What I did this weekend
We'll skip past the part where we spent a nice Saturday at home pulling doors and windows open and shut for the painters instead of doing the Lowell Folk Festival.
And also the part where Mr. Spike decided to go AWOL, since the doors were obviously open for his benefit. (He turned up in the barn the next morning, only a little the worse for wear.)
No, the deja vu moment was that I watched a swim meet. In California. Via streaming Web video.
The strange nature of this activity makes sense only when you recall that my daughter began age-group swimming at age seven and continued to swim through college. For those unfamiliar with the sport at the age-group level, let me say that no youth sport is quite so all-encompassing. Past a certain age (say 10), if your kid goes for both seasons, you're talking ten months a year. While a small calendar of dual meets takes only an afternoon each, most meets are three-day affairs. If they're relatively close by, you simply drive; so much that the meet seems at its end like one enormously long day. Otherwise, you choose motels based on three factors:
As parents living some distance from the college, we were able to take a step back during the offspring's NCAA swimming. This was good, because the swimmers got a great deal out of the experience that might have been denied them had there been more parents underfoot. Also, college was a decompression experience, what with attending one or two meets a year instead of two or three a month. Still, when it all ended, there was a void that was a bit disconcerting. Be it said that I don't begrudge a minute of E's age-group experience, because doing it was her first major life decision, and how she pursued it opened a succession of other choices which became wiser and wiser as she went on.
Evidently, five years' break is enough, because E has joined a Master's swim club in CA. There's this age compression in junior swimming: you reach the "senior" ranks at 17, and Masters after college, when you're old enough to pay your own bills. It has no upper limit. After a decade of waiting for six-year-olds to finish their heats, you have to reverse your thought process and wait for the 80 and up group to finish theirs. After being annoyed by raucous parents cheering kids who can't possibly hear them, now you get to hear the kids cheering their parents: the pre-teens anyway, because the adolescents are insufferably bored or embarrassed by it all.
I can thank the streaming feed for all this insight, and for being able to watch the meet without leaving home. As with many other technologies, there's nothing like a swimming pool to find out the bugs. During the Saturday session, we got a stream that was real-time and in full motion, but very lossy. On Sunday, the geeks-in-charge enhanced the image resolution, but that reduced image transmission to about a frame a second when more than a few people logged in. Judging from the feedback, they were doomed either way.
They never quite figured out the sound, either. Mics that made the starter's announcements audible picked up interesting, sometimes salacious, detail from the audience and coaches. Few of these people realised what revealing tidbits they were sharing with the whole of cyberspace. The poolside Web views of coaches' and officials' beer guts should start a wave of weight loss programmes.
Presumably, all this will improve (except the beer guts). E seemed to enjoy herself, so this is likely to happen again. I see only one challenge. California doesn't do indoor pools because, of course, it's never cold. Uh-huh: I should think that's when they set the Master's records.
Next time, I'll open a bottle of bleach next to the computer to get the full sensory effect.
And also the part where Mr. Spike decided to go AWOL, since the doors were obviously open for his benefit. (He turned up in the barn the next morning, only a little the worse for wear.)
No, the deja vu moment was that I watched a swim meet. In California. Via streaming Web video.
The strange nature of this activity makes sense only when you recall that my daughter began age-group swimming at age seven and continued to swim through college. For those unfamiliar with the sport at the age-group level, let me say that no youth sport is quite so all-encompassing. Past a certain age (say 10), if your kid goes for both seasons, you're talking ten months a year. While a small calendar of dual meets takes only an afternoon each, most meets are three-day affairs. If they're relatively close by, you simply drive; so much that the meet seems at its end like one enormously long day. Otherwise, you choose motels based on three factors:
- Price. Bear in mind the parent has not only to pay club dues, motels and transport, but also maintain an inventory of 10-15 swimsuits plus goggles, caps, deck sandals and towels, all of which are either lost or about to be.
- The management's ability to provide an endless supply of towels.
- The size of the breakfast buffet. Leiningen's ants, millions of which could pick a stag clean in six minutes, had nothing on a motel full of ravenous age-group swimmers stoking up before the morning session of a meet.
As parents living some distance from the college, we were able to take a step back during the offspring's NCAA swimming. This was good, because the swimmers got a great deal out of the experience that might have been denied them had there been more parents underfoot. Also, college was a decompression experience, what with attending one or two meets a year instead of two or three a month. Still, when it all ended, there was a void that was a bit disconcerting. Be it said that I don't begrudge a minute of E's age-group experience, because doing it was her first major life decision, and how she pursued it opened a succession of other choices which became wiser and wiser as she went on.
Evidently, five years' break is enough, because E has joined a Master's swim club in CA. There's this age compression in junior swimming: you reach the "senior" ranks at 17, and Masters after college, when you're old enough to pay your own bills. It has no upper limit. After a decade of waiting for six-year-olds to finish their heats, you have to reverse your thought process and wait for the 80 and up group to finish theirs. After being annoyed by raucous parents cheering kids who can't possibly hear them, now you get to hear the kids cheering their parents: the pre-teens anyway, because the adolescents are insufferably bored or embarrassed by it all.
I can thank the streaming feed for all this insight, and for being able to watch the meet without leaving home. As with many other technologies, there's nothing like a swimming pool to find out the bugs. During the Saturday session, we got a stream that was real-time and in full motion, but very lossy. On Sunday, the geeks-in-charge enhanced the image resolution, but that reduced image transmission to about a frame a second when more than a few people logged in. Judging from the feedback, they were doomed either way.
They never quite figured out the sound, either. Mics that made the starter's announcements audible picked up interesting, sometimes salacious, detail from the audience and coaches. Few of these people realised what revealing tidbits they were sharing with the whole of cyberspace. The poolside Web views of coaches' and officials' beer guts should start a wave of weight loss programmes.
Presumably, all this will improve (except the beer guts). E seemed to enjoy herself, so this is likely to happen again. I see only one challenge. California doesn't do indoor pools because, of course, it's never cold. Uh-huh: I should think that's when they set the Master's records.
Next time, I'll open a bottle of bleach next to the computer to get the full sensory effect.
posted by Uncle | 00:24
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