Big Ten Memphis Blues

The Daughter's last gymnastics meet was a tough and emotional loss. The team had been on a roll for three events, on track for one of their best meets of the season and a solid 4th place finish at the Big Ten Championships being held at Penn State. The final event was Beam, but one of their Beam workers injured her knee on the previous event and a backup was quickly substituted. They had already rallied to ovecome a bad landing on vault and an unexpected fall on bars. When it came to the beam rotation, however, it was a meltdown. The first beam routine had two falls and, as often happens in gymnastics, it seemed contagious. The Daughter's performance was good, but not quite what she was hoping for as her last competitive routine - ever. A few of the others, however, were nothing less than disasterous. In the end, the team dropped from 4th to 6th, eliminating whatever slim hope they had to qualify for the Regional Championships. It reminded me a lot of my last competitive high school swimming meet. I was team captain and we were at the state championships in Baton Rouge at the old LSU Natatorium. For the first time since I'd been on the team, we lost the state championships that day. In my own main event, the 400 free, I finished, once again, behind the same guy to whom I'd been finishing second all year. It was disappointing and frustrating, and knowing that, for me, there would be no "next year," just made it all that much worse. Game over. But a year later, I'd find myself riding 80 mile road races and trying to figure out a whole new sport.

I don't know where I heard it, but someone once said that if you give someone the experience of winning, even just once, he'll spend the rest of his life trying to get that feeling back again. So true. Still trying.....

So early this morning we drove back to the the airport for the 3-plane trip back to New Orleans. The flight was going fine until the pilot came on the loudspeaker and announced that we were in a holding pattern waiting for the weather to clear. Well, to make a long story short, we finally landed almost an hour late. So we literally ran through the Minneapolis airport in order to make our connecting flight, only to find that it had been delayed ten minutes. Then it was delayed another half-hour, then they announced there was a mechanical problem, and then, finally, they went and got another plane. By then, there was no way we were going to make our next connecting flight in Memphis, which is where I have been sitting for the last few hours waiting for the last flight to New Orleans. Ate dinner at the Blue Note cafe' in the airport. Meanwhile, The Daughter is also stranded in Pennsylvania due to weather.

As I'm typing this, they are pushing back the departure time for my flight by another half-hour. Here we go again.....

Long weekend. At least I had lots of time to post the results of the 2-Person Time Trial!