Swim Meet

Last week, Sat­ur­day and Sun­day we spent swim­ming com­pe­ti­tions. It was a com­pe­ti­tion for chil­dren under 9 years old. The grand­son had five swims of dif­fer­ent dis­tances and styles in each com­pet­i­tive day. In two swims he was removed, but this is a com­mon thing. Almost not a sin­gle swim pass­es so that some­one is not filmed: either he touched it the wrong way, then he turned over incor­rect­ly, or he swam in the wrong style, or he jumped in the relay ear­li­er. These are all things of life. But, in gen­er­al, the grand­son swam well, and improved his time every­where, and this is the most impor­tant thing.

Now, next year, he will be com­pet­ing in anoth­er age group of 9 – 10 years old, and there are already region­al and state reg­u­la­tions that he will have to try to meet, to get to the high­er lev­el com­pe­ti­tions span>. But it’s not very easy, because in each state they are dif­fer­ent, and in Ari­zona these stan­dards are very high, this is a state where a lot of chil­dren swim.

This Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, March 25 – 26, we had a trip to Woods Canyon Lake planned. Woods Keny­on Lake is a lake locat­ed in the Nation­al For­est in north-cen­tral Ari­zona, in pine forests at an alti­tude of 7000 feet (approx­i­mate­ly 2133 m). Rain­bow trout is found in this alpine lake and you can catch it (if you bought a license). The chil­dren had booked a hotel near this park before I arrived. All week before the trip, we read on the Inter­net what trout are caught on, where and what kind of fish­ing rods to buy and how to fish. And sud­den­ly daugh­ter went to the site of this reserve and read that the lake is still cov­ered with ice and the reserve is closed until April 27. I had to urgent­ly can­cel my hotel reser­va­tion. Being in 27 degree heat, we could not even imag­ine that there could still be snow in a three-hour dri­ve. This is how it is, Ari­zona — three hours by car in one direc­tion or anoth­er, and you can get into dif­fer­ent cli­mat­ic zones.

So our trip did­n’t go well and instead we vis­it­ed a bowl­ing alley on Saturday.

Some­how it fails to take good pic­tures. I see all the beau­ti­ful places from the car win­dow. You won’t say: “Stop here, I’ll take a pic­ture.” And here the sun is so strong that no one wants to be pho­tographed, because every­one turns out squint­ed, and I myself can’t see what I’m shooting.