Swimming Lessons

To the left is a really bad picture of Garion's first day of swimming lessons for this summer. Garion is the barely visible blob just to the left of the ladder. This is Garion's third summer of swimming lessons. Up until now, he has hated every second of them. I didn't even tell him he was starting swimming lessons this summer until about 4:00 yesterday afternoon (the lesson started at 5:00). Surprisingly, this tactic seemed to work. Garion gave me five minutes of the usual "I REALLY don't want to take swimming lessons." I have him a thirty second answer that boiled down to: tough pattooties, you're going and we're not discussing it anymore. He then asked me how many swimming lessons he had to take and I told him when he could show me that he could swim across the pool by himself, without touching the bottom and without a life jacket, he would be done. He seemed to be heartened by the fact that he might not have to take swimming lessons every summer for the rest of his life, and pretty much sucked it up. I was very proud. Then, miracle of all miracles, I think he actually had fun during his lesson. Whew!

We arrived at the pool about 15 minutes early because I have still not adjusted to the fact that Flagstaff is small and you can get all the way to the other side of town in 10 minutes. While we were sitting there, I told Garion that this was the pool where I learned to swim.

"Really?" he asked. And then eying a group of teachers in the corner, "Which teacher did you have?"
Me: "Well, it was a long time ago, so I didn't have any of those teachers."
Garion: "Because none of them were even alive yet?"

I started to say, "no." Then I stopped and looked again at the group of teachers. They all appeared to be maybe between 18 and 20 years old--college aged. I think I was 12 the last summer I took swimming lessons.....about 20 years ago.

Me in the agony of the realization of the passage of time: "Well.....yes, I guess they probably were not alive yet."
Garion, very helpfully: "Or they were babies."

It's like living the twilight zone

This morning I went swimming (for the first time since we moved here, ugh--got to work on motivation). The pool is the same pool that I learned to swim in. I think the first time I swam in that pool I was three years old. And now, a few decades later, I'm right back where I started-- one big circle. Weird.

Geeky Thoughts

Since January, I've been taking a lap swimming class twice a week through Tucson's Parks and Recreation. I love to swim and this class has been a great way for me to build some stamina and release some stress. As part of my new resolution to kick the car habit as much as possible, this morning I decided I'd ride my bike to my swimming class and then ride work. Which I did. Which means riding my bike at 5:oo in the morning because my swimming class is at the ungodly hour of 5:30. This also means riding my bike to work after an hour of swimming. Needless to say, by the time I got to work this morning, I was starving. If it had taken me any longer to open my containers of yogurt and granola, I probably would have resorted to eating the plants in my office. Also, I still had to ride to home--I think I'm going sleep really good tonight. And probably have sore legs tomorrow. I wish that my body could respond as instantly to my desire to bike everywhere as quickly as I've decided that this is something I should do; I can hardly wait until the day when I can bike, plus swim, plus ride home and not feel completely wiped.
On the other hand, now that I've done it once, I know it can be done and I'm feeling even more encouraged to bike whenever I can. Which leads to the shamefully geeky thought I had today as I was contemplating the wonderfulness of my bicycle: wouldn't it be great if you could choose as bicycle as your mount in World of Warcraft?! You could ride around smiting the forces of evil from your slick, two wheeled steed that didn't require the upkeep of horse but still moved you efficiently from point A to point B and didn't pollute the world with those mechanical chickens or whatever they are! AND!! you could have a bicycle helmet for your head, like a bike helmet +50 to armor, +100 to intellect (because you'd made the intelligent choice to ride a bike!), and +200 to stamina (because think of all that extra exercise you'd be getting!)!! It would be sooooooo kewl.