the mighty lake...

Thursday afternoon July 3rd 2008:

K & I had been looking forward to heading down to Lake Michigan to get in a good open water swim since our offices closed early for an extended Fourth of July holiday weekend. We drove down to the lakefront and unloaded the old mountain bikes for the 5 mile ride south to the Ohio Street beach as we noticed the lake was very, very wavy & choppy since the winds were strong out of the northeast. Once we got by the swim start area even the outer harbor lake break walls couldn’t hold back the big roller waves which were amplified twice-fold since they bounce right off the lakefront concrete walls…the best way to describe the lake at this time was imagine a super-duty industrial washing machine on the agitation cycle…yikes! But K & I were bound and determined to at least try it especially since it took us 90 minutes of commuting just to get to this point.

As we walked into the water we attempted to swim out to the buoy line which we did but it took a ton of energy with a few stops along the way to catch our breath from ingesting too much lake water. At the buoy line area we deemed this situation just too challenging for our abilities and we turned around to head back to the beach to safer, sandy ground…afterwards we took off our wetsuits and headed back via the MTB’s to the car into the strong headwind.

3 hours of commuting via car & bike ride to swim 200 meters…we learned our lesson!

b