strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive: see sydney 2002
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
Nov 16 02: dust; settling
Honey, we’re home. Film en route was The Bourne Identity. Apparently Nathan Lane was in the first-class cabin the whole way from LAX. Saw him at the baggage pickup wearing a blue sweatshirt and an aura of studied inconspicuousness. Our car service never showed—apparently somebody’s assistant dropped the ball, again—but it was okay because we took a cab. It’s not like it was a big deal to stand around in the cold and rainy, anyhow. The apartment building still stands, and our home has not been burglarized. In our absence, we received 11 phone messages, 8 of which were pre-recorded spam; numberless skillions of e-mails; and about 40 lbs of good old-fashioned postal mail. Let the digging-out begin!
Much unpacking to do. But it’s good to be here.
it is
This blog and its annotations are hereby returned to Eastern Standard Time. That is all.vacancy
Am spending the second night in a row at “brother-out-law” Rob’s house in Oakland hills. Second night in a row: no Rob. Actually, he was here last night but was asleep by the time we returned from the evening’s festivities (see below). Saw him for about 5 minutes this morning, but you y’all know how useful I am directly post-waking, so it didn’t count for much. Tonight he’s out doing something lawyerly.
I am getting a ride from him to the airport tomorrow, so total time with Rob this trip is expected to be about 25 minutes. Given that he was an ostensible reason for this visit to the Bay Area in the first place, I find this odd. And a pity, moreover. We like Rob. But okay, whatever. Next time.
notes on pasta
Did the big dinner with University beloveds last night. I was too whacked out from jetlag to be much fun, but I gave coherence my best shot, just to be a sport. River Madison Walker is nearly two and beautiful and fabulous. Her daddy Scott is going to go blind because he keeps his monitor cranked to its tiniest possible resolution, but other than that he is very well. Britton Walker is her usual Superwoman self. Rich was about as jetlagged as I was. He has cried uncle and is returning to the States on 12/16. He’s totally burnt out on the job (as much as he loved Tokyo) and has some mysterious girlfriend in Boston whom we need more info about—so he’s coming home, and we are all the richer for it. Kelly Wade Dragoo was not pictured; baby, you need to get us your current phone numbers so we can get you to these things.ramble on
Paul is playing Rob’s guitar in the next room. What is that—Zeppelin, I think? Whatever it is, I’d missed that sound.even more importantly
I’d like to point out that bit above that says to the airport tomorrow. I’m going home! Tomorrow! Plane arrives about 8pm, for those of you who were waiting impatiently; the car service will get us home by 10. Feel free to call us and tell us how much you missed us.Oh, I can’t wait to be home.
Nov 14 02: right back where I started from
Am in CA, wildly jetlagged. Pablo is here too, and that makes everything better. Would have gotten more sleep last night but was up most of the night with food poisoning—was it Qantas? Was it LAX? Surely it couldn’t have been Mom’s home-cooked meal. Anyway, I am all kinds of flooby at present as a result.
Plan for tonight: dinner with Rich Brewer (in from Tokyo), the Walkers, and K. Wade Dragoo, in the city. Tomorrow: picnic with Mom, followed by dinner with Dad. Purchased the LOTR: FOTR hyper-extended set yesterday but it appears we won’t be able to actually watch it until we get to NYC.
Arrive NYC Saturday. Am I ever looking forward to getting home. (And that has nothing to do with movie-watching, either.)
Nov 12 02: another observation
Also recommended: grabbing an aforementioned small smiley boy and turning him upside down. Suspend him by his ankles and present him to the camera like a prizewinning marlin; tickle him until his laughter makes the dishes rattle in the kitchen. Switch to the other small smiley boy and repeat.
Good for the soul.
Nov 11 02: t < 24
Just got off the phone with Pablo, who has arrived in San Francisco safe and sound. I’m now even readier to return to the States than I was before.
high culture
Tonight’s entertainment: beer, Tim Tams, and The Blues Brothers on VHS. Sure, I’m ready to go home, but this will do nicely until then.
Nov 10 02: review: feersum endjinn
Heather is out at the gym. I just couldn’t get enthusiastic about an Aquarobics session today, for reasons I can’t fathom. So I stayed here and finished my book.
