I'm So Hot for You and You're SO COLD

Next Swims:
Mon-Fri 6AM and 5PM
Saturday/Sunday 8AM and Noon

Last Swims: Thursday at 6 a.m.
Water Temp: 

    Tuesday -  48 mitch-o-meter, 50 duck-o-meter

Air Temp:  low 80s

Clarity: CLEAR
Waves: Smooth with some slight heaving

Kru:  Diablo, early shift.  Mabye an Unknown guy, early.  Linda the Lamprey, Showgirl, Mr. Bubble, Moondaug, Dragonfly

Waking in the dark, Atwater Buoy has nothing nice to say.  Then star light before car light.  Driving under opalescent blue with an intense diagonal hot pink swoosh to the East.  The Harbor building windmill slicing against a SW breeze portended waves, a lie.

Only three souls at the flagpole – whence the hordes of the 70 degrees of yesteryear?  Today promised something else, but what?  Only a few milipedes criscrossed the mid-section of the path.

Beach pearly opal, but pink gradually dominating sea and sky.  Smoothness beckoned, but then the glacier exhale as we drew near.  Next, ankle-biters, black flies pursued in turn by a huge phalanx of dragonflies, hunting and swooping.

 Assembling the defenses – wetsuit, booties, sleeves, gloves, silicone sandwich headgear – took plenty time, no rush.  Linda skin as usual, Moondaug maybe half-and-half, a Merman, splashed away, FIFO.  Linda, wading then diving with no wasted motion.  Showgirl dove with a little cry and I followed. 

Always even colder than you think it’s going to be.  I turned  to breathe and in just those few short moments,  sun crests horizon, defined red orb silhouetting Showgirl’s black-suited arms.  Just past the rocks I paused to rest from the burst of energy required to get going and saw Showgirl, holding her hands up outside the water in the humid air.

 “How beautiful!” I gasp.  She laughs.  Water on my teeth hurts, slight ice-cream forehead ache.  My bare shoulders and armpits prickled with pain that felt more like fire than cold.  We commenced – to Sewer Pipe, to Kraken, to Garage and then “50 more yards.”  Linda was far to the East but as we reached Garage she came up behind us.

 “Are you guys going further?” she asked. 

I was too cold to get any words out, but Showgirl ventured, “I think we’re going back?”

Another pause while I gathered myself.

“I’m totally ready to go back!”

 Naturally, the current.  Leisurly fast swim out turns into  hard slow slog back.  Amazingly as we neared the rocks, my face started to feel warm when I put it in the water.  We agreed it may have been a degree or two warmer there, but otherwise it was “consistently cold.”

 Finally standing on sand – “Come here and look at this,” said Showgirl.

Although my entire body was screaming, “not another minute!” I did, putting my face back in one last time.

“There’s these fluffy things,”

Effluvia that Mother Michigan was sweeping up into long strands as she cleaned up the water around them, light and insubstantial as dandelion seed.

“And those big rocks, that have been around here, now they’re way over there,” Showgirl continued.  “So often I see things on swims, but there’s no one to share them with….and then I forget to discuss them later.”  Ephemeral, is the word I’m looking for.

 Manipulating chilled extremities to get dressed, a slow, awkward and hence humorous affair.  Linda confided that she sometimes, on very rare occasions, went so far as to - turn the heat on in her car!

 Walking back up the path we saw Mr. Bubble, LILO, breastroking back across the bay. He’d been in at least 45 minutes, probably had 15 to go.

 As my own swim was relatively short I circled back to Klode after some intravenous caffeine to check on Mr. B.  He was already at the flagpole and most graciously handed over the Blogwriting Quill.  I left him as he was affixing the Phantom of the Opera mask to the front of his bike.

 “Everyone needs a home,” he observed.