DISCLAIMER: Open-water swimming is inherently dangerous. Open-water swimmers risk drowning, hypothermia, hyperthermia, heart attacks, panic attacks, cramping, jelly fish stings, fish bites, boat or jet-ski collisions, collisions with floating or submerged objects (including other swimmers), and other calamities that can be injurious, disabling or fatal! The "West Neck Pod" is an informal association of open-water swimmers who swim "outside the lines" with no lifeguard protection, it has no formal membership, organizational structure or legal identity, and its participants, including the author of this blog, make no representations and assume no liability with respect to its group open-water swims. All swimmers who participate in West Neck Pod group open-water swims do so at their own risk. Be careful out there!

Monday, May 30, 2011

A Not-So-Memorable Memorial Day

 Violent early morning thunderstorms dashed the Pod’s plans for a Memorial Day swim – for everyone, that is, except Tony Santomauro, Mike Paradise, Greg and Magda...Undeterred by the raging tempest, they headed for the beach, waited the requisite time until the last of the thunder and lightning had died away, then entered the water, despite the glowering skies and the steady rain that continued to fall. Also undeterred by the rain, as reported by Tony, were the jellyfish, whose early arrival had been noted by the weekend’s swimmers, and additional throngs of which had apparently been driven into the harbor by the storm and the incoming tide. As with the weekend’s group, today’s swimmers passed harmlessly through the gelatinous invaders, whose tentacles appear to have been rendered innocuous, perhaps by the water that’s still chilly by jellyfish standards. Whatever the reason, Pod swimmers are grateful to be spared close jellyfish encounters of the painful kind. As every open-water swimmer knows (and will soon undoubtedly be humming as they swim), when it comes to jellyfish, "It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that sting [doo-wa, doo-wa, doo-wa, doo-wa, doo-wa...]"!!

Weekday swim schedules this week – the first week of June! – will be posted on Facebook and/or e-mails; weekend swims will be at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. See you in the Salt!

No comments:

Post a Comment