Evanston, July 4

Our traditional Independence day swim, often the official start of Lake swim season. On the way to the Lake Mike and I argue as to whether it is a north wind or a north-easter. I have the advantage of the NOAA marine web site with its new wind model while Mike must rely on his instinct. Its a draw, it is much wavier than predicted, 2 foot waves, but they are wind driven and too short a wavelength to be a real north-easter. We decide to swim north-north-east directly into the waves as far as we can. I should add that because of yesterday's morning rain I worked out in the pool in the evening with the team and took a beating from our coach Jerry, so I was not really up for a hard swim. We fought the waves for about 30 minutes ending up in a line with the shoremost part of the wall, but about 100 yards out, we purposely avoided the area around the wall. It was a quick 15 minute swim back with the waves, with Mike, as usual, ignoring our agreed upon line to better ride waves, but also getting stuck swimming crosswise the last 500 yards. It was interesting that our total time was consistent with our time Sunday when it was perfectly flat, proving some physical conservation law.

With the wind we did not stay too long at the beach, even though this was the first nice sunny day in a while. One indication of how strong the wind was is that not only were the roof tiles on the restrooms flapping, but the top of a woman's bikini completely blew off uncovering what appeared to be some very expensive synthetic tits.