okay! this is jen, and here is our 4 month update! this is mainly about wednesday, when sar, gen and i had a blast driving to long beach and checking out swimmers :O)
http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4286217517
around 3ish, i went to gen's house, and waited for gen to get ready. we had a little crisis when he couldn't find his license, but everything worked out fine. so moving on, we picked up sar at around 3:30 and we were off on the freeway headed towards the beach! the ride was typical gen/sar/jen style, with singing and making fun of each other, and of course our meaningful discussions (this time about...american accents and such)
so near the end of the freeway, theres a fork. gen decides to take the right side. as we merge off, we see "SHORELINE DR." on the left fork aka OUR EXIT. oooooh boy! so we circled around and around
sar: "which way?"
gen: "OKAY WE'RE GOING RIGHT!"
sar/jen: "yayyyy!" we arrive in long beach and stop at a shell because halle berry needed some refueling.
jen: "gen don't get back in the car!" (i saw on oprah how drivers get back in the car while fueling and their static electricity sets the gas on fire)
gen: ::confused/hurt look:: hahaha that wasn't meant to sound hurtful!
okay after refueling, we "ride halle berry topless" (its a convertible) to the parking lot and get out! yayyy we're here! its so pretty and we walk up to the box office to pick up our tickets. little did we know we were soooo high up (row 30) which is usually okay. but the stands had HOLES UNDERNEATH. i hate stairs with holes ahhhhhhh! that took a while to get to our seats. when we settle down, yay we get ready for the women's 50m free. wowie saw jenny thompson dominate and yea that was fun.
coming up the men's 1500m. sarah finds her new dream guy. eric vendt in lane 3 or 4? anywho sar is giddy and excited the whole race "yay i like him" haha so pretty intense with the swimmers in 3 and 4 until 3/4 of the way through when (i think?) lane 3 pulled ahead. sar's dream guy gets second and larsen jensen gets 1st. pretty cool stuff, especially the videocameras on the ramp thingy following the swimmers.
then come the synchronized swimmers. they do their routine to "the sorcerer's apprentice" (very entertaining) and we ooh and aah over their choreography. after that, alas, the march of the athletes. men's water polo, synchronized swimming, and the whole swim team. after all that hoopla, we get "fireworks". at 6:45 pm. it's bright outside, you can't even tell fireworks are shooting out. cheap thrill.
after getting out of the stands, we are determined to take pictures with the swimmers. we wait outside one of the exits, only to find the security people kick us out after 5 minutes. so we make our way to the entrance of the arena. slowing walking out, gen just starts darting like a bullet.
gen: "OH MY GOODNESS!"
sar/jen: "huh?"
gen: "it's lenny! i see lenny!" lenny krazelburg, cool guy. briskly walking out with his wife, reluctantly stopping (wife probably got ticked off easily). gen manages to get his autograph, and i sneak to take a photo. SUCCESS!
we hang around this area for awhile, and gen goes again with his hawk eyes "i see aaron piersol!" we run, snap a photo. success x2
few minutes later, sarah gasps. her new man eric is wearing a BOSTON shirt. we snap a photo, sarah is enamored with the guy :O) success x3
we see a mob, and a reaaaly reallllly tall guy. gary hall jr! gen is shaking. he firsts takes a pic with the original master, gary hall sr., then we tackle the manager ("um..people gary needs to eat") for a pic with the jr. woot success x4
as we're wrapping things up, we decide to take pics with the nearby water polo players. we've come this far, so why not? still need to figure out their names. so goodbye long beach arena, fun times.
our only regrets? not seeing michael phelps (for me), and jenny thompson (for all 3 of us)
we head off to islands for dinner, where cool waiter bob took advantage of my supreme gullibility, charging me 20 bucks for napkins and 20 for the doggy bag (kidding)
after a very productive day, we head home, and beam over what happened. we are awesome yayyy that was soo fun! | 