mattie g

8 hours ago, vastateofmind said:

I was a middling athlete in MS/HS and an okay but noncompetitive swimmer...my wife isn't a swimmer at all! I don't know where our sons got their swimming genes, but without going overboard I'll just say they did well growing up. I think our oldest still holds a pool relay record with a couple other guys, and our youngest still retains a number of pool records, and hangs on in the NVSL top 50 for fly and back as well as couple of relays. End of the day, summer swim season should be about the community-building, as you so wisely suggest...and I'm glad that you (and @H2O) aren't as jaded as me, and still have that, and enjoy that, at your respective pools.   

It’s so cool that your boys found their way successfully in the local swimming world despite any other expectations! We have a set of identical twin boys (11s) who have turned it on this season (not having swam year-round), but whose parents aren’t particularly athletic.  I guess you just never know!

Fun final dual meet of the season today. Lost to our local friendly rivals, but it was a relatively close meet, despite our missing some significant swimmers. 3-2 after moving up a division for a team like ours is a damn good result. Now it’s up to the NVSL gods to determine if we move up again next year!

DC corn dust fail.

3 hours ago, Terpeast said:

 

What more needs to be said? 

 

That’s been my life for the last week or two. I feel your pain.

This afternoon was a different story. The southern edge of that line blew up and dropped a 45-to 60-minute deluge on MBY and cooled things off really nicely at just the right time if the day. Lawn and garden are booming, and this will freshen everything up.

4 hours ago, vastateofmind said:

Sage advice above, from an experienced pro/old hand in NVSL...especially the part about the "special water."   

Usually those bump-ups in team size happen gradually...I hated B meets for that reason when we first got involved, but if you get enough experienced officials and on-deck volunteers and (perhaps most importantly) FILL THOSE LANES on every blow of the whistle, it can go pretty quickly. After free and back, of course...   

See? Y'all already getting too damn efficient! And I always loved to see the records made (and old records fall!) during this point of the season over the years...not just for my own sons, but to see the younger swimmers especially work their arses off and to see the sheer joy on their faces when they drop their times!

It’s really is great when these kids hit their stride as the NVSL season ends. We’ve had a fantastic season and we’re still seeing phenomenal time drops across our team. Our 6-year-old who just set that IM record is one of the nicest and most humble boys you’ll ever meet, and watching him crush it all summer (dropping 8 seconds since our B Meet on Monday!) has been one of the highlights of the season.

Best race last night was in the 13-14 Boys group where one of our most experienced swimmers dropped 5 seconds(!) in his IM against the kid he knew was his biggest competition. The other boy was seeded to win by 4 seconds and in the end ours came in .04 behind the other one. We were all so proud of him and the effort he put in - it was truly inspiring and you could just feel the positivity he was putting out afterwards!

For a guy who was an athlete but never a swimmer, I’ve been bitten hard by the bug. I truly care for these kids and the community we’re building. It’s the best part of the summer for me, despite the grind, and I’m already looking forward to next year!

31 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

And ensembles keep a trough over us in the means for the next 2 weeks. Seasonable heat? Sure. But no sign of any persistent mid-upper 90s kinda Bermuda high. If we can get through mid-august without that, climatology starts working in our favor.

Exactly. There's no way in hell we escape a summer without heat at some point, but to keep from going 98/77 or worse for an extended period is a win.

Of course, we can get well into the 90s in September, but that's usually short-lived and a drier stuff than the soup we can get in the summer.

Lots of complaints about a day or two with highs in the 90s. Folks are getting spoiled by the lack of big heat, which is a pretty common thing around here in the summer.

Hosted our IM Carnival last night. 195 swimmers and we got through it in 1 hour 45 minutes! We opened it up to more swimmers than usual (no seed time cutoffs), so we were a little apprehensive going into it, but it turned out great.

Super fun meet with a group of pools we swim against regularly and many of whose kids go to school together. One of the other pools (PAR) set a record in 11-12 Boys 100M IM and one of our 6-year-old boys beat our 8&U 100M IM record by 5 seconds! 

3 hours ago, Terpeast said:

Yeah I have mixed feelings. As much as I want a big winter here to break the pattern, ninos are really hit and miss here. Basically half really deliver, and half give us nothing. 

I just want some reason to feel optimistic. If it doesn't pan out, then whatever, but at least we can go into the fall dreaming of a mashed potato Christmas morning.

12 hours ago, pazzo83 said:

megalopolis starting to flex the overnight lows:
73F at DCA
76F at NYC
79F at LGA
72F at BOS

The ease with which LGA records lows 78-80F these days is disturbing.

Is that any different than their lows in the recent past? I'd expect their lows to remain relatively warm given serious UHI and its proximity to water. 

2 hours ago, MillvilleWx said:

A few days ago I was followed by CWG on Twitter. I followed them for a LONG time. 

This morning I got followed by Jim Cantore and Stephanie Abrams. 

What on earth is happening? 
 

 

Everyone else is leaving Twitter, so they need someone new to follow.

6 hours ago, Terpeast said:

My grass has gone dormant. At least I don't have to mow every week?

My grass has been growing pretty nicely since the dry spell broke. I just choose not to mow often.

1 hour ago, H2O said:

They acted that way for a B meet?  Weird.  

 

Ours was against @vastateofmind former team.  The combo of their team size and ours meant that it took over 2 hours to get thru free and back.  When you hear that 8&Us have 5 heats and 9-10s too you are in for a long evening.  My only complaint was clerks not stacking lanes to fill all the way.  Just combo the shit out of events and if they are mixed boy/girl then just do it.  Fill 6 lanes as much as possible.  

So between team size and wanting to do IMs as well it meant a long night.  My knees and back were tapping out after 2.5 hours.  But my data people are so fricken awesome.  They knew I was hungry and they got me some pizza.  Then I had to figure out how to yell "timers clear" with a mouth full of za.  

