Ohio Street, June 30

After our success yesterday at Evanston one might think we would go back today. But due to a downtown appointment for Jody later this morning and the willingness of Joe to drive we headed for Ohio Street. I was not overly excited about this thinking crowds and heat etc. But I was pleasantly surprised. Unlike yesterday's turbulence the water was pool smooth. And the millennials haven't yet discovered 6 AM on the clock so there were relatively few swimmers, we could still find nearby parking and a locker. The big change I noticed was the number of older swimmers with floats. Apparently it is now macho to practice open water using a float in addition to your wetsuit.

The water was a nice 68-69 and while the air was hot, it was not yet oppressive. We had a pleasant swim to the curve and back without, even near, collisions finishing around 7:30. By then the new phenomena of a crowd of open water swimmers was gathering and we boogied out of there.

Evanston, July 29, 2018

"What is so rare as a day in June?", the poet asks. A 67 degree day at Evanston in June.

Jody warned me it might happen but when I saw it on the buoy I intercepted her on the way to our pool practice and said we had an emergency and had to get to the Evanston beach immediately. One thing I had forgotten to check the wave height. Fortunately it was low, no surf at the beach, but there were 2 foot swells away from there. And windy chop. The buoy didn't lie, we actually thought it might be earlier when it gave ridiculously low readings, I did get a 67 degree reading, although it seemed to go down a bit towards the end of our swim. We were plenty warm. But the waves and sun made for bad visibility, and even though Jody intentionally slowed down a little so I could stay close, we had trouble seeing each other.

We went to the wall and back but didn't dawdle much because we were both playing hooky.

Postscript: To see just how rare this was I went back in my diary 20 years all the way to 1998 when it was 70 already on June 23. I recorded an Evanston temperature of 67 or higher only 5 times in June, including today. The warmest was a 74 on June 30, 2012, we also had warm days June 27 1999,and June 27, 2005.

Ohio St, June 23

Jody and I are pushing the season, there will be a large segment of July and August were one of us will be unavailable. Conditionso today were hard to predict. We had a week of very hot weather, then a cold rainy week of East winds. This should setb up some warm water. But the finally repaired Wilmette buoy said 58 there. We bet Ohio St would be warmer but we had to find out.

It was. 63.4 was my reading. Being as I was coming off 90 degree water in Jamaica, and both of us have been swimming in an 85 degree pool, this felt cold. Later in the summer this temperature with light chop would be almost ideal. Today we swam to Chicago Ave and back and called it a day. But later we felt very good and ready to come back.