The book is Iain M. Banks’ Feersum Endjinn. I’m a huge fan of Banks’ work: it’s intelligent, inventive, and surprising. He writes tragedy and hilarity with equal grace. In the SF sphere, he’s best known for his Culture novels, a series of works all sharing the same galaxy-spanning socialist utopia. The fun is the exploration of what happens after you’ve founded the perfect society, where nobody lacks for anything and your personal freedom is paramount. What is such a culture’s responsibility to the civilizations it encounters? How can you enshrine an enlightened, hands-off approach to other people’s business and still wage wars, hot or cold, if you feel they suit your purposes? Fabulous stuff. Feersum Endjinn is not a novel about the Culture, though.
FE is told, mostly, from a quartet of viewpoints: a scientist, a disembodied colonel, a naïve young woman, and a boy hoo rites lik thees coz sumfingz rong wif hiz hed. The world is plunging into a cloud of sun-obscuring dust; a nameless naked lady has just been spat out of a family crypt; the VR that connects everybody’s heads is behaving strangely; and Ergates the talking ant has been carried off by a mysterious bird. Why is the government opposing all attempts to investigate the situation?
I’ve tried to write a more coherent synopsis a dozen times now and failed. An explanation of all the brilliant and crazy things contained therein would be as long as the book itself and nowhere near as fun. And I haven’t even mentioned how the entire population of humanity is living inside a gargantuan castle called Serehfa, with rooms kilometers long by kilometers high and towers with summits unseen in millennia. Or how people get to live eight lives and then sometimes end up turned into animals, which have their own common computer networks.
There. See? It all sounds bonkers. But as usual Banks makes it all work. Rich characterization, a keen sociological eye, and all kinds of fascinating stuff going on in the margings. Pretty much all of his work is highly recommended: check it out.
brought to you by…
This bit is a shout-out to the Galaxy Bookshop. I hadn’t intended to do any sort of Big Shopping while in Sydney—and then I wandered into this place. Huge selection, and because Australia is Commonwealth you can find things here that aren’t in print in the States. Like Ian McDonald’s most recent novels, for instance. Why does he not have a US publisher these days? Or a collected re-issue of LeGuin’s first four Earthsea books. Or Miéville’s King Rat. Heaven.I dropped some cash, and it was great. I am set for the plane ride home, let me tell you.
Nov 9 02: hi, mom
Left the hotel in Sydney today; am spending the next few days at the home of the delightful Heather Doering Mitchell and her family. Heather is Cornell class of 1989 and an old drinking buddy. We’re in Roseville, an hour or so north of the city. As a friend explained to me yesterday, this is the Australian Dream: every family with their own house and their own yard. Hence, staggering suburban sprawl—but the houses (and the yards) are nice. There’s a stunning bougainvillea out in the back in full bloom: an eye-wrenching shade of purple. Also the ubiquitous jacaranda, the tree which will be one of my most lasting visual associations with my trip Down Under. Heather has two kids whom I’m meeting for the first time today: Campbell (age hey-did-you-know-I’ll-be-5-next-week) and Tom (18 months). Campbell is obsessed with airplanes and airports. The house is full of hand-made signs telling you which way to the taxi stand, where you can park, where the fire extinguishers are, and what you can (and can’t) bring on the plane in your carry-on bags. Right now he’s telling me about the train that runs through the basement that will take me to the Sydney Airport.
heh. Cute.
agenda
While I’m here Heather and I are hoping to do a coupla touristy things that I never got an opportunity to do while running around with the queers. We’ll see how it goes.For instance—I realized on the bus on the way out here that I have no photos of the Sydney Opera House. Every time I saw it I thought about how it is one of the most-photographed buildings on Earth. And how striking a thing it really is when seen in person. But I never did get around to taking a picture…
I did get lots of photos of Hugh making up Jim for the Black Party. That will get a gallery unto itself upon my return, mark my words.
wait! what happened on Friday?
