The Bounce House
I left the house at 6:20 this morning and it is fully light outside. Nice. I have been looking forward to this change. When I get to the parking lot, it feels odd that the lot is so empty given the amount of light here.
I take a 6 mile run through the harbor and try to be cognizant of my achilles. I actually had to visit the elliptical machine this week. It wasn’t pretty and I’m hoping there will not be too many more of those workouts to come.
The water looks fairly smooth but not still. There are incoming lines of waves and they are all over the place. The water looks all jumbly which is probably from the coastal storm we had at the end of the day yesterday.
After my run I change into my trunks. I also notice that the showers up here are no longer undergoing maintenance so I don’t have to use the inferior lower showers.
I walk down the stairs and stare into the torqued face of the ocean. I’m so glad that the last few mornings have been much more mild than those frigid mornings we had mid week. The sun feels good. It is mostly sunny skies out with some large cumulus clouds hovering up overhead.
As soon as I see the shore, it looks like the Sunday morning swim group is just finishing up. They are coming to shore one after another and I chat with them for just a little bit. I do a little bit of Laguna Beach swimming evangelism. None of them have swam there and tell them it’s great, but I am happy to be home this morning.
The tide is high and there are a lot of waves here. It’s not big surf but it feels like a lot of it. There is lots of white water rushing over the sand. I walk into the surf and it feels about the same as Laguna did yesterday. Is it colder? I’m just not sure. Surfline does have Dana Point a degree (62) below Laguna Beach (63). It’s hard to tell with the run I just took too. Well whatever it is, it feels good.
I’m swimming south and feel this wave of gratitude come over me. I’m just so happy to be doing this. I feel like out here I bring all of myself here to become my best self. I don’t have the challenges here that I have on land. There are different challenges and all the challenges I have here, I always overcome. I can’t say the same for the rest of my life.
The entire swim today is like swimming through a bounce house. I am constantly rising and falling and it is great. Whenever I stop to pause I can see the waves rolling into shore. It feels like the waves should be larger but they aren’t.
The mood of the water seems to change on the south end of the beach. There is a bunch of small, loose debris swirling in the water. I must be right under one of those big clouds because the light gets darker. I don’t stop at all between the start and my southern turn around point. I just feel the urge to keep moving.
When I reach the south end, I look north over a vast plane of water that rolls and shifts and basically just cannot stay still. The surface is a combination of greys and blues depending on the location of the clouds.
I swim north and now and do make a couple stops along the way. I slowly make my way further and further away from the shore. Now I’m well past my start point and I look back past the small lifeguard hut where the main surf break is. I see the sun shining on the curling wakes and electric white water spreads out and glows yellow on a grey cloud covered surface. To the north, the water is bright blue and the cliffs shine green and brown with color.
I finish up the swim. A set of small waves steamroll over me just before I reach shore. It’s good. My lower legs feel super stiff and it takes me a bit to walk normally.
When I reach the showers up top, I am delighted to see that everything is structurally in tact and basically the same as they were the last time I used them and also the same as they were five years ago. For all I know, they are the same as they were 10 years ago but I was in a different state then and not paying attention. What I see has changed is a fresh coat of paint on the surrounding hardscape. Well isn’t that nice? This does feel like a small step up.
