Dave Harmon and I represented the Montgomery Ancient Mariners at the World Masters Championships in Munich this summer. It was a unique opportunity to get beaten by swimmers from all over the globe.

When I first arrived in Germany, I had the opportunity to visit with a friend, Uta Virkus, who had swum on the Fairfax County Masters team in 1995. She was gracious enough to pick me up from the airport and show me around Frankfurt. She also took me on a side trip to Heidelburg. The most memorable part of that trip was pushing my right foot into the floorboards of her car while we cruised along at 180 km/h on the Autobahn. (That’s about 110 mph.) Surviving that trip, she made arrangements for me to ride to Munich with three of her teammates from the Bad Homburg Masters team. They went just as fast.

Once in Munich I met up with Dave who had just arrived. We spent our first evening in Munich wandering through sheets of rain in search of an adapter for our electric clippers so that we could shave down. Dave had brought the clippers and I was responsible for bringing the voltage converter. Only nobody had told me that the square converter wouldn’t fit in the round German outlets. (It pays to open the directions BEFORE you actually need them.) Hence, our search for an adapter. Using pigeon German, we were introduced to many interesting German appliances but no adapters. Finally we settled for a direct connector between the clipper and the outlet, completely bypassing the voltage converter. Smarter people might not have tried this bold experiment. Smarter people also might not have allowed the over-juiced clipper to touch their bodies. Plugged into the German outlet, the docile American clipper became a hungry beast and fed on the flesh from my chest. After a few violent minutes, I disconnected the now engorged clipper from the outlet and relied on my razor to finish the task. This took several hours.

The next morning, Dave was up at first light to catch a quick breakfast and begin his shave. He was afraid of missing his first event. Little did he know that it would be after 8 p.m. before he would swim his first race. When we arrived at the Olympic Swim Hall, the warm up pool was already full--and I mean full. There were easily 30-40 people in each lane of the 50 meter warm up pool. Once we finally did pry our way in, we couldn’t stretch out to take a complete stroke. (Interestingly, the Germans designated different speeds for different lanes, which helped a little.) What we were quickly learning was that over 7,000 aquatic competitors had descended on Munich, most of them swimmers. Heats of the 200 I.M. took over six hours alone! Every day of the competition turned into a marathon. Even the 400 freestyle, contested with two swimmers per lane, went on until 10 p.m.

Another thing we learned was that without our I.D. cards we didn’t exist. Grimly determined German teenagers manned every entranceway inside the swim stadium. A swipe of the card through their computers determined our right to access various areas. By the second day, they closed the few alternative routes we had discovered to circumvent the system. Now, if we were foolish enough to exit the building to visit the outdoor vendors, we were forced to climb a hill to return to the swim complex. Competitors using the warm-up pool were forced to reenter the competition area by walking through out-of-the-way locker rooms. (This wasn’t all bad since the locker rooms were coed.).

The venue abounded with aging Olympic stars of the past. Shane Gould, the wonder child of the 1972 Olympics, won the 100-meter freestyle in the 40-44 age group, while Jim Montgomery, gold medallist in 1976, won the 100 freestyle in the 45-49 age group. Mark Spitz, who owned this pool in 1972, declined to swim, and moved around the pool area with the media in tow.

When we weren’t swimming, we were touring the area. We took a bus trip into the Bavarian countryside and saw mad Ludwig’s castles. We also sampled the fine German cooking which consisted mainly of bratwurst and other fine animal cuts. Within a few days we were desperately searching for alternative food sources and finally found a Filipino restaurant that was quite good.

Oh, yes, we did actually race while we were there. Dave had the better meet, shaving 13 seconds off his 400 freestyle to place thirteenth.