birthday suit, birthday swim, birthday love...tftc

swim report friday 11am: RUTH!, lftc, dianadarling and ethan swam in sub zero viz but warm at 67, maybe warmer in spots but you know it's the amoeba reproducing making the sea so warm, bacteria procreating! eww. anyway, we swam to the 1/4 with ethan, he turned back due to his lunch hour being just that, an hour, the girls swam across to find toni who is the birthday girl today, we landed at tower 30 and walked around looking for her, there were only 5000 people on the beach, no easy task but we press on because we felt like it. i see a little kid, a little toni looking and i think it's jake, it was! where's your mom? he didn't know. what is she wearing? he didn't know. cap and goggles? he didn't know. do you even know your mom? he was pretty sure he did but that was about it. finally we see our toni walking, sauntering even, out of the water in her tiny two piece, we tried to surprise her but she was sauntering pretty quickly. we did a little birthday swim out to the pin buoys and as she is supposed tom she went in her birthday suit! well, mostly, top off, pants on because she had nowhere to stash them.  we get to the pin buoy, i was working so hard to stay with her, shoulders aching, cardio burning and she tells me she wasn't even kicking. i had to say stuff about this, it got ugly for a minute. she went back to her beach and we to ours. the current going back was a killer workout. i love this feeling, being able to work hard without caving, to cruise through discomfort until it's the real time to stop. only in swimming do i have this fortitude, all other types of exercise, i want to quit after 5 minutes. i keep going though so i can stay in the water. lots of people out in the water, kayaker nation. an excellent swim and i'm so happy that we swam with TFTC on her birthday!
lftc-out

Some really great swims on our holiday weekend...

Just wanted to add a brief cheer to our holiday weekend swims... Bill and I had a great swim on Saturday, then with LFTC and our mighty 13ers to the pier on Sunday too. What a glorius weekend. On the 4th, we swam in the morning with Ruth while her Roger dear  traversed the People's Wall below the Museum of Contemporary Art! Quite a treat -- we could see Rog climbing as we swam north.  Waters were nice (not clear, but warming up), seas were calm, purple jelly encounter, bat rays, Ruth saw a shark -- lots of water joy! Thanks to all of you able to make it so...

Here are a couple of pics taken by Ruth:

Janie, C's and LFTC, with Ruth holding  camera.

C's relaxing (quite a fashionista, Cary!)

Birthday List

Name	Birthday	Notes/email
Leonard	January man	?
Steve	January 22	Aquarius
Don (paddler)	January man	paddle king
Marta	March 7	Pisces
Diana	March girl	Aries
Laura	November 7	Scorpio
Annamarie	April 7
Amber	May 23
Wendy	June 25	Cancer
Toni	July 8	Cancer
Janie	July 14	Cancer
Cary	July 16	Cancer
Bill	August 4	Leo
Doug	August 6	Leo
Claudia/Al	August girl	Leo
Carol	August 16	Leo
Shayne	August 21	Leo
Phoenix	September 29
Hovik	October 23
Cami	November 5	Scorpio
Lyndee	November 23	Scorpio
Ethan	November 24	Scorpio
Ruth	November 28	Sagittarius
Ralph	March, mid march	?
Beth	?	?
Alexis	March 28	Aries
Steph		?
Steve Dillard	February 6th

4th of july: everyone soaking in it..

going down, dianadarling, walter, lftc

walter in 1st and OUT like a rocket!

lftc taking the leap.

going north, goodbye world!

hogging up the entire invisible rail, eating, drinking, eating and drinking. it's what we do.

again but with dave.

hard to see but this is a night heron, below him is a school of fish right on the surface, he's hunting, waiting to for the primo snack to be plucked out.

brown people! walter, dd, dave, lftc, al, c rose..

