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Morning YMCA Swim Report, 3/2/2024

The outdoor pool at my Y doesn’t open till 8AM on Saturday mornings, quite a civilized time. This morning it was in the 50s, the pool surface misty in full daylight. Beautiful, in fact. I swam for 45 minutes. On one length I even tried to do the crawl, if it’s still called the crawl, and remembered by I’m a committed breast stroker: the crawl feels as though I’m ladling water into my head through every cranial orifice.

Afterwards I went to Trader Joe’s in my after swim attire—in pleasant weather, a long flowered muumuu of sorts, and a pair of orangey-pink fuzzy clogs, and when I got back my ball-and-chain said to me, “That’s quite a get-up.” He wasn’t wrong. It was the sort of thing that one might call Old Austin.

I got back yesterday from a trip to San Antonio to do a gig with my dear friend and colleague Deb Olin Unferth. The hotel we stayed at was on the Riverwalk, and had an outdoor pool. I’d packed my suit. The pool turned out to be on the fourth floor. Not only did the exercise room look out upon it, but so did that side of the hotel, including Deb’s room, on the 12th floor. I’m fairly good at pretending that I’m invisible but not that good.

At the Y, I feel invisible enough, though not invisible: there are lifeguards surveying the pool at all times. I am a line of handwriting on lined paper, and I can love my fellow swimmers because I do not fear their noggins headed my own sorry old noggin.