got Chris Thompson to sign “Do you not have a Facebook account?”.
There are several other Olympians here, such as Lenny Krazelburg and Aaron Piersol, although I haven’t seen them yet. But I did see Aaron Piersol’s coach — in the coffee lounge.
Robbert and I will be doing our two web workshops tomorrow from 9am-12pm, and depending on the Wireless Internet Situation™, I’ll try to stream live video to the web. If all works as planned, you’ll be able to watch us live at this link:
Because the convention hadn’t yet started as of Tuesday night, this is how we spent USA Swimming’s money.
Space Mountain was definitely the best ride in the whole place. We would have gone on it twice, had Pirates of the Caribbean not beckoned us to seek its treasure.
Also, we stood in Disneyland’s Longest Line, which took 40 minutes and stretched probably at least a quarter of a mile. The line was for the Submarine Voyage, which is, well, a submarine ride across a mini-lake. But this wasn’t just any submarine ride. If you watch the video below, you’ll see why it was worth the wait…
Disneyland’s Submarine Voyage consists of the 8th largest submarine fleet in the world.
When it was time to leave, we actually got stuck at Disneyland (no, it wasn’t exactly intentional): when we first arrived at Disneyland, we were so excited that we forgot to note where the bus had dropped us off. So afterwards, when we were waiting for the bus which goes back to the hotel, we had no idea which bus it was or where it would be — all we knew was that it leaves at 8:20. We asked someone where the bus going to the Hyatt hotel would stop, and they told us “at the white sign”. Lo and behold, we found a little yellow sign that said “white”! So we waited. And waited. And 8:20 came. And went. And then, we noticed a little arrow under the white sign — pointing to the Real white sign, 50 feet away.
Luckily, the last bus was leaving in 15 minutes, so we still made it back to the hotel.
We arrived in LA this afternoon, after about three hours of flying. The weather is notably different here — meaning, no rain and 80°. There are also more palm trees on each block than in the entire state of Oregon.
I have to get up really early tomorrow for some kind of meeting, so I’ll save the blah blah for later. In the mean time, I’ll be updating this photo gallery every night, so keep checking it.
Below are some yummy photos from today. More coming later.
Robbert and I will be running a web design seminar at a national swimming convention in LA this week, and I’m -=::excited::=-. I’m flying down there tomorrow, so I’ll either be posting a lot while I’m there, or not at all. And I’m kind of hoping I don’t take more than 500 photos… O_o
In other news, we had our first early morning practice today at 5:00am… Is it any coincidence that as soon as our mornings start, I flee leave the state…?
Our set this morning made me question my will to live:
2x{
500 Free/IM by 100’s @ 6:10
500 IM/Free by 100’s @ 6:20
500 IM @ 6:30
}
I was going 90% the whole way, and getting about four seconds rest in between each 500. But it was fun now that it’s over…!
Kate left our set up on the board so the college people can read it and marvel at our superman-powers. We swam 6400 yards overall, which is the record for this season by 100 yards.
In a single day, we trekked through the Arctic, across Africa, all the way to Asia. However, we skipped the North-West for certain obvious reasons. The monkeys were by far the kings of the zoo, in terms of, well, monkey business. We also saw a crocodile try to eat its feeder.
See some of the action below, with lots more on my Web Gallery.
Saturday swim practice this morning completed what I’m really hoping was Hell Week. We swam 6300 yards, or 3.9 miles. Even after we finished the 5×800’s, people were just hanging on the wall, whimpering. This was our set:
