Ohio Street, September 1
The morning pool group, Ken, Joe, Paul and me, decided last week that we would go for a Lake swim. Ken and I are doing Big Shoulders next week, Paul is a veteran, having done it last year, and Joe wanted to come along for the workout. As I have the most Lake experience I was delegated to pick the time and beach. Monday and Wednesday were too rainy/windy for Evanston, which was my preference so I cancelled on both of those. But Ken needed to swim so it was decided that regardless of the weather we would go somewhere. Unfortunately our weather has been held up by the storms coming up the Atlantic coast so we have had this constant north-east wind all week. And today, which I was hoping to be better wasn't, maybe worse. So the trip was to Ohio Street where one can always swim.
So we drove down in two cars, the idea was that Joe would do one lap and leave for work and Ken, Paul and I would do to. We got into the city by 6:30 AM and actually were able to find, at least partly legal, parking places not too far from the Lake. The other guys are Chicago natives and the mindset here it that it is better to get a $50 ticket than pay a $20 parking lot fee, and besides who ever heard of a traffic cop in Chicago working before 8:30 AM? The Lake was almost as rough as I have seen at Ohio St. Some swimmers getting out who had biked down assured us that it was worse up north. They also said it was warm, it didn't feel that way getting in as it was 69, but we worked so hard that we, at least Ken and I, were plently warm by the finish. We lost Joe at the second ladder, we last saw him waving to us from shore to continue without him. We made the outbound with difficulty, I told the guys to round the red bouy at the end, but it wasn't there, either due to wave action or the triatheletes removing it at the end of their season. But the inbound trip was better. We decided not to do the second lap. There were a number of other swimmers present and many of them were doing an out and back to the first boat bouy east of the beach, so we did that, about 200 yards. Paul and I had enough but Ken did one more of these for cooldown. Then coffee at Starbucks and we were on our way home about 8:30 with very little traffic on the outbound Kennedy.
So we drove down in two cars, the idea was that Joe would do one lap and leave for work and Ken, Paul and I would do to. We got into the city by 6:30 AM and actually were able to find, at least partly legal, parking places not too far from the Lake. The other guys are Chicago natives and the mindset here it that it is better to get a $50 ticket than pay a $20 parking lot fee, and besides who ever heard of a traffic cop in Chicago working before 8:30 AM? The Lake was almost as rough as I have seen at Ohio St. Some swimmers getting out who had biked down assured us that it was worse up north. They also said it was warm, it didn't feel that way getting in as it was 69, but we worked so hard that we, at least Ken and I, were plently warm by the finish. We lost Joe at the second ladder, we last saw him waving to us from shore to continue without him. We made the outbound with difficulty, I told the guys to round the red bouy at the end, but it wasn't there, either due to wave action or the triatheletes removing it at the end of their season. But the inbound trip was better. We decided not to do the second lap. There were a number of other swimmers present and many of them were doing an out and back to the first boat bouy east of the beach, so we did that, about 200 yards. Paul and I had enough but Ken did one more of these for cooldown. Then coffee at Starbucks and we were on our way home about 8:30 with very little traffic on the outbound Kennedy.
posted by Barry at 2:27 PM
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