Sixth Day on the Ground - A Dad's Diary - August 27th, 2021

This blog post originated from Clayton’s Frech’s personal Facebook page. He is chronicling his journey as a dad with his son that is headed to Tokyo.

Today and most of tomorrow will be rest days for Ezra. Tomorrow is the Paralympic debut for Team Ezra and I couldn’t be more excited! I am actually writing this the morning of the 28th, so the excitement is REAL right now! Before I walk through our day yesterday, I want to share my morning ritual with you.

Morning Ritual

I immediately adjusted to local time, getting up without an alarm around 6/630am most mornings. I am surprisingly tired from a day of walking and standing around. I guess I am a true office worker…

I put my phone on silent and throw it on the floor so I don’t hear any vibrations, and this has been working really well. I usually check social and email to see what I have missed. Then I boil water to make my morning tea. I have because a serious tea drinker and brought my own tea and big tea thermos, which I often bring to the village in the morning.

I often shower in the mornings because I am too tired in the evenings. When I get back, I just want to get off my feed and veg out for a little bit. I tend to fall asleep very quickly!  I also have started to wash a couple clothing items each morning so I don’t get behind on clean clothes. I usually wash my Team US shirts (I was given a nice set of shirts) and socks seem to be my primary shortage.

I then sit down to write my daily blog and push more images on social. I am primarily using FB for the blog and Instagram for stories and images throughout the day. Hoping that is keeping folks upated! I have gained a few hundred Instagram followers which is super cool. I am at or near the 5,000 friend limit on FB, which is kind of funny.

I also check in with the family, as it is late afternoon / after school by the time I am up and talkative… The 7-12pm window here is the best time to check-in as it is late afternoon / early evening in LA. It’s so weird to be here without the rest of our family. We originally had 33 family and friends attend the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games as part of Team Ezra…. It’s sad to not have everyone here. I know we would have had the best time ever if we weren’t in a pandemic.

After writing, I start to pack up. I add more USA pins to my lanyard for pin trading. I grab my backup phone charger (I have two and rotate each day so I am always loaded up with power) and gopro batteries (I have four batteries and some days have run out!). I ensure I have the credential, snacks, tea, and my taxi vouchers ready to go.

Then I go down to the lobby and have the receptionist order the TCT taxi, a taxi service that follows the Tokyo 2020 Playbook from a sanitization standpoint. A few times I have been able to carpool with some other chaperones, but we are all on pretty different schedules so it’s not as easy as we thought. There are 8 of us staying at this hotel and we see each other once in a while.

The All Important Rest Day

So yesterday was a super chill rest day for Ezra. I arrived in the village and grabbed a bite to eat in the plaza and waited for Ezra to meet me for a trip to ottobock. It turned out the transport system was not working and he didn’t want to waste any energy walking all the way. It’s surprisingly far. So I offered to come up to the village to grab the leg and bring it to ottobock.

Before I run the leg over to Ottobock, I had some gifts and letters for him. A couple sweet notes from my mom and step dad (which I forgot to give him on the plane!), and then a bunch of gifts from our Japanese friends Risa who works at Tokyo 2020 and Max from UCLA Anderson (we were in the same section and graduated ’98, so I have known max 25 years!). Max went to a Japanese shrine to pray for Ezra to have a good competition on 8/28 and 8/31. He got two certificates for us, one for each day. SOOO cool and special. And Risa got him a bunch of Japanese hand towels (description below) and a Japanese flag with dozens of written notes from her friends, family, and colleagues at Tokyo 2020! How cool is that? Also he got a couple letters from Japanese high school students, one who said he has inspired her to try sports and other things she was afraid to try! How sweet is that?

A tenugui (手拭い) is a thin Japanese hand towel made from cotton. Typically, tenugui are about 35 by 90 centimetres (14 by 35 in) in size, plain woven, and almost always dyed with some pattern. Usually the long sides are finished with a selvage, and the short sides are just cut and so soon show some fraying.[1] A tenugui is often used in ways that towels are used, such as being used as a washcloth or dishcloth, for example. They are often used as headbands, souvenirs, decorations, or for wrapping bottles and similar items. Towels made from terry cloth have largely replaced tenugui in household use. However tenugui are still popular as souvenirs, decorations, and as a head covering in kendo, where it functions as a sweatband and provides extra padding beneath the headgear (men).

After opening these gifts, I take the leg down to the Ottobock Repair Center. I have to say the Ottobock team is amazing. They repair everything any athlete needs, from chairs to legs, to braces. They run a tight ship and bring their best people in from all over the world. THEy stock parts from all the major prosthetic and chair companies so they are ready to repair anything. It’s an amazing operation. I toured it in Rio and it was mind-blowing. We will tour this one next week once we finish the HJ on Tuesday! Can’t wait. The team at Ottobock, including Julian and Jeff, took great care of us. We just wanted to clean up the leg, tighten everything down, and make sure there were no risks that were obvious. With prosthetics (and likely all adaptive equipment), things are in a constant state of degradation, meaning you have to really keep an eye out to avoid catastrophic breaks and failures. We have gotten the call from school “Ezra broke his leg” so many times.

Within 20-30 minutes I was on my way back to give Ezra the leg. Before I could get back he wanted to grab some food so I met him at the Casual Dining restaurant, which is purely Japanese food (but way healthier).

Ez then went back for a massage and relax time in his room. I watched the Games on the TV in the public lounge that I am allowed to hang in. By 6:30pm he was ready for another meal. We went to the main dining hall this time with Jarryd Wallace , Roderick D. Townsend, Josh Cinnamo and Sam Grewe. A solid squad for sure.

I walked back to the US block with him, he went up to the athlete lounge, I stayed and watched a little more sport. Then I headed home to my hotel. Pretty uneventful day, all said and done.

But we got the leg tuned-up. We relaxed and kept the legs fresh.

Ready to jump today!!!

Clayton