Fire Hazard

This weekend I am in Houston, Texas for my teams conference championship meet. I must say it is so nice to be so close to Austin. Last year the meet was in Tennessee. You would also think that since we are only traveling a mere 3 hours that nothing could go wrong...

I was woken up this morning by the fire alarm. I am rooming with our team trainer, Shawna. We completely disregarded it and I try to continue to sleep. It was 8am and about time for me to get up anyways so I did. I heard some commotion outside my room, but still payed no attention to it. I ignore commotions especially as a coach of college kids. Me and Shawna therefore continue to get ready, but the fire alarm keeps going off. I was rather annoyed by this so I decide to march down and complain to the front desk. When I opened the door the hallway was full of smoke. I calmly closed the door and turned to Shawna. I cursed and smiled and informed Shawna that our hotel was actually on fire. We then began to move a bit quicker, but still took our time to make sure we had all our valuable belongings. We figured if we saw flames we could easily out run them, or if need be we could jump out the window, we were only on the third floor. So I crammed my bag full of my precious things (mainly my mac) and headed out. At this point I thought of a talk i recently heard from Shari Dew. She spoke about a time when her hotel was on fire and she had to climb down 30ish flights of stairs and made the mistake of taking all her luggage with her which resulted in some severe knee injuries. I couldn't help but laugh at myself when I know I should just leave everything and run, but I of course took my dear sweet time and grabbed my precious computer among other things.

The smoke was incredibly thick and awful. I walked down the stairs and went outside to find multiple fire trucks and police surrounding the building. It turned out that one of the dryers in the laundry room on the first floor blew up. I broke out my camera, gathered my team and made them all pose in front of the trucks and make terrified faces. It was rather hilarious. I after all am making the end of year slide show, so I had to document the moment and make it memorable. After a little while we were told we could go back in quickly to grab extra things if we needed them, but not to breathe because there was carbon-dioxide in the air. At this point all my sprinters were telling me how thankful they were that I made them do so many breath control sets. They saw this as a challenge and totally went for it. I was so proud. I will upload pics when I get back.

Conference is going well, by the way. I am proud of my athletes and look forward to some more fast swimming.

Valentines Disappointment

There is only one reason I look forward to valentines day, only one. HEB, the local Texas grocery store, has chocolate covered strawberries that are amazing! Every year they come up with them best concoctions with oreo, butterfinger, white chocolate, M&M, toffee, etc. But Sarah, you say, how could you possibly like chocolate covered strawberries since you are a hater of all things chocolate. I myself cannot come up with a good answer to this. These delicacies fall in the same category as hot chocolate, hot fudge on ice cream, and chocolate covered caramels. For some reason it just doesn't make me sick.



So this year I found myself completely oblivious to the holiday until Sunday, the day before Valentines Day. I realized that I had almost missed out on my most favorite thing and planned to go run the HEB on Monday to stock up on my chocolate covered strawberries. Unfortunately my work schedule delayed my trip until about 6:30 in the evening. I was so excited to finally bit into a huge juicy strawberry covered in chocolate and oreo's. However, when I walked into the store I did not find any strawberries. None. I asked and begged and pleaded, but it seemed I was too late. All the strawberries were gone...forever. Well, at least until next year. I was completely gutted. Heart broken. I now officially hate this holiday. I shall forever associate it with this disappointment.