Open-water swim, July 21

In spite of the rain on Sunday, the lake was clean and the water was the warmest yet: about 25 C. The water was calm except for an occasional wake bringing in a set of rollers. I swam more continuously than ever before, but at a slow pace.

There were seven students. After warm-ups and drafting practice, we each did a fairly large loop in the water — perhaps 250 metres long for me, longer for most of the others. At the far end of the loop we swam to the beach, got out and circled the lifeguard’s platform, and back into the water. I tried to use our previous lessons about running lightly into the water and then doing some dolphin dives to travel fast in the shallows.

Afterwards we posed for a group photo.

That wasn’t energetic enough, so we tried again.

See Kelvin’s swim diary.

I’m watching the Tour de France go over the highest pass in Europe–9,000 feet? There are only a few more days to go—until July 27. Unfortunately, I’ll be out of town for the last three days. LotStreetWiz will have to watch them by himself.

House prices are rising

House prices are rising in Toronto. People are paying over the asking price. Vendors no longer take the first offer that meets their price. They collect bids, then compare them to see who offers the most. Bids are then being sent back for more.

more funny cat pictures

Open water swim, July 18

It was another day of heat & smog alerts. We wanted to get to swimming early so we packed up from our respective workplaces at 17:30 and were on the road to the beach shortly after that. The water was warmer than ever (75 F.). Maybe next week some of the others will shuck their wetsuits. There were long, low rollers coming in, which made swimming more interesting.

I warmed up in advance of the lesson by swimming out around of our temporary buoys and back. We practised swimming into the waves and back. More swimmers arrived The second time, I went almost as far as the other swimmers. Then we swam down the beach to another spot where we could practice triathlon starts. Last week we practised water starts, from treading water; this time we practised running starts from the beach with shallow-water swimming; and “dolphin-diving” in slightly less shallow water.

I got into the water about 18:15 and swam until 19:00. I don’t know how far I swam; I just enjoyed the water and took it easy. I’m getting more confident and more consistent, which is good. Here’s everybody except for Mirtha and forLaura, who is taking the picture: Arthur, Coach Kelvin, Lynda, Richard, me, Lisa.

See Kelvin’s swim diary.
And now I need to get to sleep. You wouldn’t think that we need haircuts? But we’re getting up early to get our hair cut nice and short for swimming.

Last weekend for Summerlicious

The annual Summerlicious festival is a chance for people to try new restaurants without spending a fortune. It’s been going since July 4 and it will be going on until July 20.

Heat & smog alert!

It was very fine on the weekend, but for the last few days, it has been getting hotter and a little more humid each day. Today we had both an extreme heat alert and a smog alert. It’s going to be slightly hotter on Thursday with a chance of thunderstorms, and the same on Friday. We might even have a funnel cloud! On Saturday it might cool off a bit with more thunderstorms.

I’m not going to bike to work unless I can get out early and find a place to lock my bike in the underground parking. Currently we have more bikes than racks.

I was going swimming this morning but I read until late and decided not to get up early. Then I planned to go to Pilates tonight but I cut the travel time fine and then took the underground streetcar the wrong way after letting two go by in what turned out to be the right way. So I just came home.

My documentation is shaping up and yesterday we got access to our wiki where the documentation will be stored. We had a meeting to hash out the standard page format.

The weather report just came on. It’s going down to 19 tonight but right back up to 30 again tomorrow. Today it was 30 but felt like 38. The tornado watches and warnings in Western Canada have been called off. Oh-oh! They had about three inches of rain in Dunneville. I wonder how the Guide Camp is doing?

Now I need to go and hang the laundry that I started this morning. And then I can write my science blog posts for tomorrow and schedule them to appear throughout the day.

Nissan Ten-miler

Results, comments, pictures: Nissan ten-mile road race.

Commuting by bike

I don’t get out and ride around for no reason very often, but I do like to ride to my clients’ premises if they are close enough. I finally got organized to bike to 1 Yonge Street. It was a pleasant ride, not too hot, and very refreshing.

bike ride, Danforth to Toronto harbour

Fifth open-water swim

Open-water swim at Cherry Beach

The weather was fine. There were eight of us swimmers at Cherry Beach. And eventually LotStreetWiz joined us to make it nine.

There was a long, diagonal swell coming in, which made swimming more interesting. The others swam farther and faster, but I did a couple of turns around the orange, temporary buoys.  The buoys were about 300 yards apart, so I did about 1300 yards.

Fire alarms!

We had two fire alarms today, caused by construction on the upper floors.

Everyone dutifully poured out of the building each time. Some floors were gathered together outside but I couldn’t find my floor. That got me walking around the buildings a couple of times.

The second time, I followed some other people across the street for ice cream.

Aerial view:

“Massive” smog alert

smoggy Toronto

Smog caused by air pollution drifting in from the U.S., local pollution, and hot, sunny weather triggered a smog alert for large parts of Ontario. The alert covers “Toronto, Dufferin-Innisfil, the City of Hamilton, York-Durham, Halton-Peel and many of the surrounding regions in the southern, central and eastern parts of the province.”

Toronto is also under an extreme heat alert, so the city will extend the hours of several outdoor public pools until 23:45. For details about pool locations and operating hours, call 416-338-POOL (7665).