Holding at Perfect

I left a little after 10:00 this morning. It is warm, about 76 degrees, and an absolutely beautiful clear sky day.

I get to the parking lot and all of the spaces in the parking row I usually occupy are taken. So I park just a tad further away but still close. As far as I know, this is the only beach within 10 miles with free parking all day. Doheny recently dropped hourly parking and if you don’t have an annual pass, you have to pay for a 15 dollar day pass. So you really can’t complain at all about the parking here at strands. Also, I have to say the spaces are very roomy, which is nice with my Toyota Tundra.

I get out of the car and just love this sunshine. It feels so good walking down the stairs. Despite the parking, there really are not a lot of people here. Just as I am approaching the shore, I see two other swimmers heading up the asphalt. I ask them how it was. Even though I can guess the answer, it’s a good conversation starter. I didn’t before but now I recognize one of the swimmers as an occasional member of the Sunday swim crew. We all talk for a bit and talk about the seasonal shift in sand and he points out that the Jupiter rock is almot entirely covered. Wow. Yeah. Only a few inches are visible. This is a rock that stands at shoulder height much of the year.

I approach the water and it feels just as I expect that it would - great. It’s cool but I can tell the cool will not last long. The water temp forecast last night calls for “holding” temps through the week. Holding at perfect is my kind of forecast.

I get into the water. Despite the initial cool sensation, there really is no shock factor involved. It is nice nice nice. I head south and make my way down to the end of the beach. This section goes by pretty quickly. There are a couple cool spots but I have nothing bad to say about any of them. I’m trying to keep my attention right here in this moment. I zero in on different areas of my body and check in with the sensations I feel. The swish of the liquid motion against my skin, the slap of the water on the tops of my feet, my knee bending and straightening to propel me forward, the sun on the upper part of my back and shoulders.

The visibility isn’t great but good enough to see plenty of Corbina fish swimming close to the surface of the water. I see them all throughout the swim today.

I can tell the current is pushing me south and when I turn around, things change. It doesn’t feel turbulent and I don’t have the sensation of fighting my way forward like I do on some days especially after the winds pick up but I’m stuck once again in the dead zone between the middle stairs and the wooden boardwalk. I look up and note my position and then I look again after what seems to be several minutes and I swear I have barely moved. I can tell that I am indeed moving but so so slowly. I want to be home by about noon and I’m starting to worry that isn’t going to happen.

I’m caught between this interesting tension of thought right now. On the one hand I’m stressed about the time and on the other hand as I look about me, where else could possibly be better than here? Why can’t I just stay here all day? My body is tired too, but not alarmingly tired. I don’t have any kind of a time piece on me so I really don’t know for sure if my slow pace is a matter of poor perception or if I am super behind. I just don’t know what time it is.

I keep moving. What a delightful day it is. I watch the silver splashy motion of the water slosh in front of my face every time I come up for air. Except when I’m in the surf, all of these pictures I take show the water relatively still and I wish I could get a pic of what it is like to watch it streaming by my face and the wake that my stroke produces behind me. So I stop and quickly move my camera along the water and take a shot as I do so. Nope. Didn’t produce the same effect. Not even close.

The swim remains sluggish pretty much all the way to my northern turn around spot. After pivoting and heading back south, the remainder of the swim feels nearly instantaneous. I watch the rocks briskly pass by. Seemed like they could barely budge an inch coming the other direction.

The “cool” spots are starting to feel like the most delightful spots. There is a ton of loose seaweed floating about in the shallows where I come to shore just to the north of the concrete ramp. As I head up the asphalt, a couple starts talking with me and mentions that I seemed to be going super fast as they watched me from the beach. I explain the situation with the current. We part ways at the lower bathrooms and I break into a run (not jog) to the top of the stairs. When I get into my truck, it is 12:15. Ugh. Later when I check out the timestamps on my pics I figure I was swimming just a little over 90 minutes.