Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Today our plan was to go into Indianapolis and catch some of the ConocoPhillips National Championship trials at the Natatorium at IUPUI. We had some difficulty the night before finding information on getting tickets to the trials, so we decided to just drive up to the Natatorium and buy tickets there for the day.

Unfortunately, when we finally got there, around 1 p.m., the ticket booth was closed and wasn't due to reopen until 4 p.m. for that evening's finals. Luckily, I had looked at the map of Indianapolis again and had figured out how to get to the White River State Park. We decided to go to the zoo, that way we could get something to eat and entertain the boys until we could go back and buy tickets to see some swimming.

While both boys whined about going to the zoo, they ended up having fun. While the Indy Zoo is on the smaller side, it is a nice zoo with good animal exhibits and very clean. Aidan liked touching the sharks.



We also rode their roller coaster. Here's a shot of the boys in a vehicle like the ones on the roller coaster. You can see the tracks of the coaster itself behind them.



After getting some ice cream, we went back to the Natatorium to get our tickets. Kelley's gotten into swimming in a big way and was very excited to see such great swimmers live. After we got our tickets and went inside, the swimmers were warming up in the pool before the finals started at 6 p.m. I have never seen so many people swimming laps in a pool at the same time - such discipline!



We saw Michael Phelps, even though he wasn't swimming in any events today. There were several girls behind us in the stands who were calling out to him, which clued us that he was down by the water. He finally waved at the girls to get them to quiet, finished talking to his coach, and then walked down to the other end of the pool.

We stayed to see the finals of the women's 100m butterfly and the men's 400m freestyle. We saw Christine Magnuson win the women's event and then Peter Vanderkaay win the men's event. Both will automatically go on to represent the U.S. in the World Championships. The boys were pretty antsy at this point, so we called it a night and drove back to my uncle's house and warmed up some leftovers.

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