Flashes of Panic

I am sitting in a parked car next to Republic Square in Austin. I am online with the strongest wireless signal I’ve had all week (I’ve been wired in the hotel, and admittedly I probably could have had a stronger signal yesterday if I had actually gone in to Bookpeople instead of sitting outside in front of Whole Foods.)

Austin turns out to be the free Wi-Fi capital of the world, and Republic Square is a flagship. This is helpful, because at this hour, nobody else is open.

It turns out that due to the late-in-the-game nature of our preparations for this trip, our hotel is in about the worst possible location for nearly everything—a sea of concrete highways and parking lots.

The last time I remember this feeling is Sacramento at the 2000 Trials. The feeling is of being behind and low on sleep, knowing only the hotel, the track, and a few places in between. Eating entirely at restaurants, and not always very good ones. (The best meal I’ve had so far was from the salad bar at Whole Foods.) No exercise and a backlog of Other Stuff to Do. I am easily frustrated right now, a side effect of being low on sleep.

That said, I should get back to work. I’ve got the women written up from Thursday, and now I need to finish the men. It’s tougher, because I missed about half of the only men’s final on Thursday while I was talking to the winner of the women’s final. I usually wind up missing a lot of the men’s events for that reason. The mixed zone is funky that way.

Still, I got to see Alistair Cragg’s last race for Arkansas, and that was pretty cool. It’s easy to see why he has fans. Harder to see why there were so many different reporters from the Arkansas papers talking to him… how many newspapers do they have around Fayetteville, anyway? And why did one of them have so many really, really bad questions?