Friday, November 2, 2007

I'm in love...

... with a swimming pool. Yup. A couple of Alison's (adult) students took us on Wednesday (Hallowe'en, that is) to try out a pool they frequent weekly or so. Those not familiar with what my expectations might be are referred to my previous post on swimming.

I was in awe.

The pool was a fifty-metre, eight-lane one. With lane ropes. And people swimming the length of the pool, keeping right, not going diagonally or around the perimeter! The icing on all this was that the price to use this pool is about half that of the one we used in Changchun.

And there were people there who could actually swim! Some were doing flip turns. And butterfly. As impressed as I was, I was also glad to find myself to be faster than them.

If my standards were not so low, I could have complaints: There is only one time clock (as opposed to one at each end of the pool) and it wasn't moving, there were no backstroke flags,1 and the pool's quite a bit farther from our home—about a twenty-minute bike ride, rather than a three minute walk.

I don't mind the greater distance though as it gives me more of a chance to ride my wicked cool bicycle.

1Or rather there was one set of flags, and they were way too far from the end of the pool to be of any (normal) use. And they were being used to hang a message, which Alison's students informed us described to people how not to swim like total idiots (à la Changchun swimmer). So I guess they did have a worthy enough purpose after all.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

>I don't mind the greater distance >though as it gives me more of a chance >to ride my wicked cool bicycle.

i'm intrigued...

Owen said...

I wonder who is intrigued, though. Why "anonymous"?

Regardless, stay tuned for more details on the wonder that is my two-wheeled transportation.