fun day for all! my little family hung out near the pier all afternoon, mostly chasing ali, getting ali out of the water, calling ali back toward us, yelling at ali, looking for ali, wondering where ali was, diana and her cute cute husband walter joined us for some ali time, then diana and lftc decided to swim but the surf! what to do? david offered to let us off the pier, walter wanted to body surf too so we all took the leap. walter was worried, this seems to be a trend, everyone is a tad shaky, it's the newness, the steep stairs that shake as you walk down and then you're in the shade, almost under the pier. but! he took off like a rocket as soon as his feet hit the water, we followed suit and head north but didn't know how to come in so we swam back south but again, the surf! so i'm deciding between swimming to the marine room or jumping on the lifeguard boat which is nearby. diana said no to my brilliant lifeguard boat plan but to make me feel better she said we'd go in right in front of the guards. why? why, diana? WHY? just in case, she tells me. wtf does that mean? clearly i want answers. but she's a pro at handling shaky old people so we calmly made our way in. a little diving deep but absolutely fine. thanks, dd! for the hundreth time guiding me in rough surf. claudia and al showed up later, they took off to swim south, exited at the tower and jogged back in their thongs. i love this 'who cares what people think' attitude! it's true hard core! we hit the pier to eat and drink champagne & talk about the many disasters at sea we have had-note to all: never invite any person in this group to sail, ever! it was so great to watch the fireworks and the night heron, many kayakers were out too, it was cool to see them at night. a fab day! i hope all of you had a wonderful, wet day!
lftc-out
   

Happy 4th!

July 4 I wake up and my back is sore from swimming nearly 3 miles yesterday. So i decide to take it EASY, and do a gentle swim along the coast with the Mighty C's. Well, those C's are so mighty i could barely keep up them as we put in at the beach just south of the beach where the People's Wall is, and then zipped north along the coast up to the point and back. Very little viz but I did manage to see a small smoothhound and Cary saw some batrays. We ended up swimming for a good hour. Then on the way back we lolligagged in the water looking up at Roger who was bouldering a traverse along the People's Wall! As i tried to exit i caught the end of a big wave which tumbled me around a bit. With my hands full of goggles and cap and fins I was too slow getting up and got whipped around a few more times before being spit up onto the shore. It was the must fun i've ever had getting about 3 buckets of sand under my bathing suit. I was literally padded with sand. Then to the Shores to boogie board and body surf with Roger my darling husband. We had a blast - i saw the largest fricking leopard shark EVAR - 4-5 feet long.
It was another grand day at the seashore!

really the best swim EVAR!



CFTC haapy girl!




happy swimmers, two of us..this may be the mighty c's..




the otherlaura, cary, any ideas about the middle swimmer? maybe leonard.



this was taken after our 2nd dip, we look so happy! or before. the theme? happiness!

i love this pic, it's cary swimming out of a fly stroke, more on this in the story.

pre swim, left to right: CFTC, the Mighty C's Rebecca, RUTH!, Neill and Gracie. 

pre swim still, left to right: laura, cary, cami's cute butt, bill.

finally in! RUTH trailing someone. 

end


end of the pier super stars..



end of the pier.

end of the pier again! osprey in the top right. checkin us out! 

a little hello from the no pants crew!

osprey is not impressed.

oh wow! swim report for july 3rd: our lucky number is 13 so far and the number of our pod. otherlaura, gracie, RUTH, the mighty c's, CFTC, TFTC, LFTC, amber, leonard, paula, gracie, rebecca swam in in sub zero viz but cooking at 68 degrees, straight to the pier in a very long line. some big swells rolling through, some chop but no real current to speak of and oh so fun!  on the way back i found it interesting that some of the regular no pants swimmers ended up all together, it was so great to have this group of 13, everyone is so strong and good in the water but i love especially how the core group ended up together naturally. to me, this says we know eachother, we know how we swim together, we fit!  sorry the pics are not in order, i know not why. user error.  the picture of cary ending her fly stroke is after our fun second swim. doug and janie came by to nibble and visit so we sat around for a long time in the heat, we needed to cool off so doug took off, we snagged janie and went out to play, per bill. well, the 'play' turned into a wicked game of tag and the swim chicks were all 'it' chasing after bill. cary changed her stroke several times and whined that it was hard, not playing at all but working! bill was long gone, maybe at the 1/2. when a helicopter came by cary was so relieved that it might be life flight. it wasn't so we turned it up a notch and moved out.  all in all THE MOST FAB SWIM EVAR! we missed those that couldn't attend, especially dianadarling.. who shoulda been with us!
lftc-out
1 more thing-thanks to marta for sending gracie our way and so sorry about your bat ray boo boo. hurry and heal!

Black jellyfish

The viz could have been better today. But the company made up for lack of good viz. 13 podmembers struck out from the Marine Room to the pier. On the way back we oggled a huge black jelly bobbing on the surface. It was so big it looked like a blob of seaweed.

The water temp was 66-ish. Large upwellings of chillier water here and there. Vizability left much to be desired.