Day 1 of U.S. Nationals and I’m Sitting Behind a Desk

Sometimes things just don’t work out. I’ve been planning to attend this year’s long course championships ever since I wasn’t able to go to our only long course swim meet in Victoria way back in March, again because of work commitments. I would have thought the middle of August, smack in the middle of the slow season, would have been proof against this happening but I would be wrong. The original plan was to spend a couple of leisurely weeks with my sister while working some part days for a client, then head off for Texas for the long weekend, and return to LA for a few more days to wrap up my work. That had to be scrapped when I had to twice delay my departure to deal with client problems and to complete some engagements (try telling a client you’re not going to deal with his tax problem until you get back from vacation in three weeks!). I had another client move up the time for an expert opinion because of available court dates which meant flying down I was looking at working right through the week and then squeezing in my opinion during the swim meet. Not the best preparation for an important meet but those were my plans until I discovered some major accounting problems early this week which required me to reconstruct events going back as far as 2003. So regretfully I had to sacrifice my swimming this weekend. It’s a shame because attending a serious Masters swim meet would be an experience and would have given me the opportunity to meet up and talk with some of the best masters swimmers in the world as well as several prominent bloggers. Wieslaw Musial, the Canadian backstroker masters world record holder in the 200 back for my age group will be there, as will Steve Woods, the current 100 back masters world record holder (you should be able to tell I consider myself a backstroker). Perhaps next year things will work out better.