OT: Kirk Acknowledges that he will never compete at the Olympics. But he sure gets to spend a lot of time in the pool. And with wonderful people.

I wrote about retiring and mentioned that my schedule will be open enough to get in a lot of swims without worrying about scheduling conflicts. A commenter wrote to tell me I would not go to swim/compete at the Olympics. Having 69 years of life experience and a healthy dose of higher education I kind of figured that out on my own. But here's a little secret: Most masters swimmers don't show up for daily practice because their goals include getting a gold medal at the Olympics. They do it for social connection. For health benefits. To enjoy healthy competition. To maintain optimum body weight. To maintain muscle mass as they age. To maintain a healthy blood pressure. To stave off cardiac events. To put off hip and knee replacements. Because pushing off the wall in a great streamline is the closest most people will ever come to flying without an airplane. To continue wearing the pants bought in college. Because they are 35% less likely to die of all causes compared with the general population in the same age demographic. Because they get to hang around the pool in a swim suit. Because the people they swim with are in better shape, are happier and more attractive than the general population. Because it's fun not to be at work first thing in the morning. And because swimming helps one sleep better. Add that all together and I think swimming every morning is a better deal than winning once at one Olympic Games. 

Most older men who take up golf in retirement die within 18 months. And in those 18 months they have to spend a lot of time with other retired men in bad outfits. That sounds like a really sucky bargain to me. Exercise? In an electric cart? In Major League baseball games the average three hour game has ONLY 8.5 minutes of actual play. And that's an "athletic" pursuit? Amazing what the public will buy...

If you go to a one hour swim practice I'm pretty sure you'll get 58+ minutes of active, aerobic, and some anaerobic, exercise. A tremendous bargain compared to just about anything else  you can do. 

Or you could just play pickle ball and keep an orthopedic surgeon on retainer. Just saying. 

Kids who swim make better grades. Have more discipline and don't mess up as much as non-swimming kids. Among college athletes they have higher academic achievement. 

B. Already water safe at 2.5.

Prince Rainier Memorial Pool in Monte Carlo. A nice pool in which to do laps.

Tyler is a masters swimmer at Longhorn Aquatics. UT.

Young B. At workout. Still swims now at 29. Still in great shape.

Early habits pay off. 

Rip Esselstyn. He recently set a world record in the 200-meter backstroke for the 55-59 age group in 2019 at age 56.  Yeah. He swims on my masters team. He's 62 now. Still looks the same.

The WHAC USMS swimming pool. Clean water, fast swimming.

UT Swim Center. USMS Nationals

B. Post workout. Better appetite.

Shawn Jordan. Gold medal winner at both the 1988 and 1992 Olympics.

Yeah. He swims with my masters team. 

I might never go to the Olympics. 

I get my rewards every morning at 8.

And for the rest of the day...

 

B. before he could even swim....

 

Guest Post by Henry White. What the heck is Kirk up to?

Another random photo of a very nice person...

 It's kind of weird. One minute KT is here pounding out post after post and the next minute he's M.I.A. I walked through the ten inch steel blast doors into the entry area for the Visual Science Lab headquarters and everything was dark. Except, of course, for the 30 foot wall of blinking front panels for the servers and the status lights on the plutonium powered, uninterruptible back-up power units. I turned off the layers of intruder alarms and went into the break room to fetch coffee. Usually by this time in the morning my boss has been in for hours, reeking of chlorine and sunscreen, and the coffee machine is always humming. Today? No such luck. The custom brewing mechanism was stone cold; untouched. The air conditioning still set at 50 degrees...

I started the coffee machine humming and walked over to KT's office door, did the retinal scan, the fingerprint scan and the voice scan, and entered the thirty digit code to get through the door. I looked carefully around on the floor to make sure I hadn't inadvertently triggered the automatic release on the black mamba cages by doing the alarm disarming out of sequence... Nope. I got it right and I'm still here to talk about it. 

No notes on the desk. No messages on the whiteboard that hangs on the wall. No text messages either. 

Perplexed I walked over to the underground garage to see if I could use my "Sherlock Holmes" brain to discover anything. While the Veyron, the McLarens and the Bentleys were all accounted for the Subaru was missing. Road trip? Always possible. I checked outside on the crash pad but there was nothing new, just the continuing car fire from the exploded lithium batteries on that EV we were considering...

I walked over to my much smaller office and settled in to see how the markets were opening everywhere when I finally got a message on my proprietary iWatch; the one Tim had made for our team as a "Thank You." It was a terse message. Brief. Not wordy. Almost sketchy. 

It said: "retired. out shooting portraits. sell the cameras and the lights when you get into the office. Give yourself a bonus. Ghost write a blog post for me. don't sell the three original SL cameras. They are special. No company will ever make that good a camera ever again. Also, have the mechanic check the O2 mixture on the Veyron, it hesitated a bit last night when I hit 165. That is all. Soldier on." 

I didn't know what to make of it. Usually his instructions are more detailed, more authoritative. 

But since I have been handed a project, here goes: 

Gosh. This is harder than it seems... daily inspiration? Almost inconceivable.

"FACTS ABOUT THE WORLD'S GREATEST CAMERA" 

It's not widely known outside of closely held circles but earlier this year a German company brought to market the world's greatest camera...ever. It's called the ....... wait! I'm getting an encrypted call on the KT dedicated burner phone. Ooops. I'm not allowed to divulge the new product just now. Yikes! That was a close call.

Update: A sigh of relief. While I was sitting in the titanium and kevlar lined conference room of the VSL HQ I finally heard from the boss. Seems I missed the recent blog post in which he more or less announced his retirement from commercial photography work. He swam early this morning, had Chip fire up the back-up Gulfstream (an older 5 series) and met an old friend for coffee at an undisclosed location about 760 miles from here. He should be back to write about his adventures sometime tomorrow; Sunday at the latest. 

An added note from him: "Move 100 million into Swiss Canton bonds. Stock in some more of that wonderful Parisienne Sourdough bread." 

Followed by: "Success! we've now cornered the market on Leica SL cameras. The 2015 era model. You may now announce that it is, without a doubt, the best consumer camera ever made. Make room in the warehouse for another shipment. And order another one of those darling DLUX8s." 

I did some more busy work. Archived some files. Tossed out several tons of transparencies and negatives that KT went through last week...and found wanting. Carefully polished the front and rear elements of a couple of those lenses we bought from the NSA GeoSpatial division (remounted for the SLs), and called it a day. 

Running a commercial photo business can be complex and daunting. On the other hand, why would anyone who had a choice pursue anything else? Baffling....

Now heading back home to prompt my favorite LLM app to write a series of detective novels. Easy pickings. Most of the content is already pre-scraped. 

Visual Timelining.