Roller coasters and helicopters

It seems we got all excited for nothing at this point. The weather outlook has changed again and it now looks like the first possible time to swim is Saturday. If that is the case, it could be a problem for me as I am second slot. That would mean the first slot guy would go Saturday. My flight back is Sunday morning early. I just hope something changes between now and then and everyone gets to do their thing. There is really nothing I can do. I am trying to put out of my mind the possibility that I may not get to swim at all.

Apparently the crazy weather is a common part of channel swimming. One minute you are ready to go and the next it's called off. Or vice versa, you are touring around the city and you get a call from your pilot that you are going. I was prepared for this rollercoaster having heard from people who have gone before me. The good news is that I have everything laid out and ready to go.

Most of the day was spent making final preparations for my swim. We went to a grocery store (Tesco) and picked up some things to mix with my Maxim, food for after the swim, etc as instructed by Freda. She has a very detailed feeding plan scripted in 30 minutes increments of what I am to drink/eat. Most of it is just Maxim (energy drink) with different things mixed in. We also had a little time to make our way to the central shopping area of Dover. I am a huge shopper. (not). And because the kids were hungry we ate at, you guessed it, McDonald's. Pretty much like ours at home.

So now I will regroup and be on standby for the rest of the week. We'll probably just do family vacation type things - probably go to London one day, Canterbury Cathedral and the like. I will continue to get in the harbor though. In fact tomorrow I may do a longer swim.

Well, I was sitting here thinking I didn't have an interesting picture to post for you today. At that moment, an enormous British Royal Airforce helicopter circled our building a couple times scattering all the sheep in the fields and then landed in back on the lawn! It's not 150 feet from our window. It blew debris everywhere and created quite a bit of excitement for the guests here. So of course we all went downstairs to investigate. The pilots walked over and I asked if they dropped in for dinner. One smiled and said "actually yes, we have reservations". They were a friendly bunch of 4 who explained they were out on a training exercise. After dinner they were going on their way for some night training. They gave the kids (and adult kids) a guided tour of the inside of the chopper. They do search and rescue operations over land and sea. In the picture above you can see Anna, Benjamin and Jacob at the front of the helicpoter. Anyway, kind of woke us up here.