Open water swim, Cherry Beach, August 1

We did go for open-water swim practice. Doesn’t that sound official? It just means we swam in something other than a pool. At 3:00 p.m. the water was declared clean by the strictest standards in the world, so all three of us swam in the lake. Andie didn’t like the seaweed and water plants, so she didn’t swim much and soon retreated to the shallows. Then she played in the sand, even though I pointed out that damp sand has a lot more E. coli than does open water.

We did some swimming with eyes closed to test our ability to keep going in a straight line. I learned to compensate for a slight tendency to veer. Some people just have to look up more often and maybe get so-called “prescription” goggles. Actually, they are more like the graduated reading glasses that you can buy in a drug store: just pick the ones that improve your sight most.

There was something of a swell with waves rolling in. After a while I cut the lesson short and went in. But I probably swam 550 to 600 yards.