Oh, right: the Pink Flamingo.I guess I should start this report with one final piece of historical information: prior to these Games, Team New York Aquatics had not won a Pink Flamingo competition—has not even placed in a PF competition—in the last several years. In recent memory, even.
synopsis
Here’s how our PF went.Little Nikki Webster skips out onto the beach. She spreads her towel, applies sunscreen, and promptly falls asleep (looking as though she had been hit with a rock). As she sleeps, she dreams of the sea life of her beloved Australia: a wiggly green worm, a pink jellyfish, a couple of big random tropical fish, two graceful nudibranch. [sign holders hold up sign 1: “Nikki’s Nightmare: SOUTH PACIFIC”] [music: from the Sydney 2000 opening ceremonies, Nikki’s underwater fantasia theme]
The fish swirl enchantingly about the stage…until Auntie Jack and Thin Arthur arrive! They wake up Nikki and throw her into the pool. Auntie Jack shouts at her to “Swim damn you, or I’ll rip your bloody arms off! And I will, too!” Her dream has turned into a horrible nightmare! The happy sea life is replaced with fish skeletons and signs reading “Toxic Waste” and “No Swimming” and “Danger” and they all swim around her menacingly. Aieee! [sign holders hold up sign 2: “Nikki’s Nightmare: SOUTH PASSAIC, New Jersey”]
Little Nikki finally escapes the horrible toxic waters and drags herself out onto the deck, exhausted. Where is she now? It’s some kind of…cheesy tiki bar? [sign holders hold up sign 3: “The Bada-Bing! Lounge welcomes the Sopranos’ Tiki Night!”] The cast of the Sopranos strides into the bar and glares at her. [music: “Got Yourself a Gun,” aka the Sopranos Theme]
Suddenly the music changes. A man in a sailor’s hat strides onto the stage and sings “There is Nothing Like a Dame.” He sounds suspicously like Bernadette Peters, but who’s counting? He spies Nikki and plants a big one on her lips. Nikki finds this unsettling, but she is quickly distracted by the beginning of a fabulous synchronized swimming display, to an orchestral arrangement of the same song.
35 seconds into the synchro, the Sopranos become bored. The swimmers are summarily executed; their corpses drift aimlessly in the water. [music abrubptly cuts off]
Nikki screams. It’s all going horrible again! And now the big tiki heads at the back of the bar stand up. Inside are three Nikki Clones, dressed just like her! They begin to dance [music: Kylie Minogue, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.”] and move towards her menacingly. The corpses of the synchro performers stand up and do the same. Nikki screams again!
Showing the pluck that made her an international star, for about 17 minutes, Little Nikki begins to sing her big ‘aren’t we all one big family and isn’t the future bright’ number. [music: Sydney 2000 opening ceremonies, Nikki Webster singing “Under the Southern Sky”] The entire ensemble joins her in a series of interpretive hand motions. Vendors appear in the stands selling Nikki t-shirts and “Nikki on a Stick” fashion dolls. Nikki is raised on the shoulders of the crowd triumphant.
And then the Sopranos fit her with a pair of cement shoes and drop her in. The ensemble waves a happy goodbye to little Nikki (except the lounge singer, who weeps despondently). Exeunt. [music: Sydney 2000 opening ceremonies, end-of-Nikki’s-dream-everybody-leaves-the-field theme.]
Yes, we did all that in under 5 minutes.
…and?
And the crowd went wild! The locals ate it up! They recognized Nikki and Thin Arthur and Auntie Jack right off the bat! (Which is a good thing, because the Americans had no idea what was going on.) They loved the fish! We won the “Best Interpretation of Theme” award, which was a case of Aussie Chardonnay! And we took third in the overall judging!Jubilation reigned. Much of the PF squad went to the Sydney Tower’s revolving restaurant to celebrate. Spectacular view.
denouement
Yesterday, we went to Palm Beach, another trip well north of the city. Great beach, and then late in the afternoon there were parasurfers, who were amazing.Last night: the closing ceremonies—much less grand than the opening—and then the Farewell Party, at which a few thousand people danced until 5 am. Extremely fun, but clearly much easier to do if you’re on heavy drugs, which I would like to stress I was not. I wore my olive green neotrad Utilikilt.
That’s all for now. There’s an almost-5-year-old who is parading up and down the hallway outside this room singing “Eleanor Rigby.” Between that and the lack of sleep, my ability to construct sentences is collapsing catastrophically.
Nov 7 02: flowers and bats
Spent the first half of yesterday wandering through Sydney’s lovely botanic gardens. They’re huge, immaculately maintained, and free. Took many pictures of plants…and then we turned the corner and went into the Palm Grove, and saw the inhabitants.
