Getting a running start on handling a hot week.

We don't have masters swim practice on Mondays. Our club pool is closed on Mondays for cleaning, maintenance and to let the water "settle." I hope someone on the lifeguard staff turned on the aerators last night to keep the water cool. Nothing makes swim practice tougher than too high a water temperature. In fact, for hard swimming anything over 82° is uncomfortable and anything over 84° is dangerous. 

So, my regular pool is closed today and we've got a week of increasing heat in front of us. How to get a jump start on staying cool? I got up this morning, looked at the seven day forecast, grabbed my swim gear and headed straight over to the Deep Eddy Pool. It's run by the city of Austin and it's filled with spring water from deep underground. The average water temperature in the Summer months is around 72°. They drain and refill the pool every three days to insure the purity of the water but even so, by the end of the Summer the pool takes on a green tinge. Nothing dangerous; just a bit green. 

When I exited the car to join the small band of daily swimmers waiting by the gates for the nine a.m. opening I took note that the ambient temperature at the time was already 85°. All forgotten and forgiven when I slipped into a shaded lane in the deep side of the pool to swim some laps. The difference between our swim yesterday at Rollingwood (84° water) and my swim today was over twelve degrees. So refreshing and so delightful. Not cold enough to shock me when sliding into the water but cool enough so that even after a mile it still felt ....... refreshing. Cool. Sweat free. 

After I got that mile in I stayed in and paddled around luxuriating in the chilliness. The lanes were full this morning but there wasn't a line of waiting swimmers. The lockers and showers are in an open air courtyard and I had forgotten the joys of taking a post swim shower under open sky, surrounded by landscaping, with birds ducking and diving overhead. An absolutely lovely way to start out the week.

By early afternoon the Gen-Zs and the Millennials will be awake and the pool will be thronged with lap swimmers and, on the other side of the wall between the lap lanes and the huge, shallow pool there will be groups of small children with moms and dads in tow living life large in one of the nicest pools in one of the nicest cities I know of. Too busy to bother with swimming laps after the morning crew. Too many people waiting for lanes to open. Too many people who don't know the protocols. But first thing in the morning and you have a chill buzz for the rest of the day. Almost feeling down about "having" to go back to the club tomorrow and plow through the warmer water..... almost. 

Now, after coffee, I'm procrastinating about billing Thursday's project, thinking vaguely about marketing, wondering when my passport will arrive and playing around with combinations of cameras and lenses. 

Life is pretty damn good.

The hot part of Summer arrived in Austin. Time to carry a smaller, lighter camera. The temperature in downtown today was 103°....

It had to happen eventually. The heat. I just looked at the weekly forecast. It's going to top 100° every afternoon; over 105° on Friday this coming week. I could convert that to centigrade for you but it sounds hotter in Fahrenheit. Either way you look at it the heat has arrived and it's time to get acclimated all over again. I only hope the smoke from Canada doesn't come with it...

My doctor tells me that as you age your body is less tolerant of temperature extremes. I pay him to tell me these things so I guess I should believe him but I hate to think I have to make smart choices = that flies in the face of my Maturity  Deficit Disorder. And what's the fun of hibernating in air conditioning all Summer? You'll just get...chubby.

So I put on my best pair of Keen sandals, some cool, cotton short pants and an REI long sleeve, SPF 50 shirt, wide-brim, non-Tilley hat, and fired up the all weather Subaru Forester (mercifully painted white). I hit downtown around 4:00 pm. It's about five degrees warmer there (urban heat island...) than it is up here in the hills West of downtown. We also have a lot more trees up here. Big trees. Good shade. But if your plan is long term acclimation you might as well go into the very belly of the steamy beast...

The one concession I made toward some measure of sanity was to jettison the heavy SL2 and its coterie of large, heavy, full frame lenses and select instead a Leica CL (APS-C style) and one of the much, much smaller Zeiss ZM lenses. I thought I'd try out the 28mm f2.8. No need for a faster aperture. Not while under the white hot glare of the Texas sun. 

I kept the walk to under an hour and I'm glad I did. I was a bit wiped out by the time I made it back to the car. Nothing serious, just some nausea, a closing down of my peripheral vision, a nagging headache, a touch of delirium, the inability to sweat, and a feeling of accelerating dread. Oh...I really meant I was a bit sweaty and warm when I got back to the car.... Not all that other stuff.

In Texas, when we buy cars the more experienced among us order our vehicles with double air conditioning. Two compressors, two fan systems, double the chilling power, etc. Sure, it costs a bit more and it requires more fuel to run but the power of two air conditioning units in a car ensures that you can keep a six pack of beer cold if you put it next to the vents. And I mean icy cold.  It's also good for rapid cooling of incautious humans. 

Got back home, parked and reached into the passenger footwell to grab an ice cold beer. Tossed a can to my neighbor as well. He was just getting ready to go for a run. I thought he might need some extra hydration. He's young --- still thinks he's bullet proof.

I couldn't find a damn thing to photograph that you'd really like to see here on the blog. Most of the interesting people had long since retired to their cool, dark lairs earlier in the day. I did have one embarrassing moment when the pavement got so hot the bottom of my shoe started melting and I was afraid I'd get stuck to the pavement in the direct sun. ("Photographers get in but they can't get out....") but a passing motorist with Florida plates took the corner a bit too sharp and bumped me (not too gently) back onto the sidewalk... thank goodness for that famous Floridian "stand your ground" driving aggression.

Since I was hot and no one was posing out on the city streets I just snapped endless photos of boring architecture and told myself it was a worthwhile pursuit for two reasons. One: I was testing the limits of my now 67 year old self to endure gunky, snarly, ostensibly dangerous heat. And, Two: I was getting a good sense of how the 28mm Zeiss lens performs on a cropped frame sensor. I do like it. 

And, in a nutshell, this is one of the reasons I like to swim in the early mornings for exercise. Unless the water gets too hot or I go too late in the day I don't have to worry about exercise induced heat stroke. 

This post was not written by a ChatBot. 

But just to give you greater confidence that this post was human sourced I thought I'd tell you something funny that happened at swim practice this morning. One of the people in my lane is a real, authentic Texas woman. Old school.  It was a hard workout and we were in the middle of a hard set. The water was a bit warm. She decided to sit out a 50 (that's one "down and back"). I stopped and asked if she was okay. Of course she was. Her reply? "I'm just taking a hostess break. I'm going upstairs to check my make-up and to smoke a cigarette. I'll be right back with you." The other person in our lane was heading back in our direction. After he turned we fell in line right behind him and finished the set. Sometimes you just have to know when to take a break. And have a good line ready to drop some humor into the near thankless task of staying in shape past your twenties... 

The tallest building west of Elgin, Texas and east of San Angelo, Texas. At least that's what they are saying.