It’s always interesting to hear what this Olympian has on his mind. May he inspire a generation of swimmers.

My kids got a kick out of the country club meets. The pool was a little shorter, there was a cap gun to signal the start of a race, and there was a great wading pool for the babies to play during the meets.

And our local country club didn’t trip at the sight of our multi-cultural swim club.

I wonder how much it costs to join?

Remember Naji Ali? He’s started a discussion group called Outside the Box on the Diversity in Aquatics network. You should check it out. Here the swimmer describes the thrill of open water swimming in his own words.

The San Francisco based swimmer swims daily year round without a wet suit. If the water is 55 degrees, he can swim for 2 hours, though he usually limits his workouts to between 45 minutes and 1 hour, depending on the water temperature.

The subject of fear never comes up. He even talks about a thrill he gets plunging into the dark abyss. Ali has been bitten. He is hooked on the open water, never to return to chlorine again, as he puts it.

He recently sat down and talked with Karen Rogers, a legend in open water. And they talked about leveling the playing field in swimming. About how swimming is now in the position that baseball when it was being integrated. Their tactic for getting more blacks in swimming is to raise the profile of open water swimming. Ali set these goals for the next 4 years to bring some attention to the sport, and to raise money for Project Josh:

2010-2013!

2010 (August) – 18.5k (10 miles) Width of Lake Tahoe

2011 September – 22K (12 Miles) The Strait of Gibraltar

2012 April – 29K (17.4 Miles) The Cook Strait

2013 September – 33.7K (21 Miles) The Catalina Channel

Be on the lookout for great things from this inspiring swimmer!

Yeah, I know you could swim. That’s obvious. You could also relax in the sand. Or. . . catch a screening of a documentary called Free Swim. I talked about this movie before. How it explores the absurdity of people living on a narrow isthmus not knowing how to swim.

I don’t know if this is reason in and of itself to go to the Bahamas, but if you’re going there already, you should definitely check it out while there.

Here’s part 2 of the Diversity Summit speaker, Max Siegel. If you have a chance to swim before partaking of turkey, go for it! What a great way to make room for a feast.

Today was my glorious return to the beauty shop! My hair has never been happier.

While there, I veered the discussion towards swimming, as I always do. Hair and swimming are inextricably linked, unfortunately. In fact, my daughter was supposed to have the hair appointment today, but I switched with her, because she had lifeguarding class today.

I mentioned the class to the ladies at the beauty shop, and one of them mentioned the concept of ‘going down for the last time.’ She talked about how important it is to get children in swimming lessons, because inevitably somebody who can’t swim will find himself (it’s always a ‘he’ in these stories) at the bottom of the pool–after having gone down for the last time.

We talked about my question of treading water. What is it about treading water that two people can do exactly the same movement but one is treading and the other is drowning? I got an answer: fear. Fear is the difference between floating and sinking. How the scared person tenses up and is unable to make treading happen.

I remember when my daughter first learned to tread water. She was 7 and skinny as a pole. She didn’t get cold in the water though; she was too busy moving a mile a minute. She had the fastest treading I’d ever seen! I had thought she was scared, but that was just her speed.

I would like to replace the tragic drowning stories with funny stories of children who finally *got* treading. And I’d love to hear more stories of grown ups who decided to learn how to swim, too, rather than sending their kids down to get swim lessons. Because if they fall off the boat, or whatever, they could go down for the last time just as easily as a child.

Maybe even easier.