Category: Uncategorized

The Bird Enthusiast

My dog Stella loves to chase birds. She has chased Canada geese through a nearby pond, seagulls on the beach of Lake Superior (a particular favorite) and she aspires to chase my neighbor’s chickens. She also chases swallows. Swallows are the outlier in that group–the others spend at least some observable time on the ground, making them easy to chase for a land-based bird enthusiast like Stella.

Her swallow chasing is limited to mornings at the neighborhood park when the insects are plentiful, hovering above the grass on the playing fields. The swallows swoop and swirl to catch breakfast. On these days, Stella strains at her leash and looks at me, and I usually relent and let her go. She gets into a low crouch like a sprinter and dashes off after the nearest swallow–she can cut and turn as well as an any offensive end–pulling tight ovals or lazy S’s around the field. The swallows may enjoy it–they seem to watch her and let her get almost close enough and then they pull the stick and UP UP they go, leveling off into another oval loop-de-loop around the park.

Slipstream of life

This blog started 3 years ago after I finished a swim across Lake Tahoe (the “true width” swim, for swimming fans out there). The idea was that getting into a “slipstream” was a good metaphor for a good swim, and hence the name of the blog. While the Tahoe swim was the impetus for this exercise in self-revelation, the Tahoe swim also intersected with a time in my life when I finally–after 56 years–felt like I had agency. I’d finally left a job I should have left a long time ago, my family was healthy and prosperous, I was in love with my husband (I still am, btw), and I was feeling like I had the ability to “make” things happen.

What is the saying? “Man plans, God laughs.” Over the last three years that feeling of agency has been transformed, through all kinds of unexpected twists and turns of life, into composure and acceptance, at least on a good day. So while I may still write about swimming from time to time, there are lots of other good things in life to share and ponder. Hoping to write more frequently, and if you want to follow along with that caveat about the title, that would be great.

Swimming as the antidote for the election

0FE26E85-D17D-4E4A-8A5F-9495EC4C2FC6.jpegSpoiler alert–not much of this is about swimming.

Tomorrow are the midterm elections.  Here in Colorado we’ve had early voting for almost 3 weeks.  We reportedly have the most secure voting system of the entire 50 states, and we even have voter registration on election day. No three-hour lines around the courthouse, like I’ve heard tell-of in places like Georgia where they discourage you from voting–if you don’t vote in Colorado it’s truly because you don’t want to/can’t be bothered/aren’t paying attention.  Yet my friend the election judge, told me yesterday that only 30% of usual voters had voted, an unusually low percentage based on recent election stats.  But never fear, all the voters at our address have voted–over a week ago.

Driving today, I heard on the radio that the Russian minions who unleashed the “bots” and “fake news” sites on our country during 2016 spent only one-million dollars to turn the 2016 election upside down.  Set that down against the hundreds of millions (billion?) dollars spent by candidates in the 2016 election cycle.  Also,  that the magnitude of Russian and foreign internet interference has only increased since 2016.  Add to this the synagogue murders last week, along with all the other recent racial/political/religious violence in the United States and I have to say I’ve never felt so unsafe.

I go to the pool to try to work off some of my anxiety.  About 5000 meters does it, and I always feel better, even though I’ve spent 90 minutes in a chlorine box.  Part of that is because the pool is beautiful–an almost brand-new, 8 lane, bright with a lot of natural light, and generally competent (e.g., pro-active) lifeguards.  This is Denver, and that means my fellow swimmers are an amazing and beautiful array of shapes, sizes, colors, and (guessing here) persuasions.  And the wonder of swimming is you really can’t tell the first thing about a swimmer from outward appearances.   Your lane mate may not look like they can swim even a stroke and yet they hammer out 100s at 1:10 or 1:15, and then will smile and chat with you afterwards.

I ponder all of this while I’m in the water, getting my butt handed to me by the friendly, older, larger person in the next lane, and I realize that, for me, this presents the possibility of a metaphor for where we’re at in our neighborhoods, communities, country.  Not the “getting my butt handed to me” part–there is plenty of aggression in our political life, a lot of it endorsed from on high, and we don’t need more of that.  Rather we need to stop and take the measure of our neighbors.  Not based on the place they worship or the gender of their partner, but on their merits as human being.  Can they make you laugh? help you with a difficult problem?  babysit your dog?  be your friend?  offer good advice about an aging parent or a troubled child? If they can do any of these things, I’m willing to consider putting in a plug for your neighbor, regardless of how they vote.  But by the same token–and here’s where the election comes in–we have to demand the same type of thoughtfulness from our elected officials.  For all I know, Mitch McConnell is a stand-up guy who can tell a joke and who would love to dog-sit my 11 year old, slightly high-maintenance pup.  But he (and so many others) seems to leave all of  that at the door when he enters the Capitol, and that’s part of the reason (or maybe more) that we’re so divided.

