After day two's somewhat boring day(of course we are at a swim meet surrounded by beautiful men so it is far from boring, but for a swim meet it was just meh), we knew that we need to make magic happen on Sunday. Once again we were up at the crack of dawn and to the pool even before some a lot of the swimmers arrived. We take our seats in the front row as usual and look around to spot Olympians. As every morning the first one we spotted was always Ryan Steven and the TWS, just for the mere fact that he was always warming up in the lane in front of us. As we are sitting there we also spot Eric Shanteau. Just a quick side note, Shanteau is such an inspiration and has overcome so much! We decide to walk down and get a quick pic with him before he began warm ups.
Prelims begin and we sit back and enjoy the races, but as always we are scoping the pool deck. Ms. DP had somehow snuck in without us seeing her, and took a seat in the back row of the Gold Medal Seating. She was sitting in the corner out of the way of everyone. We thought that maybe she didn't want to be seen or she was stressed and needed some space. All of a sudden we see her talking to a little boy. It took me a few minutes to realize that the little boy was Connor Bourke! It was so cute to see DP interacting with him. Both of them had huge smiles on their face and seemed to really be enjoying each other. Connor is such a strong young man! I guess he had been there Saturday night and done an interview with Michael Fred, but somehow we missed him being there. If you have not seen the interview with him yet, you need to. I just watched it for the fourth time and still find myself in tears each time. Here is the link, so check it out. You will be happy you did! http://www.swimnetwork.com/Multimedia/Media-Center.aspx#/id=b8e9de1b-7249-4781-85b4-8f6314baa238/
About half way through prelims we see Aaron Piersol signing autographs and taking pics with fans. I had gotten a pic with him the day before as I had spotted him on my way back from the restroom and snatched the opportunity to take a pic with him, but Kaitlin had not yet. So we rush over there so Kaitlin can get her pic with him. Mission accomplished! I just want to say that Aaron is one of the nicest swimmers ever! He is always so willing to sign and take pics. One little boy standing in front of Kaitlin had 4 hats that he wanted signed. He was only gonna ask Aaron to sign one of them, but Aaron grabbed them all and signed them, THEN he took a pic with the little boy! That is what makes swimming one of my favorite sports. The athletes are so appreciative of their fans. (their bodies are pretty fantastic looking in those tiny speedos as well :) ) Kaitlin gets her pic with Aaron and we head back over to Gold Medal Seating.
As we are walking up the steps Garrett Weber-Gale was sitting in the second row waiting for his heat to start. He looked up at us, smiled, and Kaitlin asked if he remembered who she was, as they have talked in Indy and online. He had indeed! Having a swimmer remember you is always exciting! The next hour or so became GWG mania. We watched him swim in the prelims. We then headed over to talk to Robin once more before we left the pool for the break. As we are sitting there with Robin and her two kids. Her son is a HUGE GWG fan. He is only 4 1/2, but he wants to swim like Garrett when he gets older. He also wants to swim with Garrett when he gets older. He wrote Garrett the sweetest letter I have ever read in my life. If any of you follow Garrett on twitter he tweeted a pic of the letter! Now excuse me for a second while I go cry because it was so dang sweet! While we were standing there Matt Grevers walked by again and Kaitlin jumped on the opportunity to get another pic with him. Him being one of her faves and all. Also Mark Gangloff and his wife were standing there with their daughter (who is absolutely gorgeous and adorable I might add). Kaitlin also decided to take another picture with him since her first picture with him was a fail, because Mark had his eyes closed. Much better the second time around!
Prelims are over and we decide to head back to the hotel to get some lunch and rest a little before finals. As we are heading back to the car, we notice Cullen Jones sitting in his Make a Splash foundation tent. As we get closer we also notice that Ricky Berens and Rebecca Soni were signing autographs and taking pics, so before we headed over to the Make a Splash tent, we took pics with Rebecca and Ricky. And can I just say that they are the cutest couple I think I have ever seen in my life. I bet Kaitlin got sick of hearing me say "OMG look at how cute they are together." After getting pics with them we got pics with MR. Jones before heading back to the hotel.
We arrive back at the hotel and decide to eat lunch down in the lobby. As we are waiting for our food the lady at the front desk starts talking to us. She asked us what we were doing in Charlotte. We proceeded to tell her that we were there for a swim meet, her response (in her southern accent)"like Michael Phelps." Yes, like Michael Phelps. She proceeds to tell us that she loves Michael Phelps. We told her that we had met him and taken a pic with him the first day of the meet. We had her hooked. I ran up to the room to get my camera and show her some of the pics. At one point of her looking at my camera she yells "OH MICHAEL MY BABY BOY!!!" Kaitlin and I were dying of laughter! She asked us when we were leaving the next morning because she had to hear all about what happened on the last night. Little did we know that EPICNESS was about to go down.
