TV coverage

The paralympics will be televised on NBC universal!! Ive never heard of this channel, big surprise...but I guess that it is available on dish if you have that.

flight line

Last night our team held an ice cream social with the local kadena dolphins to show our thanks for letting us use their facilities and to give the kids a chance to take pictures with us and get autographs. Makes all of us feel way cooler than we really are when we get to make a kids day by signing our name or taking a picture with them. I guess that I made an affect on an entire family throughout the week as they brought a stuffed animal for me as well as a couple shirts from the local team. In return I signed numerous autographs and took pictures with the three daughters, again making me feel really cool.
Then I went to dinner with my friends sponsor and afterwards to his house on the base. Throughout dinner and after at his house the sponsor only 24 years old told us stories of his job in the Air Force. He told us that most of what he sees and hears is classified because he works in the reconnaissance planes that fly high and wire tap on everyone and anyone to gather information. His daily schedule made my life and experiences here seem extremely boring. He showed us photo albums of the history of okinawa from back in ww2 and one photo in particular of the actual japanese surrender of kadena and okinawa, pretty powerful picture!
This morning I had a very light practice, only about 2500 yards but all of it felt good. Then after lunch I got to head over to flight line, the airport, and get up close and personal with an F-15. I got to touch one, a 65 million dollar machine! pretty incredible seeing the plane up close. Then we got to go in a refueling plane and learn how those work. The coolest part was getting to walk out onto the massive wing of the plane and take pictures of ourselves being stupid.
The fun continues for all of us in Kadena, looking forward to the weekend when we get to ride in hum v's and go snorkeling.

kadena

Hey everyone its been awhile since my last post because I have been so busy here on base. My camera broke on the trip over to Japan so I had to buy a camera at the BX on base here, no tax on any thing on base so that is pretty cool. I got my camera just in time to go visit the bomb dump with my military sponsor.
Because I had the afternoon off of practice I decided to call my sponsor up to hang out. He was very nice and went off base and picked up his favorite curry for me to try for dinner. It was amazing. Then he took me to the bomb dump which is twice the size of the actual base itself and is covered in thick thick jungle. Amongst all the jungle they have the bomb shelters and I got to see a couple missles, but couldnt take pictures because its classified. The cool part was seeing the tombs and shrines that the Japanese have left there since WW2. Throughout the drive he was telling me stories of how certain parts of the dump are believed to be haunted and how he has had personal encounters of hauntings himself. He showed me three of these and the last one we had to hike through a cleared out tunnel of the jungle about 60 yards to the shrine of the 7 gods. The sun was just starting to set and the deadly snakes, the habu's, are nocternal so this along with the fact that the shrine of the 7 gods is supposed to be the most haunted place on the island made me almost opt out of the chance to see the shrine. I dug down deep and decided that I couldn't pass up a chance to see the shrine so I had him go first as I followed closely behind. We got to the shrine and it was completely covered with tree canopy and dark and very ery. It reminded me of an Indiana Jones movie. I quickly snapped some photos and said lets get the hell out of here.
Then on our drive back to the hotel we passed the run way and I was lucky enough to watch 2 F-15's getting ready for take off. We were literally 100 yards away from them. Being that it was night time I got the full effect of the fire out the engines as well as the power and sound of the engines as they took off. JUST LIKE TOP GUN!! SO COOL.
O ya and my swimming is going good. Feeling strong in the water and getting stronger each day. Really excited and can't wait to see what times I am able to get. As for now its just a matter of getting my rest and focusing on my stroke work and everything else will take care of itself.

Kadena AFB, Okinawa Japan!!

