bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
70 degrees
Biked over with Scott to the lake on a beautiful morning. Even though you might expect the opposite, it’s harder for me to bike with someone than biking alone. Sure, when biking with someone they can alert me to potential danger, but if I’m following behind them, I can’t get a clear view of what’s far ahead of me. And that’s bad with my slow reaction time. But, I didn’t care if it was harder today; it was nice to bike with Scott.
I wasn’t giving much attention to the world as I biked, other than trying to stay safe. Can I remember 10 things?
10 Things
- a bit crowded on the trail — most of the bikers were going the other way
- wind — it made the biking a little harder and yelled in my ears
- a single-file line of bikers riding north. I could see the headlight from the first bike from far away. Not sure, but I think it might have been a group of “silver” riders
- an even mix of sun and shadows
- more cracked and crushed acorns on the sidewalk
- the creek is low, almost dry in some spots
- the crack just past nokomis avenue on the edge of the trail near the tennis courts looks bigger — wider? deeper?
- a thwack from the pickleball court
- errrrrrrrr (the squeak from some bad brakes on a bike)
- arriving at the beach, admiring the glittering water
swim: 2 loops (10 little beach loops)
lake nokomis main beach
72 degrees
As I was walking into the water, carrying my small yellow life buoy that I tether to my waist, I’m almost positive I heard someone — at first I thought it was a kid, but it might have been an adult — say, okay we can go in the water now, the lifeguard’s here! I wonder how long it took for them to figure out I wasn’t a lifeguard. Why wasn’t I ever a lifeguard in my teens? I don’t know.
The water wasn’t too cold. As usual, it was opaque. Hardly any visibility. The only thing I could see were more of the ghost vines, haunting the bottom of the lake. Also, the faint form of the bottom of the white, cylindrical buoy — ghost buoy. I felt the ghost vines more than I saw them. Mostly quick sharp taps on my ankles, one time softly wrapping around my hand and wrist — Come with us, Sara, down below! No thanks. I tried staring down as I swam, but nothing appeared — no lake bottom, no fish, no ghost vines.
The water was very choppy on the back half of the loop. Difficult to see and to breathe, but not overly tiring.
I kept thinking I was seeing kayaks off to my right side, but it was only the tree line, or was it ghost kayaks? Yes, the fall is coming and I’m increasingly thinking about ghosts.
Swam for almost 45 minutes, but it felt like 5 minutes or no time or all the time dissolved into lake water.
10 Water Things
- a soaring seagull
- a circling plane
- flashes of pink in the water from somewhere — probably my brief glimpse of a buoy
- little waves smacking into me, from the front and the side
- 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left 1 2 3 breathe right
- the silvery white bottom of the safety boat on the other shore
- a kayak paddling by, farther out into the middle of the lake
- no ducks or geese or monstrous swans
- the gurgle or squeak of my slipping nose plug under water
- lining up my shoulders and swimming through the narrow opening between two pinkish orangish buoys