For just over a year now, I’ve been taking swimming lessons and practising under the direction of a coach.
I’m still enjoying the training effect, which hasn’t yet levelled off: the more I practice, the better I get. I’m not racing, but just improving my endurance and aerobic fitness. It’s odd: when I get into the pool next time, I swim better than when I got out the previous time

The chart shows distances swum on successive dates. Some of them are estimates. The times aren’t always the same; most of the sessions are 1 hour long, but some are longer and some are only half an hour. Some are in pools, either with lane swimming or maneuvering among swimmers, with or without a wetsuit, in smooth or rough water. Still, there’s a trend: on the average, I can swim farther and faster as time goes on.

I suppose to do this properly I should drop the obstructed swims, add a slowing factor to the wetsuit sessions, and use the per-hour rate for all dates. I don’t have a record of all the short lessons, but here’s an attempt:

Swimming improvement in one year, adjusted

The training effect was discovered by Dr. Cooper.

“None of this is speculation. The anatomic and biochemical characteristic of the training effect have been documented in the laboratory many times.”, Kenneth H. Cooper, M.D., M.P.H. President and Founder, The Cooper Aerobics Center.

more funny cat pictures

I seem to be hard on machinery. I drop cameras, carry running laptop computers, and drop cell phones. Small shiny objects are too slippery for me. But most cell phones can stand being dropped a few times. What they can’t tolerate is water. I ruined one by walking in the surf in California. The salt water splashed on my shorts, the shorts got damp, and the cell phone in my pocket discharged its battery and got hot, hot, hot! It may have steamed a little. And that was the end of it. I was carrying it so exposed only so I could hear incoming calls over the ambient noise. Hint: if you have to have your phone handy in a damp environment, put it into a sealed plastic baggie. (Experience is what you get just after you needed it most.)

Now I’ve done it again: spilled water on my new cell phone. Actually, I shoved a bottle of water into my purse. I wanted a refillable bottle so I grabbed a new bike bottle. Being unfamiliar with the bottles, I took a red lid for a bottle decorated in red. The top screwed on but it wasn’t watertight. When I checked a minute later, I found my cell phone at the bottom of my purse, instead of the side pocket when I put it when I’m not so rushed – along with half a cup of water. I fished the phone out and dried it off. I opened it up and dried it off. I took the battery out and dried off the interior.I shook it. Bad sign: little drops of water came flying out. Water trickled out of the hinge. I left the battery out and let the phone dry for hours, but it was too late.

It receives messages but I can’t display them. None of the buttons work except the On/Off.

I’m off to get a new phone again.

Now that I’m home with my 2500 new pictures, my laptop computer is having technical problems. All I get is the Blue Screen of Death. None of the starting modes work. I have to dig up some original disks and do something about it so I can get access to recent files and photos.

So I can’t start culling and uploading the pictorial essay of my trip. I’ll get to it when I can.

More LOLcats

I’m glad to report that we got a good start from West Chester, Pennsylvania, this morning. The skies were grey and there was some rain, frost, and signs of snow but never ice on the roads, which had been salted. With ten hours of steady driving got safely back to Toronto.

Today my friend in West Chester took me to Longwood Gardens, which is a an estate with a large, stone greenhouses. It’s a former du Pont estate with a world-class conservatory. I’m sure something scientific is going on here, whether it’s the banana collection, the 3,000 species of orchids, the carnivorous plants, or something else.