Just Keep Swimming

Seeing as it is insanely hot in Boulder right now and I have nothing better to do with my time, I have started swimming laps again at a local outdoor pool. The main reason is that I miss the beach, and swimming in an outdoor pool is about as close as I’m going to get to the ocean this summer, unless you count Baddie and Midget sending me pictures of Florida sunsets while laughing hysterically.

I have always like swimming, mainly because it is the only athletic activity that I showed some proficiency in (unless you count eating as an athletic activity). Growing up in Hawaii, you pretty much learn to swim before you learn to walk (although many people who know me argue that we never really learn how to walk). Not being able to swim while living on an island can be inconvenient at times.

Now, while it’s great exercise, there are some drawbacks to going to public pools to workout. Mainly the “public” part, because you end up swimming with a lot of random people, and many of these people do not fully understand what a lap pool is supposed to be used for. Yesterday I found myself constantly having to pass some guy who had a wetsuit and a snorkel on and was drifting more than he was swimming. I’ve seen tourists snorkeling at reefs swim with more urgency than this guy. I kept looking for the fishes that he was apparently watching.

The worst was the other week, when two pregnant women hopped into my lane and decided that they were going to walk the entire length of the pool. Walk. In a pool. Now, I’m not saying these women should not be allowed to do this, but there is a time and a place where you are free to do whatever you want in the pool. They call it “free swim.” But during “lap swim” time, you should probably be swimming laps, or at least swimming. And don’t even get me started on locker rooms. Yes Mr. seventy-something guy, we know you are confident with your body, but that doesn’t mean everyone else has to be.

Of course, I’m a bit spoiled, since back home I have a free pool at my high school that is not very busy. It’s pretty much like having my own private pool. I remember during one year when I was on the high school swim team, the pool was actually closed to the public and only the swim team could use it. This could have something to do with the fact that there was no lifeguard and the chemicals in the pool were strong enough to strip paint off a car. We would often get out after practice and our hair would fall out and we couldn’t’ see and we had rashes on the extra arm that had sprouted out of our foreheads.

Now, just to get this out of the way, I swam competitively, but I was not very competitive. Actually, my only real achievement was almost getting kicked out of a meet for swearing in front of a race official. I just needed an excuse to wear really tight swimsuits in public. I’m just joking. I think. Although sometimes you got the feeling our entire team had no idea what was going on. At my first meet, two of my teammates swam 150 yards of breaststroke, which is fine except it was only a 100-yard event.

But if I had to pick a highlight of my swim career, it would probably be the district qualifying meet in my junior year at HPA high school. I had already swam all of my events, so I had already changed to street clothes and was eating Cheetos in the bleachers when my coach informs me that I had tied some kid for the last spot in the finals in the 100-free, so we had to have a swim off. The other kid was from HPA so he had home field advantage, but HPA is like the Yankees of the Big Island. Nobody likes them because they are rich and they win everything. Plus I was fat and I had Cheeto dust on my fingers, so I was the clear underdog. So most of the crowd was pulling for me. I ended up beating the guy in what is still my best time in that event.

Of course, I had to take my ACTs on the day of the actual finals, so I got there late, lost my goggles the second I dove into the water, and got disqualified. So in the end I think I would have been better off just giving up and finishing my bag of Cheetos. Have you ever swum after eating an entire bag of Cheetos? You should try it. Just make sure it’s free swim time at the pool.