A typical day of practice on the team included:

• Stretching
• Swimming laps on top of the water
• Swimming laps under the water (no coming up for air)
• Doing the routines out of the water on the pool deck
• Doing the routines in the water

Each practice lasted 2 ½ – 3 hours and she practiced 5 days per week. That’s a lot of swimming. Ginger says that she used to sit on the bottom of the pool and talk in sign language thinking she was getting out of doing work. In reality, she was training herself to hold her breath for long periods of time. Ginger said that training was an on-going learning process; always learning new routines and technical stuff.

I asked her if she ever got kicked. “Getting kicked is just part of the game,” Ginger told me. “Even in warm up, watch out for those who are ticklish when you have to grab onto them. They’re like a wild horse.” Then she added with a giggle, “Me kick anyone, oh yeah!”

“Not much without goggles,” Ginger returned when I asked her what she saw while underwater. “You are always looking to position yourself correctly with the other teammates and where you were in the pool. You used lane markers to help.” I asked her how she manages to shoot up out of the water. That’s where the egg beater comes in. When you are upright, you do what’s called an egg beater to life you up out of the water. When you’re upside down, you use your arms to propel you upwards.

Time for a meet. Ginger competed once or twice a month all year. Her club did a big show in winter and again in the spring as fund-raisers. A competition consisted of solo, duo and team competition. At the solo level you did tricks in the water like walk-overs. Then it was time for the team competition. Some of the things you had to deal with were:

• Can’t touch the bottom of the pool, ever.
• Your hair had to be up in a bun.
• To keep your hair up in a bun, you put knox gelatin in your hair.
• You wore elaborate head pieces.
• You have to change your costume between rounds (try putting a dry suit on a wet body).
• You can’t wear goggles in the competition.
• Your eyes have to be open all the time.
• Different pools had different strengths of chlorine.
• You wore nose clips to keep water out of your nose.

During the competition, music plays to the routine. Ginger said that people always wanted to know how she could hear the music underwater. “Underwater speakers,” she says with an implied “Duh,” which is quickly followed by a giggle.

Below is a video of the team USA 2007 World Championship.

The chef, Jack Campbell

chicken or beef stew.  In my later years, I did prepare a full course luncheon.  It had to be nutritious and look nice, the table setting was also important as well as how I prepared the meal.  Unless I married into a wealthy family where I prepared dinner parties, my training wasn’t that useful.  I do admit, however, that I do reap some of the lessons at holidays.

So when the community class schedule came out and there were a few cooking classes on exotic foods, I jumped at the chance to try it out.  I chose Ethiopian cooking.  It sounded more interesting than the Mexican one.  I had never taken a cooking class before, so had no idea what to expect.  There was a class size limit so I figured we’d all be sharing in the cooking duties.  I was in for a surprise.

The mirror set-up

I arrived and in front of the room was a counter set up with a huge mirror over it.  Kinda like what you see at the county fair where they are demonstrating the latest slice and dice gadget.  The teacher is walking around in full chef gear.  He hands out a recipe booklet, a pancake looking thing on a plate and a bottle of water.

The class begins by him introducing himself.  He is a chef full time and teaches the class for fun.  He says it gives him a chance to try out new recipes.  All his classes are taught on different types of food and he claims that even if he teaches two classes on German, for example, the recipes will be different.  I can tell by his bantor that some of the students have been to his classes before.  In fact some, it turns out, have been taking his classes for 5 of the 6 years he’s been teaching.  That’s a good sign, right.

Next he introduces Ethiopian cooking.  It’s mostly very spicy, thus the water.  The Ethiopians don’t use eating utensils, instead they use the bread that is in front of us to scoop up their food.  The bread is made with Teff flour and is a mainstay of their diet.  Alone, it is not terribly good, the texture is more like a pancake then bread, it has a sour taste like sourdough, but it also has an earthy flavor.

The chicken and beef stews

Instead of inviting us up to cook, it is obvious that he will be doing all the cooking.  He will be preparing a beef stew, a chicken stew, lentils and collard greens.  All with lots of onions, clarified butter and spices.   As he cooks he tells more about reasons for using particular foods.  For example, clarified butter, which has all the dairy taken out, can be bottled and does not have to be refrigerated.  Africans don’t have many refrigerators.  Also, when a chicken is soaked in lime juice, it isn’t for flavor, it’s to kill the parasites.  Once again, with no refrigeration, a chicken is just sitting out in the warm air until time to cook it.

As he cooked, he also talked about some good Ethiopian restaurants in the Portland area.  Of course, the best is some whole in a basement where the owners are Ethiopian and speak little English.  There are also a couple of Ethiopian grocery stores, but the spices are hard to come by.  The cook had to send away to Washington DC to find some of them.  Speaking of spices, apparently everyone has their own special spice mixture and this is how you make it or break it as a cook.

