As much as it pains me to say this, The Swim Aid is leaving Minnesota early.  Weather is starting to get bad here and in South Dakota, and their is talk of highways closing in South Dakota.  And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be stuck on a SD highway with nothing to see but corn!

We’re really bummed we can’t stay for the whole meet, we still had some serious chatting to do!  So if you were getting up the nerve to approach us yesterday - sorry!  Should have been faster!  Oh, and remember - don’t be a finals ho, yo!

Because it took me so long to make up my mind if I wanted to go to this meet (I know - what was I thinking?!), I was unable to get deck passes, but it’s okay, because we had some good seats in the stands!

After spending some serious dough at Mall of America and getting through the hell known as Minnesota road construction (seriously, who puts detours IN DETUORS?!?!), we arrived to the meet, just 10 minutes late.  But we still got to see our favorites swim!  We even got in a brief chat with The Lochtenator!  We just reminded him to say the word and we’ll get some Heineken to his house ASAP!

We were supposed to get a snowstorm today, but it never came!  Hopefully it won’t mess up our plans for tomorrow!

Oh, and word to the wise: no grown man in his sane mind would risk jail time to be with a 13-year old.  So doing the “bend and snap” bit is probably not encouraged.  Don’t embarrass yourself anymore.  Kay?  Thanks!

And you thought no Swim Aids would take on the wind and snow in Minnesota for this Grand Prix!  Ha!  It’s like Spring Break weather here for me!  If you don’t believe me, you should think about taking a trip to Brookings, SD!  Brr!

So anyways, this is by far the smallest Swim Aid turnout for a meet - JUST ME!  However, my friend Amanda is with me to keep me company.  We couldn’t make prelims or finals today due to a test in my last class today, but two days of swimming should suffice!  After all, who knows when my next meet will be!

I guess the big news here is that tomorrow is supposed to bring a touch of a blizzard.  That’s nothing for me, but I hope some swimmers brought their coats! I’ll be inside all of the time anyways - hotel, Mall of America, pool.  Awesome, no?

Well, I guess that’s all for this update.  Short and sweet.

Usually, in the fall of an Olympic year, things slow to a stand still. A lot of swimmers take breaks and try to capitalize on the all-to-small window of opportunity that Olympic athletes score following their return from competition. And while we look forward to that, we know we’re going to miss swimming.

We had an exceptionally long drought in the aftermath of last summer’s nationals. That wasn’t the plan, but that’s how things panned out.

So where are we going to get our fix? Your guess is as good as mine!

I’ll probably go spend some quality time with the Ohio State pool that I love so much. Michigan is coming to me this season for a 2-day tri-meet with Penn St. I’m definitely hitting that up. As for more National meets, I’ve been eyeballing the Minnesota Grand Prix and Short Course Nationals. If I can get up to Minny, I can reunite with Carrie and go to the Mall of America. Win-win, right?

But with trips like that, I’ll need to budget like a mad woman, as I have already penciled in that trip to Rome for Worlds. If I have to give up a few domestic meets in order to make it to Rome, then so be it. After all, it’s ROME!! Holla atcha girl!

If I stick around Ohio this fall, then I will absolutely make the trip to Long Beach for the grand prix in January. Kiwi will have relocated to SoCal, not to mention I have family out that way. I’ve been wanting to get to that meet for a couple of years now, so I think it’s about time.

According to the Quad Plan, Austin (TX) is getting a grand prix in March, pre-NCAAs. If all else fails, you may see a group at that meet because 6th St. is beckoning all of us.

Now, if for some reason, we figure out that Rome is an impossibility, we will definitely attend the CP Summer Nationals. IUPUI is hosting in Indy again, and we already have a hotel room. (If you’re thinking about going, we suggest you book yours now, too. You can always cancel later!) We wanted to stay at University Place last year, but couldn’t get a room and the people doing reservations were incompetent. So we ended up staying at the Omni and driving to and from sessions. We’ll be hoofin’ it that 1 block distance this time around.

So, Indy is our backup plan. I’m pretty sure that if we go to Rome, we won’t be able to swing Indy just weeks before that trip. This is the time when I miss Spring Nationals. Having selection meets just a couple of weeks before a major international competition makes it virtually impossible for us to attend both. Were Spring Champs still around, we could go to both. *shakes fist*

So that’s where we’re at with our trip planning. Nothing I’ve mentioned is set in stone, so don’t be surprised if you see a Swim Aid at a meet near you!

Right before finals started on July 4, the crowd was instructed to get loud and that they did! Free shirts were given out so that the colors of our flag were on full display around the Qwest Center. It was awesome! There was also the nightly edition of “the wave”, but we didn’t catch that on video. Kiwi took a video to try and capture some of that excitement. Watch it below:

And the random “woooo” action you hear in background of the video was not us. It was our fave coach, Paul Yetter, who was sitting with us during that session. Yea, I just called him out. So what?!

So it may have taken longer than we anticipated, but the Swim Aids have descended upon Omaha!

Everyone is buzzing about the weather, but I live in the midwest. Our tornado sirens go off every Wednesday, year round, as a test.

Here’s to a week without any further interruptions from Mother Nature!

P.S. Our internet situation is kinda whack right now, so we’ll work on that during the day. (This post is coming from the Sidekick of yours truly)

USA Swimming sent out the press release for next weekend’s Santa Clara International. Pretty standard fare.

But a couple of wire reports promoting the upcoming competition have included the following line:

Swimmers from Australia, Japan and South Africa who already made their Olympic teams also are expected to race

Not gonna lie, this excites me greatly. Getting to watch Leisel and Tara race at last year’s meet was definitely a treat! Love those Aussies!

I’m not going to get ahead of myself, though. It’s not set in stone that I’m even going to make it to Santa Clara. Yea, I know it’s only a week away. It’s complicated, ok?! But kiwi should be there, provided she doesn’t catch the lazies like she did for the Stanford Grand Prix.

Anyway, we anxiously await the psych sheet, which should hit the internets early next week.