Evanston, August 12

What is so rare as a day in June? A perfect June day in August. Full sun, air temperature in mid 70's and a mild wind keeping the bugs away. Perfect for beach goers. It was not quite so perfect for swimmers, the reported 1 foot waves were more like 3 feet and again from the southeast. Today we are at Lighthouse beach, which is a bit smaller than our usual beach. An out and back situation but with the wall at the south end of the beach this presented a bit of a complication. So we go out, then upwind until we are even with the wall. This was hard as we were not making much forward progress against the wind. Now we have maximum flexibility to follow the waves in and not hit either the wall or the poles at the north side of the beach. Not much of a fun swim. Water is about 70. We tried riding the waves but they were of low quality, quite disorganized, so only a couple of good rides.

We sat on the beach with our friend Rich and his friend from Evanston enjoying the great beach day. At some point Rich decides to go in the water. He is a big older guy. Because of the waves and uneven bottom Rich falls. It soon becomes apparent that, although he is not in danger, he is not going to be able to get up by himself. The small lifeguard is watching him, but she makes no attempt to help. So Mike and I have to dash to the water to help him up and guide him out of the lake. After the guard finishes her half hour on duty she comes over to check on Rich and assure him that she would have taken action if he were actually drowning. Exactly what action wasn't clear.