Kaitlin and I are preparing to go back to the pool for the last day of finals. As we are walking to the car I start to get anxious. My stomach starts churning, my heart is racing, I am excited. I felt like I had when my little brother was in high school and college sports and I was getting ready to go to one of his games. ( Yes, I was the annoying fan who was constantly yelling and even found myself yelling at the refs. It probably wasn't a good thing that I knew all the refs names either) I hadn't felt like that all meet so I wondered what was up. Either something bad was going to happen or something AMAZING was going to happen. We get the pool and once again we are one of the first ones there. Yes, the early bird gets the worm, or the swimmer in this case! We sit down and prepare ourselves for finals. Once again it was stacked in the back and we were excited for that race, plus we were excited for the 200 IM with Michael and Eric Shanteau. As we are sitting there Michael Fred walked by, and we hear the Indy theme song play. "I Got a Feelin" Anyone who was in Indy knows that the song was played every morning and every evening before the races began. It was a given that the song became a permanent staple in good things to come. We hadn't heard it all meet so we were quite excited for it to come on. Me being the extreme superstitious person that I am saw this as a sign. We sat in our chairs for a little while and all of a sudden DP walks by us. A few seconds later the song plays again. I knew this meant that something amazing and epic was going to happen, but I just didn't know what. A few minutes after the song plays Garrett tweets the about the the letter the Robin's son had wrote him. We immediately head over to tell Robin and chat with her for a little while. We head back to our seats again, and once we get back to our seats, we decide to spread out a little because it wasn't as crowded and the seats were so close together. So I planted myself on the opposite side of Kaitlin that I usually sat because there was more room. Well it just so happened to be one chair away from DP. As I am sitting there "I Got a Feelin" played again. We hadn't heard it all meet and now the last night it had played all week and then it played FOUR times before the meet started. I kept waiting for something to happen during warmups but nothing happened.
Finals start and there are some great races. We get to watch Michael Phelps race with his mom right next to us. I mean I thought that right there was pretty cool. Well, that was just the beginning. After the 200 IM we were gearing up to watch the race of the night, the 200 back. The women are racing and we are scoping the pool deck again. I had just happened to glance up and see Mike walking up the steps. My heart starts POUNDING. Like I mean about ready to fly out of my chest pounding. He starts walking towards us in the second row (we were in the first). He stops to talk to Cullen's mom and his buttocks is right by my face. I think to myself "I can handle this. I can handle him sitting right behind me. That I can handle." A few seconds later he climbs over the chair right next to me, almost falling in the process, and plops down right beside me. I immediately start shaking like a leaf. Our arms and legs are touching because the chairs are so close. We were so close that I am sure he could feel me shaking. I sat there thinking to myself "what do I do? Do I say something? Do I ignore him? If I don't say something I will punch myself, but what do I say to him." My thinking was you don't want to invade their privacy and stare and ask for pics and autographs, but you also don't want to be rude and not say anything. So I gathered my nerves and waited for a break in conversation between him and his mom. When there was a break I looked up at him and said "Nice race!" He look at me and with smiled a HUGE smile and said thanks. After that I started to relax a little bit and got comfortable with the idea of him there. He had been sitting there a while when it was time for the 200 back. It's A finals and Lochte, Piersol, Grevers, and Thoman are all walking to the blocks to start the race. Ryan walks by and Michael yells "JEAH"! You know we always talk about their bromance, but none of us have actually seen in person. Can I just say we were in HEAVEN. Ryan and Aaron Piersol right in front of us and Michael Phelps right beside us. I mean does life get any better than that? Let me answer that for you NOOO!!! By now my phone is going off the hook because everyone at home has seen me on the live stream. So I check my phone and calm down. Michael sits there through the 200 back, then he gets up to go sign autographs and take pics. As he gets up obviously he walks right past us and lets just say everything was eye level! While he is walking past he stepped on Kaitlin's foot. We thought the night was over and nothing was going to be better than that. Well nothing was better than that, but the night wasn't over!
After finals we stuck around for two reasons 1. we wanted to get a pic with Ryan Lochte and 2. we wanted to see who was going to take home the money! We are standing around Gold Medal Seating when we spot Ryan come out of the media center. We RUN down there and being in Gold Medal Seating we were able to get to him before the whole crowd was. Well, at least I was because bad me I plowed my way through the teenage girls to get to him. And I call myself a teacher. Maybe I need to work on the budging in front of kids thing. Anyway, I get my pic, but then Ryan had to go accept an award for having top performance for his 200 back and 100 free back to back races. While Ryan is doing that Kailtin and I spot GWG again. Having not gotten a pic with him yet, we decide this is our chance. We walk across the pool deck and ask for a pic and talk to Garrett for a while. He asked us where we were from and we told him how far we had drove to come see the meet. He as shocked that we came that far, but seemed excited to have that dedicated of fans. We got our pic and we got a little convo in there! We were happy. While we were walking back we past Matt Grevers he was totally prepared to sign an autograph or take a pic. He looked up at Kaitlin and said "Oh I already got you." Hahahaha! We walk back over so that Kailtin can get her pic with Ryan. By now all the young fans are lined up waiting for pics and autographs. I guess I needed to teach Kaitlin a few tricks on how to plow through the kids to get to Ryan, because she had to wait in line for a little while before she could get her pic. LOL Once, she got her pic we went to talk to Robin one last time before the meet was over. We had such a fun time getting to know her and her kids that we were sad to leave, so we sat and chatted for a while. As we were sitting there her son spotted Garrett. He and Kaitlin decide to walk down to talk to Garrett. As they are walking down her son yells out "Garrett Weber-Gale, I know you." Then he proceeded to say "This is my friend Kaitlin." Garrett looked at him and Kaitlin and said "yeah I know Kaitlin!' They sat there and chatted for a few moments before Robin and I headed down there. Once we got down there it was so cute to watch Garrett interact with him! Garrett taught him to do the Hook 'Em Horns and took a few pics with him. It was a great end to a great meet, and an epic end to an epic night!
**Please excuse the fact that I look like I am going to crap my pants in the first pic. If you had Michael Fred right next to you, you would look the same way! LOL