The collard greens and lentils were finished first.  He set them out for us all to sample.  The people who had taken class before were jumping up as soon as he started setting it out.  They were here to eat.  The collards greens were okay, the lentils were very tasty.  Next came the beef and chicken stews.  Once again, tasty, but the lentils were the best.  Some used the pancake bread to scoop up everything.  Others, like myself, used a fork to scoop stuff onto the bread.  The lentils on the bread was even better.

Finally he put all our names in a bucket and drew out one name.  That person got the Ethiopian cookbook he had used.  Apparently this book give-away is a tradition in all his classes.  I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to cook, but I did learn a lot.  The only recipe that didn’t call for his special spice mix was the lentils, so here is the recipe.

The collard greens and lentils

Ethiopian Split Lentil Sauce

• 2 cups split lentils, red or yellow
• 6 cups water
• 2 cups red onions, chopped
• 1 cup oil or clarified butter
• 1 Tablespoon ginger
• 1 teaspoon garlic
• 4 fresh green Anaheim chili petters, de-seeded and chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• salt to taste

Wash the lentils and boil for 5 minutes.  Cook onions adding oil and stirring gently so the onions won’t turn brown.  Remove lentils from the heat, drain and reserve water for later use.  Add the lentils to the onions.  Add reserved water, stirring to prevent sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Add spices and salt to taste.  Simmer for another 20 minutes.  Keep cooking if you like very soft lentils.

Serves 6.

My stress release.

occur involuntarily, such as heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, and skin temperature. It was explained to me that bio feedback is used to treat high blood pressure, headache and chronic pain all of which I suffer. When a body is repeatedly stressed, internal processes like blood pressure become overactive. Most people who benefit from biofeedback have conditions that are brought on or made worse by stress. For this reason, many scientists believe that relaxation is key to successful biofeedback therapy. I decided to give it a try.

When I called to make the appointment, I was asked to not tell her any of my symptoms. Okay. Not knowing what to expect, I was a little nervous. When I arrived, I was asked to sit on a couch and relax. Sure. The therapist attached straps around my wrists, ankles and my head. These straps were all plugged into her computer. She explained that her program would begin reading the electrical energy in my body. This took several minutes.

At this point, she explained that she was getting my readings. She began to ask questions. Did I have joint issues, was I tired often, did I have intestinal issues, did I often feel sad. All the readings I answered yes to. She said she could ‘treat’ some of my symptoms through electrical impulses. She said I would feel a light electrical zap for each such treatment. It felt like a massage wand touching my wrist. That was the only place I felt anything. After the treatment was over, she explained that she could make some suggestions, but because she was not a physician, she could not tell me what to take. She suggested some supplements.

Synopsis: I really didn’t feel any different when I was done. But it did make a good diagnostic tool. For more information, check out Naturally Healthy You With Bio Feedback Therapy

But what kind of pizza or mutual fund to you buy? That depends on your objectives, risk and time frame. If you don’t have the time, knowledge or interest to make your own pizza or mutual funds, there are thousands to choose from. Just like pizza, there are funds for everybody including: growth and income, growth, aggressive growth, international, global growth, corporate bond, money market, government bond, tax free municipal bond, balanced and sector or specialty funds.

We talked a lot about how mutual funds should be used for the long term. There are always ups and downs, just like the stock market, but in the long run, a good mutual fund will do you well. Our instructor suggested investing about 25% of your money in international funds which have historically done well.

We compared mutual funds to treasury bonds. Remember from my previous class, bonds should be used for income. They are loaned money. You put in $200,000 for 20 years and you get $200,000 back. Now you do collect interest each month during those 20 years. The example showed $464,000 total interest income at $23,000 each year. However, after 20 years, the interest rates on bonds had dropped by 7% and the value of $200,000 had been cut in half.

The same $200,000 was invested in mutual funds for the same time period. Instead of earning interest each month, a 6% withdrawal was taken out of the fund each year. The first year, only $12,000 was taken out. But by 10 years, $27,000 equaled the 6% and by 20 years, $50,000 equaled the 6%. And the fund was now valued at over $850,000 and would continue to grow.

Finally we talked about load vs. no-load funds. Basically, no-load means you make all the decisions on what to buy and sell within your fund. Bad idea if you don’t know what you’re doing. Load funds means you pay a manager to make the decisions.

Mutual funds are the way to go for me. I can deposit as little as $25 per month and have it set up automatically. And I will go for load funds. Pizza I can manage, but I will definitely be paying a manger for my mutual fund