Just a few scant weeks ago, in mid-July, Long Island was engulfed in a sweltering heat wave, with temperatures soaring well into the 90s one scorching day after another. Even the open water offered little relief, as it felt barely cooler than the still, stifling air -- even in the early morning. By week's-end many of us had shed our customary wetsuits in favor of bathing suits, the "ick" factor succumbing to the heat index....I found that my Speedo was definitely cooler than my sleeveless wetsuit, but its relatively loose fit was a veritable open door to a myriad of tiny sea creatures whose numbers had fulminated in the warm water, and their incessant nibbling was distracting and disconcerting. Not only that, but the gravitational pull of "the girls" was slowing me down even more than the lack of buoyancy, so by Saturday I'd switched over to my "technical suit" which, although far from flattering, wadded everything down so that I felt sleek as a seal. The heavy rains that were forecast for the weekend never materialized and the relentless heat continued through the weekend, but a light westerly wind on Saturday, followed by an easterly wind on Sunday, drew off some of the surface heat so the water felt almost refreshing, but the weekend was still absurdly hot and the open water was the only sane place to be.... When the heat wave finally broke early in the following week, we rejoiced in what we mistakenly thought was a return to "normality," until Mother Nature --as she had with Hurricane Sandy -- abruptly reminded us that there is no "normal" anymore....We awakened mid-week to find, a'la Rip Van Winkle, that although we had gone to sleep in July, we had awakened in September...The air temperature had suddenly plummeted deep into the 60s, and "August" was but a ghost....
Even today, when the calendar said it was August 6th, the 56-degree air temperature said otherwise...and though it is technically only mid-summer, we swam as if we might not get another chance...
See you in the Salt -- unless it snows!
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