Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Evanston, August 9

Normally wave refraction will force waves to always come perpendicular to the shoreline, but here we can have wave directions from northeast to southeast. Today they were from the southeast. The plan was to do about half of our normal swim, then swim directly into the waves back in line with the near wall and then follow the waves in. Early in the second leg Mike gave up, after our longish bike ride yesterday he said he just wasn't in the mood to battle waves, and we swam directly in, mostly breaststroke, across the waves. The water was about 72 and cloudy, the air was 74 and partly cloudy. It seemed to be dog day at the beach, lots of dogs. A friendly husky seemed unattached and appeared to want to follow us home, and although Mike needs a new dog, this one was shedding so badly that after petting this dog you have a handfull of wet sandy hair. He eventually spied his master and trotted off.