Swimmer portrait. Getting ready for Summer over here. New "Senior" swim pass obtained for all City of Austin Pools. In addition to the swim club. Gotta have options.

 Jennifer. Swimmer. Triathlete.

For the last couple of years I have been buying the Senior Pool Pass that's offered by the city of Austin. It gives me free access to every single municipal pool from the first of April through the end of October. It also includes a hang tag for my car which gives me free parking at the Barton Springs Pool. This is very handy since that parking is also convenient for long walks around the hike and bike trails and into downtown. 

Since I swim daily at a private club, with my masters team, I won't get my money's worth out of the swim pass --- if you just consider it a primary swim resource. I get the pass because it's occasionally fun to swim somewhere different and I have a number of swimmer friends who sometimes like to mix things up by swimming laps at Deep Eddy, a beautiful, WPA era, spring feed pool that sits adjacent to Lady Bird Lake. Just across the running trail.  It's 33.3 meters instead of 25 yards so that's fun to mix in as well. Fewer turns. More distance. 

I buy the swim pass for those rare times when our primary pool is closed. Might be for a kid's swim meet or to do some needed maintenance but as any addict will tell you the idea of having to go without for even a day is... uncomfortable. I also buy the pass each year because the money generated by the sale of the passes goes right back to Austin Aquatics (the city) and helps support maintenance and staffing. 

My swimming is getting expensive. I pay $110 a month to swim with the masters team and that's in addition to club dues and the original membership fees. I also spend about $50 a month for chlorine removing shampoo and body wash. Every six months or so I find myself splashing out for new goggles ($25) and every two years or so a new swim suit ($65). I add it all up and I'm maybe spending a couple thousand dollars a year to swim. At times I look at the numbers and consider that I should just cut out all of that and sit quietly at my desk, behind my computer, just waiting to die. And then I realized that I often spend more than all swim costs combined on one lens. Or 1/6th of a  new camera body and that puts everything back into perspective.

Then my accountant ( a long distance runner and a varsity track and field athlete during his time at UT ) calculates for me the average amount the average 67 year old spends on medical co-pays, drug co-pays, therapies of all kinds, lost opportunities from being in poor shape and the very real specter of shortened and burdened lifespans. The numbers are stark. The swim costs are ultra-cheap compared to all the alternatives. And swimming with a lot of like minded and very healthy friends is uplifting and so very social. Hard to be lonely and isolated when one is surrounded by 30-40 good, decades long friends for an hour or so every day. Even my CPA, Barry, couldn't put a price tag on that.

A fringe benefit is that my swim friends are of a large range of ages, all are in really good shape, and they are fun to photograph. So different from the majority of the people I see out in public. It's a nice additional feature for a swimming photographer. It keeps me feeling younger than I am. But that might be my recently diagnosed Maturity Deficit Disorder. Don't bother looking it up in the DSM, it's a new thing. My current perceived maturity is right in line with that of an 18 year old. At least behavior-wise. Sadly, (happily) there is no cure... (this is meant to be satiric, not actual or factual diagnosis...). 

Thinking of getting a GoPro to attach to the front of my kick board. Just for something fun and different. 

Senior pass in hand. Swam hard earlier today but now heading over to Deep Eddy Pool for some relaxed stroke work. And some pool side conversations with an alternate group of swim friends. Water good.

Oh gosh. I forgot to schedule any work or chores for the day. Oh well.