OT: The sky was lit up from midnight onward. And the rain keeps coming. But, we managed to eke out a swim practice anyway.

 I must have been startled awake three or four times last night. I'd awaken to multiple flashes of lightning and pounding thunder that shook the windows and sounded like cannon fire from the 1812 Overture. Of course I despaired of there not being a swim practice this morning given that it's in an outdoor pool and, well...lightning. 

But, ever optimistic I rolled out of bed, ate some toasted Super Bread with a slash of crunchy peanut butter on it, washed it all down with a cup of Columbian Supremo coffee, brushed my teeth and exited the house into the steady rain. But no lightning in the moment.

I pulled into the parking lot about ten till 8. The early group didn't show because there was thunder and lightning leading up to their usual start time of 7. The gate to the pool was locked and it was apparent that our usual coach woke up to thunder, presumed our aquatic adventure was cancelled, then turned over and went back to sleep. Not so for the more diligent swimmers. 

There were two people waiting in the parking lot when I got there but quickly more people arrived through the mist. Seeing that we were bereft of a coach one enterprising swimmer got on her mobile and texted one of the coaches who lives nearby -- and for whom the swimmer had a phone number. Miraculously our kind, substitute coach showed up in her pajamas seven minutes later, opened the gates and started conjuring up a workout for the twelve hardy swimmers now in attendance. She also hopped in and swam the workout with us. Her quick response on a dreary Saturday morning was very much above and beyond the call of duty!

Knowing we were racing against the clock, against nature, against the power of lightning and the cruel power of entropy we rushed in and, only five minutes past 8 we were all deep into the warm-up. Stragglers, perhaps sensing our determination from afar, started showing up and diving in. Our coach tossed a bunch of good, hard yardage at us and we ate it up like candy. 

At 8:53 we were stopped at one end of the pool to listen to the coach tell us about the final set when a blast of lightning triggered through the glowering sky. Judging by the delay between the flash and the peal of thunder it was about a mile and a half away. The thunder rolled on for many seconds. The coach called it a good stopping point and we all jumped out of the pool and made our way to the locker rooms in the still pounding rain. Rain that was about 20 degrees cooler than the pool water. That will wake you up if you aren't already paying attention. 

The entire time in the water I had only two thoughts. One was about that front catch on my freestyle stroke. I'm still perfecting that. The other thought was about whether or not I should just bite the bullet and order the real deal of M to L lens adapter from the Leica Store. I have two Hoage Macro adapters and they work well at all focusing distances but they do have focusing helicoids and I did have one quick episode where I accidentally turned the ring while changing lenses and caused a few frames to be out of focus. I thought I might benefit by having at least one "bullet proof" precision adapter to use when I'm trying to be a more serious photographer. 

When I got home I checked on line. Found a 9+ condition used one at CameraWest and bought it. Should be here next week. It's going on the Carl Zeiss 50mm f2.0 ZM lens that's coming from B&H. Might as well have a complete set of my favorite focal lengths in these tiny sizes for those times that I want to lighten my load but still shoot sharp. Or on the off chance that one of my readers here is so enchanted with everything I've written that they can't help themselves and they decide to send me an M11 Monochrom as a "Thank you." It could happen.