8Aug13

I drove most of the day yesterday to Truckee, CA.  I arrived at Jamie Patrick's swim camp at 2330.  As I arrived, they were singing to me on the porch.  I laughed as I was thinking, "I have some dorky friends...LIKE ME!"  Hung out for a bit then off to bed.

Me and Janet Manning

We all got up around 0630 and after slowly moving around, we were out the door by 0730.  We had to stop by a CVS pharmacy to some people in our group could get "water shoes".  They were taking FOREVER!!!!  We all lost our patience and this was starting our first swim on our first day off to a bad start.  They finally meandered out and we were on to Truckee River.


This river is really clear and has a good current.  NOT really a swim river because there are several spots where it's under a foot deep.  You also have to dodge some pretty good size rocks that could easily bust your head open.  It was like a mini maze in some places but it was fun.  Water temp was 67 and felt GREAT. 
It was a half swim half float down the river.  We went about 1.5 miles.  At the end some of us got out and took some pics.
 

 Hung out in the house all afternoon then out the door again at 1530.  This time we went to Donner Lake.  Wind was up a bit so there was some chop.  Nothing bad but we decided to head against the current the first half and with it back.  The water was very clear and beautiful to look upon.  I found myself looking at the bottom for most of the swim.  When we were at the turn around point, one of the swimmers named Phil came up to me.  He said he had something to make me "whole" again and handed me a golf ball.  We all got a good laugh out of it and I stuffed it down my speedo.  We all collected trash on the way back to do a small lake clean up.
There was a video recently of Trent Grimsley and his "record" swim across the English Channel.  (He rode the bow wake!)  As he did his feeds, he tossed his non-biodegradable cups into the channel.  Most of us at camp FREAKED when we saw this and it made for a good conversation for the next several hours. 
Evan Morrison even made this gif of it on his web page.  It got a lot of people in the OW community talking.  This why we decided to do a small clean up of our own.  In my opinion there is NO justifiable excuse for purposely littering into an ocean or at all for that matter.  If you accidentally drop a cup or bottle and it gets away from you (it happens) then that is one thing.  Intentionally tossing it is another.

3 miles OW