Big Ten Day

So the Big Ten conference championships are tonight up here in IC and the breakfast room at the Baymont Inn is packed with parents sporting their college T-shirts and passing around gossip about who's injured and which coaches said what to whom and that sort of thing. The Wife got up at 6 a.m. to go to the grocery because a couple of the moms here decided that the girls, who are staying at the Sheraton in "downtown" Iowa City, needed a special breakfast. Not that they couldn't just walk out the door an pick from a dozen breakfast places, you understand.

We spend yesterday doing taxi cab duty, picking up and dropping off The Daughter and various teammates all over the place. I pumped up tires on The Daughter's Cannondale, which is on her trainer in her room, and also aired up the tires on her clunker downstairs and one of her teammates mountain bikes. The latter was a bit of a problem because someone had apparently ridden it extensively with a flat rear tire and so the tube was all bunched up inside the tire and the tire wasn't seated properly on the rim - none of which I noticed until I blew the tube out. So I had to make a trip to the local bike shop for a new tube for that one. Last night we had dinner at the Iowa River Power restaurant, which is in an old power plant along the Iowa River with a view of the old dam. The food here is pretty good, and the service surprisingly so, but it's a bit pricey for my taste. Anyway, it was one of those team parents things, so we kind of had to go. The weather is supposed to warm up to a positively balmy 45F today and there's some sun peeking out from behind the clouds, so that's encouraging. I spend another 45 minutes on the torture machine in the hotel yesterday evening dripping sweat and generally being uncomfortable and overheated, even though I was keeping the effort level relatively low.

I'm not exactly sure what we're supposed to be doing between now and the meet this evening, although I'm sure The Wife will fill me in with that usual "I told you all this already" look. Iowa will have Live Scoring on the hawkeyesports website tonight for those who are interested. Of course we all have to wear our official yellow and black Hawkeye T-shirts tonight. I will probably try and get some photos for the website in case I never get any from the official photographer. Apparently the team actually still has a reasonable chance of qualifying for Regionals if they have a decent meet. That'll likely mean another expensive and last-minute trip to, I think, Park City Utah. Don't really see being able to afford that trip, and I'll be rather pissed off if it means I have to miss one of the two full weekends of racing down here next month, but of course I'll probably end up going and missing a race as usual.