And I don’t mean the palm trees. The Palm Grove is home to thousands of grey-headed flying foxes. Spectacular; they hung like huge leathery melons off the trees’ higher branches. We were surprised at how active they were—you expect bats to be asleep and therefore inert during the day, but they squabbled amongst themselves if they were feeling overcrowded, and every now and then one would go zipping through the air in search of a better perch. They were magnificent, with wingpans that were easily a couple of feet across. My digital camera displays the typical lag when you push the button, so it’s not great for that kind of fast-twitch photography, but I spent many minutes making a valiant attempt to get a shot of one of them in flight. We’ll see if anything came of it. It’s not an insect-eating species, which would explain why there are so @#$%^&* flies in this town…they’re frugivores. Apparently the entire colony spreads out across Sydney every night to feast on the fruits and flowers of the local trees. Tempting to go over there at sunset to see that happen.
pf 101
There wasn’t time for that yesterday, though, as I had to get myself out to the pool for an in-water pink flamingo rehearsal. The performance is this afternoon, you know.I guess it’s time to give the uninitiated that explanation I’ve been promising. The Pink Flamingo Relay began innocently enough. Don’t these things always? Years ago, it was just a “fun relay” held at the end of many meets on the gay swim circuit. Each team in the meet would send four swimmers; the swimmers would swim a relay race in which a pink plastic lawn flamingo was passed from swimmer to swimmer as a baton. Pretty straightforward.
Predictably, TNYA became bored with this after a while. One afternoon our relay representatives strode out onto the deck in big crazy drag: hats, gloves, black spandex sheath dresses. And then swam the race while wearing all it. The other teams were amused until we won the race. The crowd went berserk. TNYA blew kisses to the throngs and wore their laurels with style, baby.
The next time somebody threw a PF at a meet, everybody showed up in drag. Surprise. And things went along this way for a little while, until somebody decided that the teams should be properly announced as they arrived, so now each team was providing the announcer with a little script to read as they entered the field of play.
TNYA eventually got bored with that, too. So at one fateful meet they carried out a cunning plan. It was a tribute to Marlo Thomas in That Girl. The announcer began to read his script, talking about how lovely Ann Marie had fallen into the photocopier at her latest new job. Enter our relay team: four men dressed in identical A-line dresses, bright sunshine yellow with white flowers, wearing matching gloves and flip-flop sandals and perky flip wigs.
The announcer went on. The photocopier was out of control; Ann Marie, without the handsome Ned to bail her out, couldn’t contain the forces she had unleashed.
And suddenly the pool area was filling with Marlos. The entire team was streaming in through every available door, in perky flip wigs and sunshiny A-line dresses. Marlos were in the stands handing out resumés. The crowd, of course, went wild, as mobs of Marlos took their places to cheer on the relay team. The officials sounded the starting beeper…
…and TNYA, drunk on the limelight, moved in for the kill. 67 Marlo Thomases decided to pile into the pool from either end of lane 4. Flip-flop sandals bobbed across the surface as the two mobs of Marlos met in the middle. The other teams swam on, valiantly trying to preserve the athletic dignity of the event, but the giddy Marlos laughed and splashed and waved at the crowd. The crowd loved them back. Chaos reigned.
Who won the race? Nobody seems to remember. But precedent had been set once again; history had been made. From this point on, the skit that got your team out onto the deck was vastly more important than the race they swam when they got there. Cast lists swelled; musical numbers and costumes and props and choreography were dragged in; synchronized swimming became de rigeur. The modern PF has pretty much dispensed with the race entirely. Leave it to a bunch of queers to find a way to include a floor-show competition in a swim meet.
At last report, more than 1500 people had purchased tickets to see the PF competition today. It’s considered one of the highlights of any Gay Games or IGLA championships. It gets the media coverage that the rest of the swim meet—hell, pretty much the rest of the Games—generally doesn’t. A guy from San Francisco set an American record the other day in the pool, but the thing that brings ‘em in is the prospect of seeing that same guy dressed as a dancing vegetable, or perhaps doing his best Esther Williams in a French maid’s uniform.
This year, the PF theme is “South Pacific.” We’ll be presenting a thing that (without giving too much away) incorporates that darling Nikki Webster from the opening ceremonies from Sydney 2000 with old Aussie TV shows, Kylie Minogue, and the Sopranos. It’ll be brilliant. Trust us.
