Evanston, June 30

I have lots of excuses why I have not yet been to the lake this year. Mike is tired of them and you would be too. In fact Mike got so tired of waiting for me so he joined up with some triatheletes who lake swim incidental to bike and run training so I'm on my own for now. Mike has been in a couple of times, he says it has mostly been cold. He even claims to have been in briefly at the end of April at North Avenue in a wet suit. It was unusually warm then so the part of the story I don't believe is the wetsuit.

I have no more excuses so I'm ready to swim, but it has turned cold. Today when the sun came up it was only 55 out so I decided not to even bother. But looking at the lake temperature report apparently the northeast wind that is bringing us cool temperatures brought in some warmer water. The "crib" figure, which tends to be the most accurate was in the 60's so I decided to try to get in the lake before the end of June.

So I quickly got over to Evanston and went to the water. It was cool, but not unbearable. As I swam it actually started to feel nice. The water was 63 which was only a few degrees cooler than the air. I didn't go far but did swim about 15 minutes, just to make it official. Six inch waves were hardly noticable but the water was very cloudy from recent rains.