After a fun morning at the zoo we went back and rested for a short while at the Airbnb and then headed out to the subway to catch a ride downtown. We were downtown super early so we walked the few blocks over to the Gateway Arch and explored out and around it, including the old courthouse where the Dred Scott case was tried. Leighton had fun practicing his handstands under the arch and was quite surprised how large the arch was when he got up to it. We grabbed some sandwiches for dinner after our exploring. Then we headed to the meet. The meet was held a the Dome at America’s Center which at one time had been a football stadium. We were seated on the 2nd row right near the parallel bars with good views of the whole floor. We watched the end of warm ups and could see Colin Van Wicklen who Leighton watched last year and did workouts over zoom with during the shut down suddenly leave the floor only to find out that he had been injured in warm-ups and had to withdraw from competition. Leighton was dissappointed that he didn’t get to see him compete. However it was amazing to watch all of the athletes that were there. We had fun getting to be on the 2nd row and seeing all of Leighton’s heroes compete and up close and personal. Afterwards Leighton wanted to stay around when the meet was finished and at first I didn’t understand why but then realized he wanted to get signatures from the athletes. He was able to get Akash Modi’s, Shane Wiskus, and Yul Moldauers signatures which just made him beam even more. As we were walking around the stadium headed to the subway the NBC media crew walked out the door in front of us and Nasia Luiken was right there. Leighton was far braver than I ever would be and walked up to the car she climbed in to and asked her to sign his shirt as well. She hopped out and graciously signed it. We rode the subway back and when I checked my watch for the day and we had done over 11 miles which explained why we were all tired.
Hiking Mommy 