Leone Beach, September 6

Cheap Shoulders, Heat 2 Mike hopes to establish an annual event the day after labor day, Cheap Shoulders, a swim from Howard Street Beach (Chicago) to Pratt Pier and back. This year I work Tuesdays and he did not want to break the tradition so he apparently did it alone yesterday. He says it was not too wavy, the water was fine, but the air was very cold on exit. He was not interested in repeating today.

Ken and I did our version of the swim today at 7AM. The conditions were awesome. Bright sun, almost flat water, almost clear (the bottom was visible all the way, but just barely), very light wind and 70 degree water. And we were not cold getting out. We modified the swim somewhat, we started at Leone beach, swam south to Pratt Pier, then north to Howard and finished again at Leone. The whole swim took about 68 minutes. There were a number of other swimmers present, they did not appear to be preparing for a meet. At one point Ken was left of me, shortly afterwards I saw someone on my right, my first reaction was that somehow Ken had swum to my other side. But looking more carefully it was a young woman, much better looking than Ken. She was as surprised to see me as I was her, and quickly swam in a different direction. After several weeks of bad weather it was good to be reminded again how pleasurable lake swimming really is.