Swimming in New Orleans

Less than two weeks after returning from our Tennessee trip, we were back on the road, heading south to New Orleans. The occasion was the Southern Masters Short Course Meters Championships at Tulane University. This is the same event that has been held at Delta State in past years, but the new SMS board polled the membership and found most were in favor of changing to a rotation between Delta State and New Orleans.

We had originally planned to arrive in New Orleans early Friday afternoon since I entered the 1500 meter freestyle event scheduled for 7 pm. High priority issues at work kept me until 4 pm, so we didn't arrive at our hotel until after 8. We stayed at Le Richelieu, our honeymoon hotel. It's a small, very old building with few modern features on the edge of the French Quarter near the French Market and Esplanade. It's also very quiet and has a cozy atmosphere.

We met the rest of our group, my Flowood Fighting Flounders teammates, and enjoyed a late-night meal at Tony Moran's Restaurant. Kate and Paul, two of our four FFF team members had been at the swim meet for the 1500 meter event. Our fourth member, KB, was visiting family and would meet us at the pool on Saturday.

A good crowd of over 120 swimmers represented about 20 masters swim teams from as far as Dallas and Fort Myers. We were getting set to swim the mixed 200 relay when KB began to feel bad, complaining of numbness in his arm and weakness. KB had only been swimming with us a few times at practice. He is in his late 60's and seems quite fit, but back problems limited his participation. We quickly scratched from the relay event and Kate had KB take some aspirin she had in her gear. We returned to the hotel and later learned from KB's family that he had suffered a heart attack and underwent surgery at Tulane University Hospital that afternoon. The doctor credited Kate's aspirin with possibly saving his life and certainly lessening the damage.

Paul and Kate left New Orleans that afternoon but Wifeunit and I stayed another night since I was swimming two more events on Sunday. We ate again at Tony Moran's that evening since Irene's had what is their usual 90 minute wait for a table. We ate a nice breakfast Sunday morning at the hotel's tiny restaurant, I swam some more at the meet, and we headed home at 1 pm. A whirlwind weekend and great time with the FFF team.