We’ve been back for a week but this is my first chance at posting pictures. I brought my old Rebel down to the beach since I didn’t want to lug the 1DMKII and managed to shoot some pictures before the shutter failed. I had just gotten some good pictures of all the kids when I decided to look at the images on the LCD when I noticed that the bottom half of the latest pictures was all black. The trusty Rebel has bitten the dust. Given its age and the cost to repair, I’m better off buying a used 20D as a backup rather than getting it fixed.
But I got some decent pictures, I think. At least good enough for a Christmas card coming to you in about 4 months! And this year we went with a good friend of mine from law school, so we had 11 folks total at the beach. It was loads of fun and as usual, very relaxing. I hesitate to even post the name of the place because we like having it all to ourselves!
As usual, click on the picture to launch the full gallery.
Things are still moving along at their hectic pace here and it shows no signs of slowing. Ordinarily swim team would be done by now, with the kids having their last meet last Saturday (the team won the Division championship again, by the way). But both kids did well enough that they made All-Stars, so now they’ve got one more week of practice plus races this Saturday.
Kate still has soccer once a week and is in basketball camp this week. Ben plays a tennis match tomorrow, and still plays golf. He hasn’t made it to a single soccer practice because of conflicts with other sports but at least basketball is done. But football practice starts the week of Aug. 9th! If only we could figure out teleporting!
I wrapped up taking pictures and managing the website for the swim team, so at least that’s off my plate. See the pictures here: HCCC page on Reach for the Wall. I’ve got some videos from the last meet too. Caveat: Ted is the videographer. No more need be said.
First up: Kate’s 100 IM race. She’s in the third lane from the top. They sometimes combine races when their aren’t enough swimmers to fill all the lanes so that they can shorten the meet. It was most welcome on Saturday, since it was 105 degrees, and boiling on the concrete pool deck. She was psyched to tie the 10 year old boy swimming next to her.
Staying with the Kate theme, the next two videos illustrate her pre-teen attitude perfectly. She’s either ignoring her parents or being mortified by them.
Next is Ben’s 50 meter butterfly race. He’s in the fourth lane from the top. He’s been shaving lots of time off his fly this year and told his coach before this race that he would drop another second (that’s huge in swim terms). His seed time was about a second slower than the fastest guy on the other team so he would have had to drop almost two seconds to win the race. Watch what happens.
And then we have the 13-14 year old boys’ medley relay. Ben is swimming the fly here too, in the fourth lane from the top. The really interesting stuff happens around the 1:30 mark. At that point, you hear the splash of the other team’s swimmer as he hits the water for their fly leg of the race. Ben doesn’t hit the water until the 1:40 mark, 10 seconds behind. He MAKES UP that 10 second lead and ties the race at the end of his leg. Unfortunately, our team only has 2 14-year old boys so the other 2 legs had to be swum by 10 year olds. They are fast 10 year olds, but no match for 14 year olds, so we lost. But what a race from Ben!
And then finally, here is a video of the championship trophy presentation. You might notice that the kids are also wearing their championship t-shirts, having put them on at the end of the meet like the NBA or NFL players do at the end of their championship. And swim teams don’t douse their coaches in Gatorade — they get their dunking in the pool!
