Some Interesting Reads

While we are experiencing some great warmths up here, (around 0c) the lower 48 are having the real Alaskan winter.

Snow Storm In US South

Also I found a funny blog written by an American in New Zealand:

www.youngadventuress.com

I didn't realise they don't have feijoas. And trying to explain one is tricky. As I am writing this on one of the school computers apparently Zealand isn't a word... who knew.

I met an Olympian

Peter vanderkaay. Swam for the Universoty of Michigan. Won gold in Athens and Beijing in relays and individual bronzes in Beijing and London for middle distance free events.

He was up for the 'Great Alaska Open' swim meet. A small meet (30 girls in the 100 free) but used to get times for JOs ( the big state meet of the year). It isn't a popular meet because it is short course metres. Since when do Americans swim Scm?

He was a really nice guy once I finally managed to hunt down a pass to get on the pool deck.

Cal Baptist

Over the weekend we had our final home meets for the season. The girls from Califorina Baptist came up. Its cute when the californian teams come up because unless your from Alaska or somehwere snowy, you dont know uggs are not a good footwear choice. On the morning of day two one of the girls slipped and busted up her knee. Lesson learnt the hard way!

Anyway, it was not a good outcome for the Nanooks. While the other team was shaved and tapered (wearing proper racing togs and well rested for racing) we are in the midst of some tough training. Many pool records fell, mostly to Cal. Although in a few races both Alaska and Cal baptist went under the old record.

I had a pretty full schedule three races both days. day one 500,200 and 800 fr relay. Day two 1650, 500 and 200 fr relay. I came out with a few second places and a win in the 800 relay.

The real test comes in Feb when we head down to LA again for conference champs.  

When rain is a bad thing

It has been unusually warm since we got back from California, so warm it even rained today. But rain is bad news. Everything turns to ice and it is super slippery. Classes even got cancelled because of the rain! The roads are dangerous and so people were advised to stay home. They put extra gravel on the paths but classes might still be cancelled tomorrow. If I cant have a snow day, may as well have a rain day.

Polar Vortex

While everyone else was freaking out a few weeks ago about the polar vortex, may alaskans were being blamed for it. Places like chicago and reached negatve 40 which is very uncharacteristic. Alaskans that went to other places for xmas were blamed by their family members for bringing the cold with them. So while the rest of the country is worried about alaskan like temperatures we areexperiencing  some warmth (relative warmth of course).

http://nation.time.com/2014/01/17/the-polar-vortex-is-probably-coming-back/

And they think theres another one coming! Oh no.

Back to school

We got back into Ak late on Tuesday night. I saw this at Lax before we left.

Also at Lax was a vending machine with ipods, tablets, cellphones and headphones. Ridiculously overpriced of course.

Flew over some moutains. one of them should be mount rainer, not sure which one though. Its the largest mountan in the 'continental US' they aint got nothing on Alaska.

Back to school and back to the grind. The first class was today (thursday) and our next meet is next weekend.

Training Trip

To sum up it was a pretty good few weeks in the sun. We got to train outside and hang out on the beach. I have been comparing the weather here to the weather back in Ak and NZ. It has been down around negative 30 in Ak and around the same temp as NZ ( which i would like to add is in summer and here it is winter).

It was a good change to cook your own food, dorm food can be a bit of a drag. And I got to catch up with some of my cousins that came to watch a meet- they brought friends so I had my own cheer squad.

We have been fortunate enough to have some great hospitality from the LMU swim team. They let us train in their pool. They had a team competition going on and each team cooked us dinner one night. The winning team cooked a good steak and put on plenty of dessert. They let us travel in their bus and the girls were really friendly and funny.

Cant say I got much of a tan in this califorina sun though. Im still a bit hesiatant after being burnt in 10minutes  by New Zealand sun. On the last day we drove down to La Jolla beach, if I ever feel like dropping $1.8 mill on a house it would be a really nice place to live!