Wednesday, June 11, 2008

First Night in Perth

After the long travel time and losing a day, I was a bit worried about not being able to adjust to the time change. Between missing the connection, trying to get to our hotel and practice that night, there was no reason to be concerned. We were all well and truly exhausted by the time our first day ended.

Once we figured out how to get to Mounts Bay, we only had time to drop our things and catch our breath before heading back to the Stadium for our allotted practice time with music. We were told it was scheduled for a bit after 8p.

During the bus/train/bus ride Lea figured out that we'd be stuck at the Stadium because the bus that left from there stopped running at 9p and there was no way we'd be finished by then. We rushed poolside to confirm with the PowersThatBe that we would have a ride back to the train station at least. That's when we discovered our other problem. We'd actually missed our pool time.

The organizers moved our time up, but never got word to us. The staff who was still at the pool agreed to give us an abbreviated time right then and agreed to hold the bus for us since it was actually a dedicated shuttle.

Slightly relieved, we hopped in the pool and sped through our routines after an abbreviated warm up. Needless to say, we were all looked a hot mess. Still, after the long day of travel, the water felt marvelous. But we found some more issues.

I never realized how much I depend on the black lane lines on the bottom of the pool. The competition pool didn't have any. The bottom was made up of tiles. With no lane lines. It pretty much became a toss up if you were heading in the right direction. Especially after a spin. To try to solve the problem, the organizers let us move the flags to the middle of each wall in hopes that it would be enough to guide the competitors.

After we'd finished decorating the pool, the shuttle dropped us off at the train station, but we took a short detour to the incredible smelling Italian Restaurant across the street.

The food was excellent. I had this super delicious plate of lasagna. The only thing about it that sucked was that said lasagna set me back $30. The exchange rate didn't even make it better since it had been dropping for months and the Australian dollar is nearly equal to ours. Still, that was some pretty good lasagna.

Feeling much less grumpy, Dawn, Lea, Jenni, Karen and I headed back to the hotel.

1 comment:

Trevor Dunen said...

Guess what Abbott did not sign the visitors book at Fremantle prison, it was me playing a joke, read my blog about it under this identity, the iroinic thing is my father-in-law Ian Elliot wrote the book "Moondyne Joe'. Moondyne Joe of course was probably the next most famous prisoner in Freo apart from Abbott