It’s looking pretty dark out this morning. There is plenty of light at 6:15 when I leave but no blue sky to be seen nor does it look like we will be seeing any soon. I’m aching for a warm sunny morning to spend in the water, but that morning is not this morning.

From the parking lot, I can see some texture and bump on the water and what looks like some rain out on the horizon. It’s by no means cold but someone should start the camp fire.

It’s medium tide as I step onto the beach. The water feels good.

I drop off my pack and and notice a rock that caught my eye yesterday as well. It has a Velella Velella smushed into it. Poor little fella.

Surf is down another notch today and what is here looks pretty junky. Lots of seaweed debris in the shallows here.

I start to swim. I feel that water and I am awake. Like the sky, the water is cloudy as well.

The beach looks so empty today. I guess that’s to be expected on an early weekday morning and it is not exactly screaming “tropical beach paradise.” I really can’t complain. First, no one is forcing me to do this. Second, it’s pretty great. Call these conditions what you want but I have never ever been here on a day I would call “ugly.” Sure it’s dreary but it is also beautiful and serene.

The water feels about the same it has been over the last fortnight - cool but very tolerable. Always love these opportunities to use the word “fortnight!”

On the swim back up north, I stare west. I play the usual games with myself: how long can I swim without looking ahead and checking my trajectory? I enjoy losing myself in this swim to nowhere but eventually get nervous that I have wandered too close to Avalon, Catalina. The horizon looks like it is two feet away. It seems like every time I surface to take a breath, a wake is right in front of me. I watch the line separating water from air shape shift with every stroke. It is never the same. It rises and falls, bends and bows, it’s nearer then farther and sometimes it makes contact with my face.

Music fills my head today. It’s the same music I was improvising on the piano last night but here it is orchestral. I relax my mind and let it create and embellish the melodies without trying to consciously compose in any direction. It’s my own Spotify playlist set on the new “smart random” mode where it mixes in new and related songs. I don’t know what will play next. I am more listener than creator.

My mind wanders to odd computer programming thoughts from work. These thoughts have no emotional weight or baggage. They are just the noise of everyday software development minutiae. Do I use an OR or an AND? I see equal signs and brackets float by me. I am swimming from one function call to another along this call stack that is the ocean surface.

Sometimes I wake up at night from a dream where I am lost in computer code. The code is not just code but I am physically entwined in the innards of software. These dreams are so incredibly boring and seemingly insignificant that I wake up frustrated that I can’t spend these precious moments of sleep involved with something more meaningful.

There are also mornings, many in fact, where I sit down to a coding problem I spent hours pounding on to no avail the previous night only to solve it in five minutes. So perhaps something is happening in this sleep swim that deserves more credit.

Eventually there it is, the Green Monster. Just settling in for the season. I swim past it just a little ways and then turn around to finish up the swim.

Just as I am turning to swim to shore I see a couple swimmers that look like they have just reached the shore and a couple others cross my path as they near the end. I chat with one for a bit and we long for the sun. He mentions something about San Diego being the cloudiest city in the nation over the month of May. I can believe it. We both hold out hope that maybe tomorrow there will be sun. I’m trying as hard as I can to keep myself from belting out the theme song of Annie the musical.

I reach shore, dry off and struggle to put my shirt on realizing my arm went out the neck hole. Can’t this be easier?

The walk back to the stairs is beautiful. I see different shades of blue and light on the water.

I get home and it is raining in earnest just as I enter my Capo Beach neighborhood. It is not pouring but I hear the drops on my wind shield and hear my rain gutters carrying runoff.