Pokematic's Big 10 Women's Gymnastics Championship Adventure

Hey everyone, amidst all the craziness with my grandma and dad mskate and I went to the big 10 women's gymnastics championship on Saturday. Since we like going to the UofM home meets and the big10 championship was hosted at UofM this year, we decided to go there. We bought the tickets before the crap hit the fan so we used this as a break. It was much need. But before the meet something very bad happened. On my right hand I have 3 rings; high school graduation, college graduation, and my grandpa's ring. When I left I was very certain I put all 3 rings on, and as we were driving to the meet I noticed my grandpa's ring was missing. I felt "comfortable" since I knew it was somewhere recent; the stairs by where I keep my hat and accessories, the stairs, the attached garage (possibly the recycling bin), or somewhere in the car. When we got to the meet we looked around in the car but couldn't find it, looked around the car to make sure it didn't fall out, and it wasn't there. OK, look when I get home. But wait, there's more. Since this is a long meet I brought our power brick to charge our phones and mskate's insulin pump, and because mskate has diabetes I had sugar snacks in my pocket, and because I have big pockets I happened to have a tin of almonds in my pocket. I also normally carry a pocket knife multi-tool, but I knew better than to bring that. We go through security and I get buzzed, I walk over to the side and upon emptying just 2 of my pockets the guy said "there's all your contraband, put it in your car or throw it away." I hurry back to the car and drop everything off, and all the while mskate is waiting just past security because the tickets were on her phone. I still got some sugars in (because diabetes, ADA says "this is medicine and overpriced stadium food is not a reasonable accommodation to prevent a diabetic from having an outside bag of skittles"), and I'm pretty sure it was the almonds since last time we got the charging brick in. Whatever.

OK, now we're in and we need to find our seats. Normally it's general admission so we found seats around where we were last time, but when mskate noticed people were getting kicked out of their seats she realized that seats were assigned and we were in someone else's seats and had to find our own. Ours ended up being wheelchair accessibility seats, and we don't have wheelchairs. Apparently this was kind of common since they were setting up folding chairs for people who needed them, and the seats were pretty comfortable so it wasn't a big deal. We wanted to make sure we had good seats for the vault and these were good. I got us stadium nachos to split as we watched the warmup. It was pretty good, and then there was the walk out and that was good. 

The match was against UCLA, UofM, MSU, and some other school with an "M" for the logo. First UCLA was on vault, UofM was on uneven bars, MSU was on balance beam, and "other school" was doing the floor routine. All of them did really well, lot's of 9.9 and other high scores, but then something REALLY cool happened, Stephen of Michigan State scored a 10 on balance beam. That was SO cool, and I think afterwards she did a crowd surf with her team. During the rotations there was a hype man MC who went around interviewing people on the jumbotron and he started with MSU asking them what it was like to see a 10, and people were very happy. Then there was the selfie cam thing and mskate and I got on it with our signs and dancing. That was really fun.

Now in this rotation it was UCLA on bars, UofM on beam, MSU on floor, and "other school" on vault. I don't have a lot to say on this one, except UCLA did really well on bars with everyone scoring a 9.9 except for one woman who got 9.95. This time the hype man went to UofM where he interviewed UofM men's gymnast and olympian Paul Juda as he was in the crowd and cheering for his girlfriend and promoting next week's men's meet. This was also when mskate got us ice cream, chocolate peanut butter I think it was.

Third rotation, UCLA on beam, UofM on floor, MSU on vault, and "other school" on uneven bars. What happened? Oh just another 10, also on balance beam, Alipio of UCLA. The MC was celebrating and I got him on camera. Way cool, 2 10's in a single meet. After that win MC hypeman came to the UCLA section where we were sitting, and I got some good up close pictures since he was standing right by the accessibility section as they were getting ready to interview. Really fun. We were also in the background of the interview, not easy to see but my high viz safety yellow jacket was visible.

Now for the final rotation, UCLA on floor, UofM on vault, MSU on uneven bars, and "other school" on balance beam. I think we should either call this meet "the 10 meet" or UCLA "the 10 school," because they scored 2 10s on floor bringing their total up to 3 and the night's total up to 4 (Moors and Chiles got the 10s BTW). Yeah, they were some impressive routines. Rotations over and ceremony getting set-up, the MC went to "the other school" section and interviewed them, especially the guy in the fedora and beaver tail.

Now time for the award ceremony. There's not too much to say, but there are pictures to show. It was kind of neat watching 11 teams squeeze on the floor routine floor (why 11? because there was an 11th school that was added to the big 10).

Bars Winners

Beam Winners

Floor Winners (sorry, don't know what happened to vault)

All Around Winners

And then I forgot the context here, but it was "celebrate the whole team and cram them on the podium."

We were able to get home without much trouble. Once we got home I dug through the recycling bin looking for my ring and it wasn't there. I looked through the stairs and garage, not there. Mskate looked at the landing and stairs, not there. I dug through the little garbage in the kitchen and not there. I looked through the car again but not there. It wasn't until I completely cleaned out the car and moved all the seats the next day did I find the ring between the drivers seat and the center console unit under the rails that the seat placement adjusts on. I saw something a little shiny and round, so I reached to it and there it was. I exclaimed really happy. I was a bit worried that it might have fallen into the back seat vent that's under the driver and passenger seats, but when I saw that my fingers wouldn't fit in the holes I was confident that my ring that's larger than my finger wouldn't fit. It was a bright little event in an otherwise dark point. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.