Don’t ask who’s wearing the pink dress, though. I don’t know. No, really. No idea. You can’t make me tell.
Anyway, I gotta go now.
Nov 6 02: fin
Today was my last day of racing. Started the morning with a 200 Breast. Did it in 3:12, I think. Something like that. Not a bad time, and it felt good as it went by. At this point I don’t trust my notes on my PR times are any more, so I’m not going to worry about it. It was fun. Coach Rob pulled me out of the 4x200 Free relay that followed, because (a) there were others who were available to do it; (b) I was feeling a little woozy—I’m either overtired, undernourished, or coming down with something; and (c) he wanted me to be really ready for the 4x100 Medley relay later in the afternoon….
5:19.15
And that was our time. We won the heat. We won our age division. We won a freakin’ gold medal. How cool is that? My personal contribution was 100 meters of breast stroke in 1:22. Zing!on to the fun part
So. My final day of competition ends with a little souvenir. I’d like to thank all family and friends who supported me as I worked to get myself to this point, most especially the charming Mr. Phillips. I couldn’t be prouder of this, and I’m immensely grateful to all those who helped me realize this thing. Woo hoo!So…I’m free! Tonight, assuming I don’t just take a nap instead, I’m going to go have some dinner with the gang and take in some of the cultural festival that’s been going on all week. There’s some sort of modern dance performance on Bondi Beach that sounds promising. Tomorrow, who knows. I have a pink flamingo rehearsal—yes, I know I promised to explain what that meant; I’ll get to it sooner or later—in the afternoon, so another day at the beach is probably not an option.
yesterday’s beach trip
Was fun. A combination of buses took me through the city’s northern suburbs; I walked through a residential area full of flowering trees and with a spectacular view of the water and then down through a small bit of the Sydney Harbor National Park. The air smelled like eucalyptus, until it smelled like the ocean. I got a glimpse of life as it is lived around here, and I’m glad. I have notes, but they’ll have to wait; I’m off to clean up for dinner now.Best to all.
shout-out
Confidential to the 3am caller: Charles says he’s sorry he hung up on you. I’m in Room 38 should you wanna try it again—but check the time-differential first.Nov 4 02: day 2
Another three races, and again, they all felt great at the time. Reports were that they looked fabulous from the stands as well—and isn’t that the important part?
Anyway. First up was the 400 IM. I did it in 5:56.6, I think, which was about 9 seconds off where I wanted to be; and the regular reader will correctly assume that I was pretty disappointed in that, regardless of any of the supportive things being said by my gang in the stands. But then I did the 100 Free a little later and set an honest-to-god no-ambiguity PR. 1:04.77. So there. And I did it despite having to make a last-minute goggles swap—my trusty pair broke while I was putting them on, about 3 minutes before race time. Good thing I packed a spare set. And then I swam the butterfly leg of a 4x100 medley relay. My spare goggles came off as I hit the water, and ended up across my upper lip for the duration, but the guy next to me started a couple seconds ahead of me and ended up a few seconds behind me. Heh.
Clearly, at some point I need to more closely examine the kind of pressure I put myself under at these things; if it’s this easy to forget that I swim because it’s really fun, then I’m doing something wrong. Yesterday’s entry was shockingly whiny. Sorry about that.
deep breath
I don’t have any more races until tomorrow, so last night I was able to actually go out and have a couple of beers with the gang. There was a cocktail reception for the big NYC group at a waterfront bar last night: free drinks, the sun setting over Darling Harbour, waitresses with little pizzas to nosh on. Kangaroo: mmmm. Then Malaysian food at the Temple of Love, which has a really big, really happy Buddha smiling over the diners. Also mmmmm. I highly recommend the Asian food next time you’re in Australia. Even the lunchtime food courts in the business district have knockout stuff.And now I’m off to the beach. The morning is achingly beautiful: clear blue sky, warm breeze. What am I doing in front of a Web terminal? I’m out of here. More later.
