Back to Normal. Let's continue where we left off... What a great swim!

It was a textbook perfect morning. When I crawled out of bed at 7 a.m. it was 73° outside with relatively low humidity. Clear skies in every direction. I checked the blog stats and was happy to see a return to our long term normal numbers and visitors. Interested to see that in a one hour segment we get visitors to the blog from 18 or 19 different countries... But this morning there were no unusual anomalies. 

I succeeded in making perfect coffee today. I drank my coffee while working on my laptop to restore archived posts back to the blog. The Blogger program only allows publishing or re-publishing 50 posts at a time so 6110 takes a bit more time than I realized. I was happy to see, as I whipped through the content, that there are some posts that have stood up while over time. But then again there really some that really fall short in retrospect. 

I made it to the pool on time and found the parking lot absolutely full. But being a very entitled individual I went ahead and just made my own parking space... Coach Will was on deck today. I like his workouts. He was just back from the World Championships in Singapore. He saw some really great swims there. Check out NBC Sports on YouTube and look for the Katie Ladecky races, the Summer McIntosh races and the Leon Marchand races. I absolutely guarantee you that they will be way more exciting than anything you'll see watching tennis or some other TV sport.

I jumped into the pool and was thrilled that the water temperature was an absolutely perfect 78°. First week of August in Texas and we're able to keep the pool at competition temperatures. Now that's a wonderful scientific achievement. Will started us out with a typical warm up, and then switched gears and tossed out a set of 12 X100's on tight intervals. Sets of three with the third 100 of each set being I.M. (All four strokes). We moved on to another set with a mix of 150 yard swims interspersed with three 50 yard swims of strokes other than freestyle. 

On a non-swimming note the new Hoka running shoes are great. I laced up after swim practice and knocked out the three mile loop at the lake, trying to get a decent run in before the temperatures cross over into the high 90s°. No complaints whatsoever about the shoes. I could be faster but it's not the shoes' fault. 

I thought about doing some work today but quickly dismissed the idea as counter productive. Instead I have a lunch scheduled with my former ad agency CFO. Just a catch up lunch at our favorite Chinese food restaurant, Lotus Hunan. After that I think I'll take a nice, slow walk with one of the SL2 cameras and that 7Artisan 50mm f1.8 lens I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. I'd also like to see how well the combo works with the new, ivory colored, small, canvas camera bag I bought over the weekend. Nice stuff. 

There are several 50mm lenses coming from Chinese makers like TTArtisan, 7Artisan and Meke which seem to copy the Leica 50mm SL APO lens design, all using eleven elements in nine groups. All of which have specialized glass types in the formulae. These are not your old style "nifty-fifties." And, judging from my limited experience, they are really decent performers. Maybe not on par with the Leica lens of the same focal length and relative speed but available to mortal photographers at prices that are a tiny fraction of the cost of the Leica lenses....  I'm buying up this new crop as though they were candy. Delicious candy...

But one lens I've had my eyes on isn't as inexpensive and isn't made in China. It's the Voigtlander 35mm f2.0 APO lens for the M mount. I have the 50mm version and it's beyond superb. It's the best 50mm I've ever owned. And I've owned (and still own) a lot. I've gone back and forth about the 35mm since I already have that company's 35mm f1.4 Nokton MC and the Carl Zeiss ZM 35mm f2.0 M mount as well as a couple of 35mm lenses for the L mount cameras. I probably don't need the endless duplication but one of my friends has a duplicate of the Voigtlander 35 APO and he's indicated that he will sell it to me at a very low price. 

I was on the fence but yesterday I decided I should probably go for it. That lens, coupled with its sibling 50mm, and two M bodies to mount them on would make a perfect, medium small travel kit. At least that's my rationale. 

It looks to be a mellow but hot week. Kind of glad I dropped a fortune on a completely new air conditioning system for the house. There goes the cash I was saving up for a Hasselblad system. Oh well. It's better to be cool than over equipped.

The blog soldiers on. As complete with off topic ramblings as ever. 

Two of the stars of the International Swim Championships last week are coming here to UT to train under coach, Bob Bowman. They are Summer McIntosh and Leon Marchand. Can't wait for them to drop by the WHAC pool for a swim. I'll try to act nonchalant...

Ben. At an age group swim meet many years ago. 

Yes, he still swims at least two days a week but his 

default is running... Where did I go wrong?

Head gear for hot times. One of many options. 

this is where I swam all during high school. 

Alamo Heights High School students were fortunate to

have an indoor, state of the art, 25 yard pool right on 

campus. It was pretty fabulous. I hear a lot of people

hated their time in high school. Not me. I got to swim

with cool, smart people at 5:30 every morning and then

again at 3:30 every afternoon. All good memories.

We're back. But we really never left. I'm learning to ignore blog stats.

I think it's better that way.