After sitting on a plane for 17 hours straight, 14 flying, and the rest was loading and refueling, we finally landed at the kadena AFB in Okinawa. As we taxied the runway, you could see the welcoming party of military personel standing on the tarmac awaiting our arrival. The military people were amazing, they unloaded all of our bags and equipment and delivered them to our rooms at the Shogun inn hotel on the base. As we got off the bus in front of our hotel, each athelete was greeted with their own "sponsor" our military assistant to help us to our rooms and answer any questions that we had. My sponsor gave me his cell number and said that he has been given permission to drop any task that he is doing to accompany my needs if I call him...really cool to have your own servant! haha. He works on the Bomb dump as an ammunitions person and will take me there this weekend. The bomb dump is HUGEE!! and it is located in the jungle so that tree canopy covers their ammuninition from planes flying above. I guess that I got lucky because you need to have someone sign you off to get into the bomb dump.
Then our sponsors waited for us to change and escorted us over to the officers club for our briefing of the base and dinner buffet. All of this was first class.
Every athlete has their own room at the hotel, that has kitchen, living room and bedroom. The meals that they have served us have been amazing as well.
I was able to stay awake for most of the flight so I got a good nights sleep in and feel better this morning. We took a bus ride to our training facility that was a nice outdoor 50 meter pool. Great weather at 8 in the morning...still trying to get used to the humidity but its nice to not have to wear sweatshirts at 7 am. I felt great in the water this morning, practice was just a warm up this morning, but it was effortless. Overall, I am loving Kadena and Okinawa by far the coolest place that I have been with paralympics!!

Japan

Today started with a 430 wake up call for 5 am practice...We had to be on the bus at 715 to get to the airport in time.  Now we are at the airport waiting to board out charter plane to Kadena Air Force Base in Japan.  There are 310 seats on the plane and only 111 people so we get lots of leg room to stretch out, good thing because the flight is a 14 hour flight with one stop in Alaska to fuel up.  Going to be a long day, at least there is no practice when we get there.  We are all exhausted but aren't aloud to sleep on the plane (so they say) until we get there because it will be 5pm when we land.  This way we will be able to get on their timeline quicker...I am notoriously bad at staying awake so we will see how I do.  Next post will be from Okinawa, Japan.

tv coverage

They just announced that it the next 48 hours they will be able to announce a tv station that will broadcast the paralympics for 3 hours a day!!! Amazing news, considering that we had no expectations of any coverage at all.

day 2

After a long nights rest my day began at 7 am with a lite practice. Then it was straight to a meeting that lasted 4 hours. In the meeting we covered everything that you can imagine. We spent a century going over media and how to properly represent your country when a microphone is shoved in your face. Then we talked about the rules of blogging that are set in place by China, some of the rules are not including brand names, other athletes names, or pictures or video that shows any action that is taking place. Then we learned a little mandarin...and then I fell asleep. We also signed about 30 posters that we are giving to our sponsors and got fitted for leather jackets, had our picture taken. This meeting and petes practices were equally tough to survive. Everyone was exhausted after the 4 hours.

It is tough to transition from training at sea level in davis to training at 6100 feet in Colorado Springs. I get winded just walking around the complex, let alone when I am working out or doing breath holding sets. At sea level I can do 50's no breath fairly easily, at altitude i can hardly do a 50 with 2 breaths.

This evening I sat with a bunch of athletes from swimming, track and field, and volleyball and watched the Olympics on T.V. Watching the Olympics at the OTC is awesome because all of the atheletes get very excited and some of the people here know the athletes personally so that makes it fun and suddenly I find myself cheering a little bit more.

Well I'm off to bed tomorrow is another long day of meetings and swimming and then its off to Japan on Saturday.

Olympic Training Center

Today was a really long day, traveling from SFO to Denver and then finally arriving to Colorado Springs and finally to the Olympic Training Center. Immediately at the airport we begin getting the first class olympian treatment with the team USA escort van that takes us to the OTC. Our schedule is so packed that I barely had enough time to grab a bite to eat at the cafeteria before my appointment at team processing.
Team processing beat my already high expectations. I was handed a clipboard and a shopping cart and off I went to processing. When I was done I had numerous t-shirts, sweatshirts, taylored blazers pants, diamond ring, watch, shoes, socks, and hats that filled our team USA suit case. The best shopping experience because it costs the athletes zero dollars. Then it was off to practice immediately where we got even more stuff, suits, caps with the US flag and our names, parkas and even more stuff coming tomorrow. I think that it is easy to say that today was a great day. The Olympic experience is starting to feel real and will continue to feel more real as we count down the days to opening ceremonies and the first day of competition.

First post

Hey everyone this is my first post.  Tomorrow I go to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado to do team processing and meet up with the team.  We will get all of our team gear at processing tomorrow, can't wait.