4 loops
70 minutes
78 degrees
AQI: 37
Another great swim, even if my goggles kept leaking. I had to stop several times to fix them. The water was not too rough but wasn’t still either. It offered a gentle rocking. My sparkle friends were abundant today and coming at me, like swimming through stars or light like it looks in a time lapse video. Mostly it was cloudy, but sometimes the sun came out and the surface of the water sparkled. From a bird’s view above, I imagine they were able to watch it turn from pewter to silver to pewter again.
The buoys near the main beach were in close, which I like. It means the course is longer. Was it? I’ll compare:
8 aug: 2010 strokes / 1.78 miles
22 july: 2347 / 2.29 miles
17 july: 2660 / 2.64 miles
11 july: 2020 / 1.89 miles
Okay. I was wrong. Today’s four loops was the shortest 4 loops out of this sample of 4 4 loop swims.
10 Things
- a sloshing sound of water — was it my arms piercing the water that made this sound, or my head turning to breathe or my torso being rocked by the water?
- a plane
- opaque water
- bubbles around my hands
- my feet feeling like rudders
- the sky, white and thick with clouds
- later the sky, split open, the sun peeking through
- sparkles on the water
- the far off dot of the green buoy not looking green but white
- the area around the white buoys thick with milfoil
Took a screen shot of my path today. The off-course lines are when I went to the swimming area at the big beach to fix my googles.

A scalene triangle, almost an isosceles.
Today I’m working on adding to my inklings (inkling poems / 5 line, 5 syllable small poems that spread rumors, drop hints, whisper, are approximate/vague/rough in their descriptions). Today’s inklings are about sketching different points on the course. One of the inklings, which serves as an intro to the larger goal of describing my course is title, “Plotting the course.” As I swam, I realized that this has a double meaning. Plotting as in identifying/marking points on the course and plotting as in create a story/plot for my experience swimming around the course. With that in mind, I’d like to write more about the story/stories I want to tell. Of course, plotting also means secret planning to do something/hatching a scheme. Will that meaning factor in too?