"I'll take a rain check, please...!"

Paul, Carol and Marc

It was not yet 6:30 when the text messages and emails began trickling in, as one Podder after another bowed out for this morning's inaugural Memorial Day weekend swim, citing the rain and cold and apologizing for their delicacy...Although the pelting rain and 43-degree air temperature seemed a good enough reason for me to roll over and stay in bed too, the inner certainty that at least one of my buddies would show up, ready to go if conditions permitted, impelled me out of bed, into my bathing suit and down to West Neck Beach.  Predictably enough, minutes later Marc Leahy arrived, followed shortly thereafter by Paul Coster (and even later by Joye Brown), to join me in gaping at the tempest raging before us. Whitecapped waves raced past us, driven by a biting northerly wind that pushed the flag out stiffly and made the newly installed swim buoys rock crazily back and forth. Rain pelted our faces, and we stood there at the water's edge, laughing at ourselves for being there at all, for standing there in the wind and the rain and the cold, and for thinking, even a little bit, that "maybe we should swim anyway since we're here..."

Of course we didn't. What do you think we are, crazy?

See you in the Salt -- maybe tomorrow!