One Down

First things first. Dave swam his first event the 50 backstroke. He got that one under is belt and now can concentrate on his better events. Backstroke is not his best stroke. He was in lane one and was right by the camera. He was featured on the Jumbotron almost exclusively - we felt we were on deck beside him. He didn't make finals but his spirits are still up!

Now we can back up to the beginning.

We got up pretty early to go to the Water Cube. Unlike the Olympics - the seating for the Paralympics is general seating. The earlier you go the better your seats. No bleacher seating though - each seat is individual. The USA fans were some of the first at the gate. The Cube is truly awesome. It is big, the traffic flow is great - inside, the bubbles makes your mouth drop. There are waterfalls in the walls and the seating for the fans seems to go forever.

We got front row seating. We scoped our seats and spread out waiting for the rest of the USA fans to show up. I think we had about 40 fans for the USA. Some records fell and we have many swimmers in the finals tonight. As I was taking it all in, the tears started to flow again. I was thinking about swimming and how much God has blessed us to have this sport in our lives. Before I really knew what swimming was about, I told myself this was a great sport for my children to be involved in. It is a safe sport, it is a life sport, and it is a character building sport. As the years have passed, our swimming has family has grown. Dave wasn't hurt swimming but the swimming community came together to encourage him and us to live a full life. It took him awhile to come back to swimming but as I was watching the swimmers warm up, the thought came to me that swimming is a life sport. These disabled athletes chose swimming to excel in. It doesn't seem to matter what the disability is, the athlete is in the water and living a full life. That is what made me cry - that we get to be a part of that in whatever capacity it is.

Tom sat next to a Chinese woman who worked in Canada for awhile. She was interested in how this all worked. Too bad for her that she sat next to newbies. We are trying to figure out how this works also. We answered her questions to the best of our abilities - some of the more experienced fans heard some of the conversations and added more accurate info. We know a little more today than we did yesterday. We did wander the halls and wandered right into David. It was good to see him - he was all smiles and very happy to see us - I think the emphasis might be- very happy to see Jerrica but that's okay. It was brief, he had stuff to attend to but good. Tomorrow will be a down day for him so maybe we'll see more of him.

We're resting this afternoon. Zack and Jerrica are still on the Olympic Green. Maybe they will get their bearings better than we did. We got tired of walking and getting lost so we came home. We thought we'd try the bus and see another event but the buses are packed to the gill and the wait between buses are long - so we headed back to our apartment.