bike: 8.4 miles
lake nokomis and back
swim: 400 yards
lake nokomis
My first outside bike ride of the year and my first swim! As my vision declines, I never know how hard it will be to bike. Will I be able to see? Will it be too scary? Today was okay. It’s very hard for me to see potholes or react quickly to unexpected things (crowded trails, passing another biker), but as long as I don’t go too fast and I give careful attention (all the time) as I ride, I should be okay. It’s a bit exhausting, but who cares? I can still bike!
Things I Heard While Biking
- drumming woodpeckers, twice
- the music from the ice cream truck
- a biker calling out calmly and quietly as she passed, “on your left”
Biked to the lake with my 19 year-old son, FWA. He’s planning to swim across the lake with me, at least once, although I’m hoping he’ll try it more than once. I’ve been dreaming about one of my kids being old enough to join me in open swim — you have to be 18. They were both on the swim team and are great swimmers. He wasn’t up for the 69 degree water, but I was. It didn’t seem cold to me. I love the cold water on my muscles. Very nice! It didn’t feel as good inside my right ear. Since FWA was with me, and I haven’t swam since last september, I decided to take it easy and only do one loop around the buoys at the big beach.
10 Things I Noticed While Swimming
- the season has barely begun and the part of the white buoys under the water was thick with muck…yuck
- no clear views below of biggish fish or hairbands or the bottom
- near the shore, dozens of minnows parted as I moved through the water
- the water was opaque, with shafts of light pushing their way through
- I could see the white buoys, mostly the feeling that they were there
- the view as I lifted my head to the side and out of the water to breathe was much clearer than my view as I looked straight ahead
- I heard some kids laughing as I neared the far end of the beach
- when I started, there were a few groups of people swimming, when I stopped, I was one of the few people still in the water
- I breathed every five strokes
- there was a seagull perched on the white buoy as I neared it. At the last minute, it flew off — was it looking for a big fish?
Here’s Poetry Foundation’s poem of the day. I love how H.D. imagines the trees as water — and how they describe it! Running in the tunnel of trees, past a part that seems surrounded by green, I’ve felt like I was swimming in a sea of trees.
Oread/ H. D.
Whirl up, sea—
whirl your pointed pines,
splash your great pines
on our rocks,
hurl your green over us,
cover us with your pools of fir.
note: Oread = “a nymph believed to inhabit mountains.”