Nov 3 02: aftermath, day 1
Three races today. All three of them felt strong: very in control of my form, very competent in the water. First thing this morning I did the 200 Free with a time of about 2:27. (I don’t have the official results in front of me, so I’m reporting from memory.) That was 2 seconds off my personal-best goal; when I do the math upon my return, I’ll know how close I came. The numbers may even reveal that I managed to come in right under the wire there, but I doubt it. Did one leg of the men’s 4x100 Free relay, with a split time of 1:04.9. That one was a personal best. (Although we took no medal, which I think irritated one of my cohort. He’d been piling on the “we’re in medal contention, you guys have to swim really fast” until Hugh and I told him to cut it out. He suggested that we were insufficiently competitive, but I tried to explain that if I didn’t take competition seriously then that kind of pressure wouldn’t turn me into a raving stressball.) Finally, did the 200 IM in 2:46.8 or so. That was about 7 seconds off my goal and a long way from the personal best I wanted. By this point I still felt strong in the water but had gone into some sort of “adrenaline debt,” and no matter which songs I turned up to 11 in my head I couldn’t rev myself up to really go in the same way I had before. My brain had been wrung dry of its fight-or-flight juices.Okay, these things happen. I can live with this.
no, not whatever
No, disregard the equanimity displayed above. In truth, I did the neurosis two-step for a couple hours after my last race. Despite feeling so strong in the water, despite my teammates having said I looked great from the stands, despite the idea that being exhausted after a long day was a reasonable thing to happen, I felt everything collapse. Somehow, the one “failure” undermined the successes of the day. And as much as I came into this thing not expecting to medal in anything, the idea that I’m not likely to medal in anything also stings.Why am I so obsessed with proving that I am Number One when you can be damn good at something and still not win every race? Or even any races? Why am I trying to read not setting personal records as some sort of invalidation of the work I put in to get to this point? Is this all just my common sense evaporating in the face of hunger and overtiredness?
Probably.
why so tired?
I didn’t get enough food or sleep last night because I was at the Opening Ceremonies, and they ran long. They were like all the Opening Ceremonies you’ve seen on the Olympic broadcasts: dancers, singers, crowd stunts, speeches. Not without its appeal. But really, the most inspiring thing was just seeing the thousands of athletes from all over the planet—Tonga, Iraq, South Africa, Taiwan, Mexico, Columbus OH—all there to do their best and have some fun and be able to prove to the world and/or to themselves that there are a whole lot of us and that we are a whole lot tougher than the world likes to tell itself.Entertainment highlight of the evening: no, not the inevitable army of drag queens. It was the incomparable kd lang! Can that woman ever sing. The audience returned the favor by serenading her with “Happy Birthday,” because, well, it was her birthday. Once she was finished, I bailed out of the stadium—had to be up at 5:45 today to catch a 6:25 train to the Olympic Park to take advantage of the 7-8 AM warmup period in the main pool. So I could be ready for my first race, 9ish.
It took forever to get back to the hotel, because I couldn’t find the damn shuttlebus stop. So I walked. I had Raisin Bran and some mixed nuts and various other things we had in the kitchen for dinner, because it was late. Actually, that’s not true: I had Sultana Bran. What is the difference between a raisin and a sultana? I don’t know. They seemed pretty raisiny to me. Must ask an Aussie for some insight there.
pulling oneself together
Okay, so what have we learned, class?* Andrew needs to be less critical of his performance at the pool.
* Andrew needs to get a grip.
* Andrew needs to get more sleep tonight so he can be prepared to kick some serious butt tomorrow in the 400 IM. After all, hasn’t he been saying that he wants to set a new PR in that single event more than anything else?
Right. All of the above. And if I can combine the sense of strength and capability from today’s races with a large burst of adrenaline and sufficient preparatory eating and sleeping…well, we’ll see, but it seems like a reasonable plan.
I still don’t intend to shave my chest for this, mind you. Instead, I’ve bolstered my psychological edge by painting my toenails a shocking shade of metallic blue-green, to go with our new team suits. It’s quite fetching.
Wish me luck, folks.
Nov 1 02: revision
Got the event timetable wrong yesterday. Here’s my actual schedule, sans the relays which I still haven’t adequately researched:
- Sunday: 200 Free, 200 IM
- Monday: 400 IM, 100 Free
- Wednesday: 200 Breast
So, um, if anybody’s out there lighting candles on my behalf, now you have the proper data.
resistance
I’m entering the pre-races stressed out of my head over every little thing phase of the meet. And having agonized to an absurd degree, I have reached the following conclusion:I really don’t want to shave down for this meet.
