IGLA History Makers

As my esteemed teammate GCC wrote in his latest blog, he set a new record for the 1400 m freestyle. Congratulations! It was one helluva way to start of the first day of the competition. The next day was my first race: 50 m backstroke. Now all my life, I was always a breast and fly guy...until high school. When you have a team of 12 guys and 5 are really good at breast, you find something else to do. We tried distance: I was ruthlessly lapped every time. So I tried backstroke once for shits n giggles...just to get out of doing the 500. Who would've known...I was good at back (my arch-nemesis in childhood).

Fast-forward 13 years to Paris. "Take your mark (though it sounded like "Gen..tlemen" with the french accent)...BEEP". I, being a flawless Aries, have a great start (a relic of my days as a diver) and underwater kick, surface and am swimming great...neck and neck. I see the backstroke flags, take my three strokes, then flip on my stomach. BAM!! The wall is still 10 m away. FUUUUCK ME! Somehow I mistook the 15 m line across the pool (where you must surface for backstroke) for the flags at the last 5 m. So there I am...middle of the pool, turning onto my stomach. Waaaay to impress all the hotties in the crowd with my backstroke prowess. Luckily, I wasn't disqualified, but ended up with a bad time :-( One more IGLA bonehead record, I'm sure! From now on, I'm going back to breast.

Luckily the next swims went much better. To be continued...

Sex is 15 Minutes, Pride is Forever

Aaaaaaaaand I'm back. So where do I begin about discussing the trip to Paris? There's actually bets being taken on what GCC will discuss first. I figured I'd first touch on an overall theme of the week in Paris, then break it down day-by-day as I have time. But the theme: Sex is 15 Minutes, Pride is Forever. As you will see it applies on many levels.


Apparently I had rather large shoes to fill at this year's IGLA, being the team newbie, relatively young (for IGLA standards), and not grotesquely overweight (except by The Imelda's standards), I was wagered to win the "Team Award," which I believe is being renamed after our former teammate who has left us for the Atlanta Rainbow Trout. I guess the best way to describe the qualifications for the "Team Award" is that it is given to the swimmer who best exemplifies the spirit of inter-squad camaraderie, networking, and bonding. I, however, did not meet these qualifications (this year). And why? TEAM PRIDE! Granted, there were some uber hotties there, who I would gladly "switch sides" for, particularly on the Paris team. mmmm...pastry flavored Paris boys. But that aside, who wants to spend $2500 on traveling to Paris to swim, but then do shitty? Well...one of our teammates (who will go unnamed).


I did, however, have my first sexual experience with a cruising bar called "Le Depot." I think that in this case, "cruising" is a complete euphemism. Before arriving, I pictured in my head the good ole days of walking the hallway at The Heretic in Atlanta...dark halls (but still somewhat light), men groping each other lightly (or as they called it "petting" in sex-ed), the occasional hand-job, etc. Nope, not this place. Full on fuckin in littly cubbie holes. Let's just say I got my free drink and left after 15 minutes. The whole time I was huddled in the center of the room, backs to my teammates, in a battle-ready position, watching the porn on the tv's of course (hey, it had been a week). Amazingly, there were some hotties there too.

Alas, I have returned to DC still sexless, light in the wallet, probably 10lbs heavier from all the bread, but with more team spirit and pride than when I left DC!

My MasterCard Commercial

This is it. Its now 9:30pm 'ish on Sunday night and I'm all ready to go to Paris for the IGLA swimming championships. My whole body is shaved smooth, and somehow I managed to squeeze everything I need into 1 small carry-on roller bag. I thought I'd run down the list of purchases that were necessary for this trip. Kind of a self-assessment, and metric of "is it really worth it?" So much for my original intent of doing this trip on a budget.

1 plane ticket: $1000

1 week apartment rental: $900

1 high tech swim suit: $130

1 new MP3 player: $140

1 new digital camera: $155

1 team swim cap: $5

1 team tshirt: $5

1 bottle of sleeping pills: $10

Various other junk: $100

Making a fool of oneself while dressed in pink and doing synchronized swimming: Priceless