Cave Woman Has Flash of Evolutionary Insight

 Time:  Friday, May 12 7:00 a.m.

Water:  54.1

Air: 56 according to car.  Cloudy and still.  Slight chill breeze on water.
Waves: Calm
Clarity: Brilliant
Wetsuit Kru:  Showgirl, Lt. MJ
Skin Kru: Fyn, Dragonfly

Shore Support: Flock of some kind of birds as I swam backstroke

Next swims:  12 noon Saturday and Sunday, weather permitting.  

Driving over the Hoan I watched a tugboat hauling a freighter toward a harbor berth, a strangely moving sight.  The little boat that could.

The sky was grey and the water absolutely still.  Quiet day, not much traffic.  Rain was forecast and showed on the radar. I wasn't going to swim in the rain, I promised myself.

But got to the beach and it wasn't raining.  Then I had to decide, skin or suit.  As I was getting ready my thumbnail split, creating a sharp broken edge, the kind that could rip right through neoprene.

"Anybody got a nail file?" I asked.  You never  know.

"Oh, sure," they laughed.

Then in a moment right out of Space Odyssey 2001 where the proto-human suddenly pictures using a bone as a hunting weapon, I had a similar flash of insight.  What is a nail file after all?  Something hard with a rough surface - I picked up a rock - the nearest rock, in fact, and applied it to my nail.  It worked perfectly.  In a few moments I had a smooth thumbnail.  (Later I googled, What are emery boards made of - the answer?  SAND!!)

"You're like a Cave Woman," MJ observed.

Now that my nail was ok, did this morally obligate me to put on my wetsuit?  My interior Google spit out an emphatic "No."  So I skinned into the delightfully quiet, clear water...warmer away from the rocks.  Passed Sewer Pipe and the False Garage (which I also think of as The Stove) for my longest swim North yet this season. Showgirl and Fyn went to Garage and Lt. MJ to Mudslide.

                           "Hurry up and get a group picture we need coffee"--Lt. MJ