I hate the grow-back period, I’m terrified of a repeat of the full-body razor burn I experienced at Montréal some years back, and frankly, I’m rather fond of my chest hair.
If I swim tomorrow and feel as though I need more of a psychological edge, or if I’m just not fast enough, or something, I’ll shave down for the 400. But at the moment I am choosing Not To. I’ve tried to balance the potential (small) speed gain against the little voices shouting “Noooo! I don’t waaaaaannaaaaa” and the little voices won. This may make me Not Suitably Hardcore, but for the moment I can live with that.
I fear I may yet drive roommate Hugh insane with my endless overanalysis of this stuff. If not myself.
Oct 31 02: Friday
It’s early afternoon, which wouldn’t really be noteworthy but for the fact that my brain finally agrees that it’s early afternoon. I keep waking up at 4:30, but I can always fall back asleep again, so it’s nonfatal. The team met again today at one of the public pools, and I’m starting to feel like myself again in the water as well. Which is nice. If memory serves, here’s my schedule of individual events:
- Sunday: 200 Free, 200 IM
- Monday: 400 IM
- Tuesday: 100 Breast
- Wednesday: 200 Breast
My big focus is on the IM events, especially the 400, which is a ridiculous “overachiever’s race” if ever there was one. A hundred meters each of fly, back, breast, and free, in that order. (The secret is to do whatever it takes to survive the butterfly portion, and not to go blasting out of the gates. You save your strength for the last half.) My goals for these races? For me, these Games are not really about winning medals. It would be nice, of course, and I’ll be swimming my hardest—but given that my age division is wildly competitive and full of guys who were, like, college all-stars back in the day, it’s not all that realistic. All I really wanna do is to beat my seed times. Every time I achieve that, I’ll have set a new personal record. I think I can do it, too, at least once or twice. And frankly, if all I manage is to set a new PR in the 400, I’ll be happy. I’ll be doing some relays as well, but I don’t remember which ones or when they are. I suppose I should write all that stuff down.
Weather today is sunny and breezy and gorgeous. Tonight we go to a cocktail party introducing a new g&l athletic foundation, founded by one of our swimmers and his partner of 45 years (!). It’s at the cricket club, which is apparently a rather swank place. Should be fun. Afterwards the coaches are peeling off for a “hurray, we got everyone here without killing anybody” dinner. There’s talk of going to the beach tomorrow prior to the opening ceremonies. The ceremonies should be fun—inspiring, empowering, exciting, yadda yadda yadda. And k.d. lang is performing, which is frankly reason enough to go. I’ll provide a report when I can.
Yesterday afternoon we climbed to the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. 700 or so stairs to the spectacular view at the summit. Taking in the view from the top, Karen James and I decided that everything built after 1930 in this town is ugly as sin. Truly, the old Victorian-era stuff is all lovely, but the newer stuff is hideous. The business district looks like it was all put up in 1973. The million-dollar apartments now being built on the old wharf just west of the bridge look like a Holiday Inn circa 1967. Blergh. Prince Charles must be apoplectic when he visits.
Nobody has posted thus far to the team’s blog, but you know what? I don’t care. My responsibility as TNYA Webmaster was to get the technology working—not to force people to use it. So there. I have better things to get obsessive about at this point.
Hi, Paul. I was thinking about you at lunchtime. Hope you’re well.
More later.
Oct 30 02: touchdown
I’m in Australia. Wow. Hard to believe that after 18-odd months of training (and not training) I have actually come all the way ‘round to the other side of the world for a swim meet. I’m thrilled to be here and a little bit whacked out of my head from sleep deprivation; managed something like 5 hours on the plane from LA to Sydney. What time was that? Hard to say. My blog entries will reflect Sydney time while I’m here, by the way, which is GMT+11.
