I ended up leaving the house at 10:30 this morning. The skies were clear all morning long which has been rare this summer. Throughout the morning as I have been working, I have been looking out onto the ocean and looking forward to the day’s swim. It has also been warmer than 70 degrees outside for most of the morning which adds an inviting touch. My last meeting of the morning got cancelled just before it was about to start and then we had a poopy toddler “situation” that needed immediate attention by both mom and dad (me). Once the poop had cleared, I was off to the beach.

When I got to the parking lot I could see that the water surface was pretty bumpy but it was a gorgeous day. There are already a fair amount of cars parked here.

As I made my way down the stairs, the sun felt super good and I began to wonder if there was such a thing as a sun coma because I felt I was on the brink of entering one.

The surf was absolutely down quite a bit from Wednesday morning. Getting out past the surf was fairly effortless, which it usually is, as opposed to Wednesday’s never ending outside set of doom.

Before getting in the water I could see some kind of dark mass just past the surf and I wondered what it was. Well I figured it out pretty quick. All up and down the beach today there were thick mats of grassy seaweed. These are interesting because the heat from the sun gets caught in the grass and radiates to the nearby water making them feel like mini hot tubs (that might be an exaggeration).

As I swim South, the water turbulence is not too bad. However it feels like there is a lot of rolling up and down.

At the South end there is a set of breaking waves pretty far out - right around where I am. It’s not often I see waves breaking and rolling through here but the break is very much localized to the rocks and it is easy to stay out of their way.

I turn around to head North and now I am definitely catching the brunt of the oncoming wind swell. It’s a rocky ride all the way to the Northern turn around. If fact, it gets more and more turbulent the further I go. Good thing I prefer salt with my water.

When I pass one of the orange Northern buoys, there is a group of jr. lifeguards paddling out and rounding that buoy. I take a picture and hope it is not creepy that I am photographing them.

When I turn around to head back South, the ride mellows out a bit. I get to my destination pretty quickly it seems.

All in all a pretty great swim even though my mind was fairly jumbled today. I had this problem that I feel like I have been trying to solve forever at work and which I thought was totally solved creep back up with some problematic nuances. Stupid computers! I’m sending messages to my subconscious to solve the damn issue while I swim. This actually works a surprising amount of the time.

As I write this, the issue is solved (I think).