Evanston, August 19

This next week won't be good for either of us so we needed some extra yards. So back to Evanston for another quick mile. It was overcast and air in the 60's, the water was still 72 but felt very chilly. Calm but still murky, no underwater visibility at all. Our hearts really weren't in it so we detoured on the way back to see what sort of monstrosity was being built just north of our beach. Lots of ropes and buoys in the water, rocks being moved on shore but we had no clue what the goal was. We probably won't find out till next year.

Promontory Point, August 18

We were trying to think of where to go Saturday to get a good long swim but miss the Air and Water Show crowds, we were thinking of hitting Ohio Street very early. But Friday after my pool swim a guy in the locker room mentioned that some of the indoor pool swimmers were planning to swim at Promontory Point at 6AM Saturday. I was unable to find out further information but suggested to Jody that we go down anyway as it would give us a good alternative.

Sure enough there were about 10 swimmers there from my winter team, and they had already built a fire in a nearby fire pit to keep warm, air in mid 60's. The plan was to swim to 63rd street beach and back, about 2 miles, which is exactly what we had in mind so we joined them. The water was a warm 72 (others among us might not use the word "warm") with a nice sun and 1 foot swells. I would classify this swim as a 9.5 out of 10, one of the great ones. The only bad part is the tradition of this group is to go up on the beach, crossing a long shallow area, and run around a lifeguard chair before the return swim; that was surprisingly hard on my legs.

Evanston, August 12

No Lake swim last week, I was out of town, I had hoped for a dip in the Atlantic Ocean but that did not pan out. Our hot summer has broken and this weekend brought a northeaster. The Lake was "closed" on Saturday due to high waves, 10-15 feet in spots. So Jody and I moved our swim to Sunday. There were still some residual swells of up to 3 feet, but mostly about 1 foot, and the wavelengths were large so mostly it was smooth going. When Jody and I got separated by 25 yards or more it was hard to see each other because of the swell in between us; the only other potential problem was that underwater visibility was about 2 inches. Since our course has shallow area it wasn't clear where the bottom was, this was especially disconcerting at the bottom of a swell. The air was 63 and water was a pleasant 72 which is more normal for this time of year, we had some sun at the beginning but then it clouded over. No August inversion yet here but there is some very cool water off of the Michigan shore so a wind shift may bring us a surprise.

We swam our usual wall to wall route. When we finished we tried to find some remnants of the rip tides that were predicted during the storm but found only the usual circular current off the near groin. We did get a few good rides from the waves coming into shore but we won't claim great body surfing.