Sydney. Impressions. Sunny and warm; I’ve been walking around in a t-shirt and sandals all day. Reminds me of San Francisco, albeit with more clement weather. The city’s parks and squares are dotted with jacaranda trees, which are all in bloom. You can see them from half a mile away, their long trumpet-shaped flowers a vibrant cloud of electric lilac. Not so many pigeons as in the States or in Europe, possibly because the natives are giving them a run for their money; the Botanic Garden has flocks of very large white cockatoos with yellow crests, and in a couple of smaller parks I saw these huge black-and-white ibises being fed chunks of bread by the men on the benches. There’s a rather plain brownish-blackish bird, with a short pointy yellow beak and a yellow circle around its eye, that roosts in the rafters at the train station round the corner from our hotel. Sweet little chirping song, and it hops on the grass looking for bugs. Must identify it eventually, too. Public swimming pools all over the place—this is a nation of swimmers. Met my suitemates and a couple other TNYA swimmers at a particularly nice one this afternoon after I checked in with the Games: open-air, filtered saltwater, with a teak deck overlooking some part of…well, it was either the harbor or that huge bay immediately to the south of it. Botany Bay, I think. I’ve seen the arch of the Sydney Harbor Bridge peeking over the skyscrapers; I’ll get a much closer encounter with it on Friday. Still no Opera House sightings, but it’s plainly just a matter of time. This being the beginning of spring, all the office workers threw themselves out of doors at lunchtime; it seemed like half the town was jogging or swimming or playing soccer or rugby for a while. Many, many, many handsome men, although some have suggested that the presence of the Games may be affecting the data.
The hotel is in the Haymarket neighborhood, which clearly used to be much seedier than it is. Adult bookstores and gun shops with “we’ve moved” and “going out of business” signs in the windows; new Internet cafés and Starbuckses all over the place. Lots of Asian restaurants and shops. A shop that sells take-it-home-and-cook-it dim-sum two blocks from the hotel; given that we have a suite avec kitchen, I think I must investigate that further. One block has something like five different video game parlors, all crammed into one small zone—I haven’t seen any anywhere else in town. Keep walking north from the hotel and suddenly you’re in the business district. I’ve tried to link to a relevant map here, but thus far Whereis.com.au won’t let me do it. Shocking! So here’s a more general map of Sydney. We’re just west of the University.
I feel like I have ten million other things I should be writing about—the mingled excitement and anxiety about the coming races, how my teammates are faring—but I’m having trouble keeping my mind still long enough to articulate them. The plane trip was okay, all things considered. I saw Men in Black II twice: once on the American Airlines flight from JFK to LA, once on Qantas from LA to Sydney. Had to sit in the middle seat on the long leg of the trip, urrgh. There’s no ‘u’ in Qantas not because it’s some kind of Aboriginal term but because it’s an acronym: Queensland And Northern Territories Aerial Service. Got a few hours of sleep on the plane but when that dried up I watched movies. It’s really criminal how the airlines put the most boldly schlocky stuff (like…say…Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) on only once you’ve been rendered most vulnerable to it by sleep deprivation. (What is this dreck? Because…it’s so beautiful! The mother…the daughter…the handsome fiancé! Oh! Sniff. etc.) I’ve managed to keep myself more or less together today by walking around, talking to people, swimming 1500 meters (felt good, thanks); but I can hear a strange and hysterical little voice giggling somewhere in the back of my head and it’s getting louder. Sleep will be a good thing tonight.
Best to all and anybody who’s reading this. I’ll try to check in again in a day or two. Oh, and that whole food-poisoning thing was (as you probably surmised) without merit.
Oct 28 02: get set…
So I leave for the airport in an hour. I’m pretty much packed—although I may go and remove some of the t-shirts, I’m sure there are too many in there—so I’m spending the next little while packing more CDs into the iPod. And while I have the time, why not some hypochondria? My brain, lacking sufficient sources of anxiety, has decided that I shouldn’t have eaten those leftovers for lunch. Tiny voices are trying to convince me that I’m about to spend the next 26 hours on the road with an horrific case of food poisoning. How old was that sausage, anyway? Aieeee!
Deep breaths, Andrew.
Anyway, the long-awaited day is at hand. I’ll be trying to check in as often as I can with reports on my races and what things are like Down Under; if you’re curious, you might also see TNYA’s Sydney Journal. I’ve roped a bunch of Roving Reporters into doing much the same for the team in general.
Back in a bit; wish me luck.
Oct 25 02: afterthoughts
Rereading the above, I suppose I’m going to have to explain what a ‘pink flamingo’ is, at least in the context of a swim meet. And I will, I promise. Just not tonight. Bedtime for Bonzo, it is…