Generally Cranky and Irritable

When contemplating an idea that is generally foolish, or at very least, overblown, it is best not to look at it too directly. Instead, let it clank around in the back of your head, never more than a general notion, until it is actually time to do the thing itself. Then only look at it one step at a time.

This is how I found myself, at 4:30 this evening, leaving my driveway on my bicycle, all geared out, with my swim trunks tucked in my back pocket, headed towards the cove. It was already late in the day, I'd had an afternoon whiskey, hadn't left the house yet, and was feeling generally lazy. It was time for a kickstart.

The bikeride to the cove was fairly unremarkable. Fifteen miles. I decided to bypass the mount soledad road, thinking it too ambitious, and cut through UCSD instead. I bombed down the hill to La Jolla Shores and back up around the bend to the cove where I locked up my bike and headed to the changing room. It was in here, standing in my cleats by the urinal, that I allowed myself to think about the second part of my excursion: the swim. I had come that far, and standing there on already tired legs, trying to rush myself before I lost too much body heat, I found that I was, in fact, going to do it. There would be no chickening out.

Beach bathroom floors may be one of the least desirable surfaces to touch with bare feet that one can imagine. I didn't have room for flip flops in my jersey pockets, however, so after clacking in on my cleats and exchanging bike shorts for a pair of lightweight nylon shorts, I stepped onto the grimy concrete and made for the door. I was sure to wipe my feet generously on the grass between the men's room and the stairs to the water.

Stashing helmet, water bottle, shoes, shorts and shirt (containing keys, wallet, cell phone and sunglasses), by the rock wall of the little inlet, I went out to test the water. It was cold. Realizing that I had forgotten my goggles in my shirt gave me an excuse to think thing through while heading back to my pile of stuff to fish them out. This was he part of my little adventure that I was most nervous about. I had noticed coming down the stairs, that there didn't seem to be any of the normal swimmers headed out to, or back from, the buoy 1/4 mile offshore. Was the water too cold today? It had become overcast, perhaps rain was coming? Maybe, this last thought quickly dismissed as paranoia, there were reports of sharks.

I should mention here that I am not a particularly strong swimmer, though I've been practicing a lot, of late. I did grow up near the sea, but it was the kind of ocean you went into when the weather topped 90 and you wanted a few chilly moments of 55 degree relief. I played around in the waves at waist, or if you were daring, shoulder height, then you came back in, shivering and blue, and wrapped yourself in your towel. What I was about to do now was entirely different. While I would never leave the shelter of the cove, I would be in water far too deep to reach, or even see, the bottom. I would have my goggles on, but all I would see would be back. I am used to this and, while I'm a reasonable human being and know all about the unlikelihood or shark attacks and whatnot, it still gives me the creeps to have all that water underneath me, with god knows what swimming around in it. I've never seen anything bigger than a bat ray in the water at La Jolla (and those are creepy looking enough), but there are sand sharks in the summer months. While they don't attack humans (their teeth are far too small to do any damage), they can grow to 6 or 7 feet long, and damned if I'd be able to tell the difference between one of them and a maneater.

So all this to say, I'm a bit of a fraidy cat about this stuff, but you can't let that sort of thing stop you from doing what you want, so I put on my goggles and waded right in, trying not to think about it too much. As I said, I'm not that strong a swimmer, and the last thing I need is to find, halfway to the buoy that I've gone and hyperventalated myself. There was a gentlemen to my left, as I waded in, playing in the shallows. He had just dunked himself and was whooping and hollering about how cold it was. This didn't help my confidence any (I hadn't brought a towel, or any clothes other than the already sweaty bike gear, and I still had to make it home without catching hypothermia). I found, when I dove in face first, to my pleasant surprise, that the water wasn't half bad. I was still warm from the bike ride and, as long as I kept swimming, I knew I'd be okay, at least until I got out.

The first part of the cove swim is magnificent, if somewhat eerie. Long, wavy grass sways hypnotically a few feet within you. Striped catfish, bright orange Garibaldi swim below along with several other varieties of fish, that I can't identify. After this, the grass is replaced by rocks and sand, then just sand, with giant sea plants growing out of it. Soon though, I'm out of this and into deep, dark green waters, where I can't see the bottom. The thing here is to keep calm. Focus of moving your arms one after the other and the rhythmic breathing. Don't get to startled when a piece of seaweed brushes your leg, or pops up right in front of your face. You have to expect to run into some, there are areas of the cove that are absolutely chocked with it.

I know the general direction of the buoy, but I don't see it. It should be easy to pick out, white with bright orange markings at the top and bottom, but it blends in with the white houses with orange Spanish tile roofs across the cove. I see a man in a full wetsuit (wimp) swimming back towards me, and I try to head the way he is coming from. I am comforted that there is someone else out here doing this, even if he is headed in the other direction. I drift off course often, and have to keep coming up and checking position. I try to do this as little as possible as it breaks my rhythm and, I think, feeds my fear of staring down into that dark nothing. I focus on form, each hand darts out in front and into the water, arrowlike, I watch them pull water back and behind me and I feel my legs kick to keep me afloat.

I reach the buoy, get startled by its barnacle crusted base suddenly in my face, swim around it and head back. The trick to get out there, on the bike, in the water, is not to think of it as a journey out and back. They buoy was the end of my trip. Now I am going home. Ever stroke brings me closer to the shore (which seems much further from me now, than the buoy did when stood on the beach). Each foot forward brings me closer to home, to food, to warmth.

I've done this swim only twice before (each time with someone else) so I know that the swim back always seems quicker. I have little time to worry about hypothermia or hyperventillation-- though I do reflect that they are the type of thing you tend not to notice until it's too late, and I school myself to keep my stroke steady and calming-- before I find myself once more over the swaying grass. This part is dizzying coming back in. The waves rock you and splash into your mouth when you try to breathe, the grass seems almost hypnotic. When I do reach shore, I walk back to my clothes like a drunk man, and pull the shirt on directly over my wet body to save heat.

I grab the rest of the gear and head up the stairs to the changing room. The first swig of water, I use to rinse my mouth out, and spit. The second I almost choke on, and that gets spit out too. The bottle is over halfway empty. I'm hungry, tired, thirsty and chilly. It's time to go home.

Grimy floor, changing, unlock the bike and head up the hill and out the other side of the cove. I decide to take a slightly more direct route back, and it's later than I thought and getting dark. I'm worried, as I pick up the pace, and feel the breeze though wet hair, that I'll get too cold, but it turns out to be a warm san diego evening, and I'm okay.

The ride home is unremarkable, save my low blood sugar irritability. I start to think about things that make me angry: the ex, mean drivers, my job, and while it's not what I want to be doing, it keeps the pace hard and steady and gets more home quick (and, fortunately, with only one middle finger incident, reserved for a particularly inept driver of a mini-van).

I'm on my couch now, with a glass of mild, but it's time for a shower, then some real food, then sleep.