Remembering 3 weeks ago and the late night Tornado

At about 4pm we ventured to the pool, after Joe and Leah spent the afternoon walking through a local street fair. We got to the pool (which was a bit more crowded this evening as more athletes are arriving). The plan was to do the actual warm-up portion of practice in the competition pool, and the remainder of the workout in the less crowded "warm-up pool". Well, we got the warm-up portion of practice done when the PA announcer told all athletes to get out of the pool, and everyone (about 4-500 athletes, coaches, and support staff) had to go down to the lower levels of this very large Quest Center. Reason.......a very large section of tornado's were moving very fast through the area. I thought.....Oh great, here we go again. So all athletes were down in this small area, actually having fun and talking. These are the times when everyone is just an athlete, you see swimmers that you all know (Michael Phelps, Brendan Hansen, Natalie Coughlin, just sitting and tackling to friends). We were down here about 30 minutes,and then felt cold winds coming through the hallway. Word started to make its way through the athletes that damage had been done to the building. At that point we started to hear a very loud howling, and the lights started to flicker. At this point we were all instructed to move to the other side of the building that the arena had suffered damage, and water was running into the building. After another 30 minutes, the tornado has passed, and the sun was out. We were told the Quest Center was being closed for the evening. We got our gear and went back to the hotel. On the way out of the Quest Center we saw the extensive Damage done to the building, and several members of the security detail were roping off the areas.

We had a nice dinner at Spaghetti Factory, and Joe, Leah, Tina and Dave did a bit of shopping in the "Olde Town" section of Omaha. We are going to workout in the AM, and hope for a bit of better weather. Here is some pictures of the damage