Maybe you have heard the comparison of our current political situation to the 1860s.  The NYT ran an article in their Sunday magazine this summer by a journalist who has been living and reporting from overseas for 10 years and came home for a couple of months this summer to find a country he didn’t recognize.  He also compared the current situation to the 1860s, and in the words of one of the people he interviewed, it was a “cold” fight, not a hot one.  I don’t take much comfort from that.  Maybe it is only apparent in retrospect, but in the 1860s we were divided over slavery (which is a toggle switch right?—either we have it or we don’t) and states’ rights (which was the purportedly objective, academic reason why Southern states thought they should be able to toggle the switch to keep human beings as private property).   I don’t quite know why everyone is so angry today–but I am confident we aren’t divided over the status of a toggle.

I am going to the pool in the morning and I am going to swim a long way, and likely get my butt handed to me by someone that seems an unlikely swimmer but turns out to be extremely accomplished.  Then I’m going to spend the day hoping that we elect–nationally and locally–a bunch of people who maybe don’t collectively look like much, but who are committed to doing the political equivalent of swimming 100s on 1:15 and then willing to stand around and visit afterwards.

If you haven’t voted, do that before you swim tomorrow!

On Not Swimming the Suck

In February of this year I got up early and put off my swim workout to sign up for Swim the Suck, a 10 mile swim on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga. For the last few years I had seen swim reports from my swimming  friends about this event and it sounded super fun, i.e., current assisted swim with the possibility of dinner and cocktails afterwards with swimmy friends.  How fun!! I wanted to be a part of that, especially coming off of 2017 with two unplanned (one scary) surgeries that totally blew my 2017 goals out of the water (so to speak) and, in February, not certain I would accomplish my primary 2018 goal of swimming Tahoe. But I am sitting here in Denver tonight, and STS starts tomorrow morning in Chattanooga and I will not be there.

What happened?  First Tahoe happened—I finished a “true width” crossing in August. My first post shared this swim, which was amazing and awesome and in some ways not-to-be-topped. What happened after that hasn’t been shared.

After Tahoe I was tired. Tired of hitting my weekly swimming goals, tired of getting up early, tired of having a “short swim” equal 5000m, tired of not having time to walk on dry land, in the mountains or to see anything  during a workout except the sliver of sky, trees, and mountains in eyeshot during each breath.  Don’t get me wrong:  the view into the water was often beautiful, and looking at the rest of the world through a kind of louvered shade was its own kind of beauty.  But it was beauty extracted from duty.  From this I learned I am not monk (or convent) material.

After Tahoe I did not stop swimming, exactly (except for the three weeks  after I fell off a scooter and, in catching myself, pulled every single intercostal muscle on my left side).   I just stopped swimming a workout.  My times were slow (when I even remembered my watch to time myself).  When swimming I mostly focused on the sky and views, not stroke, not moving through the water.  To swimmers, this non-water focus will seem significant.

So I started hiking. A lot. On steep, Rocky Mountain trails with my ever-willing puppy Stella and wonderful husband Eyal. In the sun and sky and golden aspen trees, high up where oxygen is rationed by the laws of physics.  For example, last week after work, on a golden, early October evening, Stella and I hiked 4 miles and saw elk and mule deer, and reveled (ok maybe I was the only one reveling) in the pinks, yellows, and oranges of a Front Range autumn. Not a drop of water in sight.

While I am not done hiking, and even hope to back-country ski this year (snow forecast on Sunday!), I can also report that I had a great, long SWIM WORKOUT today.  Pool, I am back.

From my experience over the last year I have learned that, while I love to swim—especially and maybe mostly in wild, open water—I am a dry land creature too. This weekend I have a hike planned at Elk Meadows (before the snow starts) and a short swim on Saturday.  On Sunday I have a much longer swim, assuming I can get out of bed and to the pool on the first cold, snowy day of the year.

And no matter what, I wish my STS friends well and I hope to join you next year!