Final swimming tips

After finally getting back to a mile in the pool after several decades on land, the Doc has these tips for excellent lap swimming:

*People aren’t hitting your feet to annoy you, they are signalling that they are passing
*Swimmers passing you with their feet near your head are trying to annoy you
*A little snack before swimming, like a 6 inch meatball sub, does not cause cramps
*Cramps have no causes, only correlations
*Burping horizontally in the pool is easy after a little practice, though for the sake of other swimmers, some verticality is desirable
*Don’t say “anything is better than nothing” when people tell you how far they swim
*If a person swims underneath you near the bottom of pool, facing up, don’t complain: they are probably on leave
*If a towel never dries out between swims during cold weather, so what?
*Guys who wear caps, have arms that windmill furiously, and are moving very fast are not the enemy
*If you are not sure whether you are on lap twelve or thirteen, you are on lap twelve
*It’s easier to reduce drag than to increase propulsion; to get the streamlined shape practice crawling through some industrial alloy steel pipes (or not)
*Try to get the chlorine out of your hair, unless your head needs fiberglass insulation.

1921 Dentzel

In our childhoods a generation apart you and I both rode on the carefully renovated and historically registered Dentzel carousel, pictured here seasonally shuttered in Glen Echo Park, which contains elements of the original park, some working some in disrepair, under the bright deco signs announcing ballroom and arcade and bubble up, while J takes jazz piano in a space within the arcade, beyond the old shooting gallery where I fired real 22s.

To me this space (and let's not even think about the yurts with their hippie crafts, the Saturday night swing dances, or the water running swiftly from River Rd. to river with force to worry Clara Barton's brow) brings together the real, the hyper-real, the simulacrum, the present, and many pasts together in a wormhole of sorts, the spirits of frozen yet whirling animals under layers of paint and preservative, bringing joy and nostalgia in season.