A Good Time
I left the house at 11:30 and it’s pretty much a perfect day for a swim. The sun is out, surf is small and, not a whole lot of surface texture. Looking at the Strands and Salt Creek webcams, I’m wondering if I can hear a faint voice beckoning me to come quickly. The sun, water and sand all seem be trying to make space just for me.
As I walk out the door, the air feels on the cool side but I don’t let that deter me. As I get in the car, the air becomes much warmer and down right cozy. Then exiting the car it drops again but I try to hone in on the feel of the warm pavement beneath my feet. Walking down the stairs to the beach and I hear a jack hammer and a small plane overhead. Surprisingly, even these sounds are peaceful here. The sand just below the ramp is still all chewed up and there is a big tractor up the beach just below the cement stairs that leads to the bathrooms. I’m curious what they are working on.
Here at the beach it is approaching high tide but it’s a low high - 2.7 - today. The water near the shore is clear. There are clouds along the horizon and above the inland hills but it is all blue sky right here at the beach. I no longer feel the breeze here below the cliff and the sun feels warm. I may be March 1, but it feels like it could just as well be August 1. This is indeed one of those days where the world has every right to be envious of Southern California. Decades ago, I had so much animosity for this half of the state but it is all gone now - certainly for this strip of coast.
I walk up to the water and it is so clear that I can se the dip in the floor just a few feet in front of me that drops into a trough of medium sized rocks. I step down and I am suddenly in waist to chest high water. It’s immediately clear that things will be easier if I swim than walk, but the sun is so warm on my skin. I don’t want to get wet yet. Can’t we draw this out just a little longer? Sorry, no. I let myself fall forward into the water and it is done.
I swim for a while and soon reach the sand and my fingers brush the bottom as I swim in about a foot of water. I don’t bother standing up. There is hardly any surf here and it’s not worth teasing my body with sun quite yet. Let’s just keep moving. I really can’t do propper justice to how nice this beach is today. I swim in perfection. Maybe raise the temperature about 10 degrees and it really would be perfect but I am by no means suffering in this cold.
I reach the southern end of the beach and I don’t hear my camera’s sound effects when I hit the “take a picture” button. The screen starts acting weird and then the power cuts out. It does not come back on. Even now as I write this, it is dead. I’m very disappointed at the moment but quickly realize where I am and that it would be ridiculous to let this technical glitch get me down. I decide to let it go and enjoy the rest of the swim regardless of whether or not I’ll have pictures to show for it.
In the process of trying to figure out my camera, it started recording video and I got a shot of a very perplexed Matt Wrock. Don’t I look so flustered and verklempt?
The entire swim is fantastic. The water is relatively comfortable the entire time - it might just be 60 or 61. I can feel the water warm and cool like a constant sine wave and the cool is not at all extreme. When I get to my northern turnaround point, I’m truly shocked at how quickly it seems I got there. Unfortunately my camera will not tell me what time the swim ends so I can’t tell the exact time in the water. That’s ok. What matters is that it was a good time.
