Evanston, September 7 (Labor Day)

An unscheduled swim. We were promised by Joe that our outdoor pool would be open for one last swim on Labor Day, but Joe, who knew where the Park District brass lived, went biking instead of coming to practice and dragging some suit out of bed to open the pool for us. We waited around for about 40 minutes for someone to show up at the pool. By then Leo had left but Ken and Jody had shown up. So when I suggested that we just go to the Lake they both agreed. So we hopped in my car and drove to Evanston with just our pool gear rather than our Lake gear.

There was a strong northeast wind with low swells and windwaves. But overall it would be hard to argue that the waves were more than a foot or two. The water felt warm to our feet but with the cool damp wind it felt cold overall. Jody had not brought a cap to the Lake and I offered her one of my 3 grubby latex caps in my pool bag and she at first resisted, but on standing on the side of the Lake she reconsidered. I suggested we start out with a straight out 10 minute swim and then reconsider. But Ken and Jody made no move to start swimming so I headed out solo. After the 10 minutes I looked behind and Ken and Jody, who are faster than me, were right behind me. We agreed that conditions weren't so awful so a swim to the wall was agreed upon.

At the wall the water was sheltered by the wall from the wind and was quite calm, just the low swells. I checked my thermometer watch and the water was 65, which has now become the norm for the Lake. We all felt good in spite of the hard swim out against the waves and looked forward to an easy swim back. It wasn't so easy, Ken was watching the time and said we were only a minute faster coming back (20 out, 19 back). But we all felt warm and pumped up with adrenaline. Jody and I agreed that this was far more fun than yesterday's uneventful swim at Ohio Street. If you re-read yesterday's post translate "nice" to "boring".

Unlike our suburb, Evanston had their bathrooms open even when we got there. But instead of lifeguards they had a plain clothes policeman in an unmarked car sitting by the beach entrance. Apparently we were not of interest to him, he was on dog duty. We all craved a cup of coffee so the next stop was Starbucks where, since I was the only one with money, I treated the group to coffee. There were so many people there that there was no convenient parking so I put the car in an alley and left Ken to guard the car while Jody and I got the coffee. Outside Starbucks there was a uniformed cop standing guard. Apparently while we were in the store he walked over and checked out my car, but seeing Ken in the back seat left us alone. Apparently a bunch of middle aged intruders wearing Crocs and little else are no perceived threat to Evanston.