Last year at this time, this blog was downright obsessed with Cullen Jones.  He was my great black hope for the Summer Olympics.  In the end, he brought home a gold medal for the 4×100 meter free relay.  It was a very exciting race, won by eight one-hundredths of a second.

And though I was disappointed that that was the only race that Cullen had qualified for, and he swam the slowest lap of the race, he did contribute to a gold medal victory in Beijing.

What’s he up to these days?

He has an endorsement deal with Nike, for one.  He’s also on the speaking circuit.

But the coolest thing Cullen Jones is about is encouraging other young swimmers.  Especially young black swimmers.  The pool where he once swam as an isolated black swimmer has seen an influx of students since the 2008 Olympics.

Cullen is determined to turn the black drowning statistic around.  A recent USA swimming study found that 58 percent of black children can’t swim. But he is an excellent example of turning that statistic on its ear.  He almost drowned at 5.  Then his mother signed him up for swimming lessons.  He didn’t just quit at learning how to swim.  He took his sport through college, to the Olympics, and now to professional role model.

He is working on a swim documentary that includes his trip to Beijing.  Be on the lookout for more good things from Cullen Jones.

I once told my husband that if he got me a pool, I’d never get dressed all summer long.  I imagined resort life, with swim suits, a coverup the closest thing to clothing.  I might even wear flip-flops. . He said, “You have a pool in your future.”

Until then, I like to visit people who have pools.  In my informal survey, I know five black families with pools.  A recuring theme of pool ownership is maintainance.  One family kept their pool closed as long as the husband worked out of town.  Nobody else in the family could maintain the pool.  Another family I know just got their house with pool.  The pool sat un-used for many years, and the family has yet to uncover, clean, and fill the pool.

Another family uses their pool, and they’re very generous with it.  The woman of the house is a grandmother, and a retired Jr. High principal.  She is able to host all the neighborhood children as well as her grandchildren.  I love how her children have bucked the black non-swimming trend, and have passed swimming on to their children as well.

One of my daughter’s friends has a pool, but we haven’t seen it yet, so I can’t speak about their pool-keeping habits.

But I can talk about my soon to be sister-in-law.  She has a pool which has been a lot of trouble for her.  She has had to find leaks, plug drains, and prune trees in order to use her pool.  She had thought about filling it in, it was so much trouble, but that would have cost more than fixing it. Now she has my brother, a fish and swim geek like myself, to help with the maintainance.  And she is very generous with her pool as well, offering its use even when she’s not home.  I haven’t tried it out yet.

So what am I waiting for?

For one, this has been a crazy cold summer.  As I type, it is 60 degrees in July.  Outrageous.  And when it’s been hot enough to swim, I’ve been busy doing other things.  But, as my brother pointed out when I spoke to him yesterday, “there are sure to be a few more warm days this summer.”

Poor neglected swim blog.  I didn’t get in the pool last week, so I haven’t been here in a while.

But today I made sure I went swimming.  I even turned on my watch alarm for 5 AM.  Which got me in the pool by 6:03.  I dawdle like that.

I have recently found myself in a pit of despair.  As I’ve elaborated on my other blog, the baby I hoped to cuddle in January is no more.  I can’t help but worry myself to death with what I did wrong to make the baby stop developing, but in the meantime, I will be working out.

It felt great to be in the water.  My fatigue is subsiding, thankfully along with the nausea, and I definitely appreciated that in the water.  It felt so good to swim the 100 IM!  I glided through the water on that final length, incredulous that I was actually swimming the freestyle so smoothly.  My time was 2:58.89–not much to write home about, but it was faster and easier than the last time I’d swum.

Then, I got hit by this strong bathroom urge.  I couldn’t believe it.  I thought about getting out of the pool after just swimming 500.  I plan to ride bikes with a friend later, so I guess I could afford to get out of the pool early.

I plan to return either Friday or Saturday.  And maybe do the bathroom BEFORE getting in the water.