I swear that snack bars need to have concession sellers walking around like sporting events.  Cold beer!, donuts!, ice cream!

One last A meet saturday then I have one more B meet to go.  We do a B meet for kids that won't do divisionals and also they hold an IM invite at another.  So for this next monday I will make up some "special" water for my timers to say thanks for all the help.  It might get sloppy but who cares.  Last B meet and it will be fun.  

Two hour for free and back...yeah, no. lol We had four heats in one or two events last night, but it was maybe two heats per event on average.

They strolled in and made comments about us being D15 team, commented on how some of our less-experienced swimmers did, wouldn't shut the F up in clerk of course, had kids yelling on the blocks after the long whistle, etc. Just lots and lots of unsportsmanlike behavior that was inappropriate at any meet, whether competitive or not. There was one point when some of their older boys were being incredibly rude to our younger kids, so our soft-spoken 19-yo coach laid into them. It just wasn't cool all around. It was bad enough that a senior official from their team reached out to a coach of ours this morning and apologized for their team sucking.

That's awesome about your data folks, but yeah...clerk needs to get hose lanes filled for B Meets! Neat idea for the additional B Meet. I do recall you mentioning the "special water" last year. Love it!

We're so small that a most of the kids who will be around for Divisionals will get to swim (plenty of our better swimmers aren't in town), so it's a good send off for them. But we still host an IM Carnival this Thursday, have an A Meet away on Saturday, then our Lolliop Meet and Community Relays next Thursday prior to hosting Divisionals. Still a TON to do until we're off the hook!

1 hour ago, hstorm said:

Our club's location gives us the (mis-)fortune of having most of our B Meets against D1/D2 pools.  (By comparison, we are D10 and quite happy to be there.)  Most of them have large teams and LOTS of B Meet swimmers.  It can make for long evenings, especially when we do IM.  Last night we were at Tuckahoe, which has an enormous team.  We hosted them for a B Meet a few years ago and the meet ended at 10:15, so we were prepared for the worst.  Incredibly, however, we finished last night at 7:40.  Small miracle!

They were ruthlessly efficient in combining age groups to fill lanes (plus they have 8 lanes).  So nice to get home at a reasonable time.

Yeah...figured that might be the case for you guys. That really sounds rough for a lot of your meets...but finishing a B Meet at 7:40? How in the hell did you do that, even with 8 lanes?! Are those teams pretty chill, all things considered? I just can't shake the impression I have that all those teams are always amped up and uber competitive in everything they do.

It's funny how relative it is when talking about team size. The team we swam with last night has 170 kids. We have 96 (including our littles), so they're MASSIVE compared to us. The rest of our B Meet group is currently D9 (last night), D10, D13, D14, and D15, with only the D15 team being about the same size as us. The D13 and D14 teams are like 120 kids or so and the D10 team has 150. I honestly don't know what I'd do if we had that many kids. 

13 hours ago, H2O said:

3.5 hour B meets are a grind

True...especially the final one of the season.

We swam the biggest team in our B Meet group last night. They're the f*cking worst, which made the meet all that much more annoying. They showed up at our pool with a cocky-as-hell attitude, and even their Reps did nothing about it after we mentioned it multiple times. My (female) co-Rep was ready to throw down

7 minutes ago, CAPE said:

As good as the radar looked with that stuff developing to my south, only 0.2" so far. Came together just to the N and E. All comes down to that line coming across the bay.

No corn dust out your way. You’re good.

4 minutes ago, nw baltimore wx said:

How would DC beltway be that different from Bmore’s? We’ve done well up this way the past few weeks. 

Because

28 minutes ago, MN Transplant said:

The writing on the wall for anything interesting was a couple of days ago.  The line near Dulles is now kicking out an outflow boundary, so we'll see where that takes us.

Looking whiffy around these parts. Pretty much the only place, too.

This is looking to be lame in the end IMBY.

poo.

I never like being on the southern edge of any meso discussion…and the orientation and movement on radar isn’t changing that feeling.

Picked up a quick 0.15” yesterday and would be happy with some good mom-stormy rains today.

3 minutes ago, Scuddz said:

Yes, our neighborhood has 16 plots in the middle of a giant field so full sun. We've had ours for the last 4 yrs.

That's awesome.

I've been thinking about how I might be able to organize a community garden under the overhead power lines that run along one side of our neighborhood, but the issue would be access to water. I love the idea in theory, but if it didn't rain regularly and enough, then it probably wouldn't work so well!

3 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Just watched the cells over Reston and chantilly pop up as the outflow crossed over. Unfortunately it also canceled the swim lesson I was giving with a crack of thunder.  

Hoping those hold together/expand and make their way to your SE.

2 hours ago, Scuddz said:

Came back from Vacation to some monstrous zuchini

Nice harvest!

And those beds look like they get a TON of sun! Is that a community garden?

27 minutes ago, yoda said:

Outflow boundary pushing through you and me right now on Radarscope 

We'll see if something fires along that boundary heading south and/or that cell in western PG/Charles Counties in MD extends a bit west as it meanders north.

Lots of boundaries flying around now. Let's see if new storms fire along them and/or as they collide.

3 minutes ago, MN Transplant said:

That cell in McLean is loud

I'm downtown right now but watching the weather at home. Unless something fires to the south, these may have initiated a little too far north for MBY to cash in at all today.

15 hours ago, mattie g said:

And now I'm literally *just* on the west side of that appendage and it's dumping. I can actually see the breaks in the clouds looking to the NW!

We'll see how long this lasts!

Lasted maybe 10 minutes and got about 0.1". Kind of impressive for being on the *very* edge of the cell.