Funny Swimming Stories

I swim in an outdoor pool year round, and one cold December morning (temperature in the 30s) the
steam was pouring off the pool at early morning practice. In the lane next to me I spied a Speedo
bathing suit (one of those kind of baggy ones) laying on the bottom of the pool. Somebody finally
fished it out and threw it up on the pool deck where it lay in a sodden pile with the steam rising
off it. It was the mystery suit - we never did find out who it belonged to. Hopefully it was being
used as a drag suit over another suit.

On another morning (a warmer morning) the pool was set up long course. The lighting at the far
end of the pool is not the best, and this, coupled with the fact that I don't see all that well
without glasses, made it difficult for me to determine what the brown rectangular thing was that
was on my kick board. Somehow I sensed that I shouldn't remove it by hand, so I tossed it up
onto the pool deck. Instead of landing on the deck as I had planned, the thing landed in the
water AND IT STARTED TO SWIM!! Eventually it got sucked into the drainage outake on the side of
the pool. It was a rat! Yuck!!

"Deli" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

It's Friday so I thought I would share some of my lap swimming stories. These are all true and
happened in the last few months.

1. An older, obese gentleman decides to do his laps in the fast lane, disregarding the "fast" sign
on the pool deck. Unfortunately, his stroke of choice is a sort of sideways
frontcrawl/breaststroke hybrid (crawl arms, whipkick legs on your side at about 45 degree
angle). He kicks myself and a few other in the shoulder and stomach as we kept passing. I
gently suggested that he try another of the lanes, for slow or medium, but he didn't listen. A
few minutes later, a Chinese guy in my lane has had enough and yells at him in stereotyped
asian english "Hey you! Fast lane not for you ! Fast lane too fast ! You swim slow! Go to slow
lane where you belong!", which made me laugh so much I swallowed a bunch of water. The guy
shrugged it off and just kept swimming for another 10 minutes, and I got kicked again.

2. A large cardiac patient always bobbles around the deep end when I swim. He is very funny and we
always crack wise in the sauna or the showers. One time I noticed he was wearing navy blue
speedo beach shorts, and that the chlorine had worn them to the point where they were
see-through. The lifeguards giggled a bit but no big deal. The other day, I was getting out and
so was he, and he asked if I was going to the sauna. At that exact moment he had hoisted
himself up the ladder and all you could hear was "Riiiip!" and those speedos were history. I
threw him my towel and I instantly had several weeks of new jokes.

3. One guy wears snorkle, fins, and lifjacket in the fast lane. We left a free catalogue for
gasoline powered outboard motors at the desk with his name on it. I dunno if he got the joke
or not.

Hearing all the problems people have with lap swimming, I guess I feel fortunate to swim where I do.
My swimming center has about 70 masters/fitness swimming sessions per week, and all but one of them
are coached interval sessions. Based on the level, the intervals can range from 25 meters to 400
meters. The relative speeds of swimmers is sorted out pretty fast (by changing start orders for the
most part). It seems unrealistic to expect problems to go away if you swim continuously, but with
intervals the rest time between intervals allows everyone to get in sync again. The only exception
to the interval system is an "open water" class where you swim for severval 15 or 20 minutes
sessions, but that is held late at night, when everyone can get his own lane, since there are 25
short course lanes.

I heard Bruce, my brother-in-law, calling me from outside our rented cottage on Keuka Lake. As I
leaned over the porch rail, he said, "Come on down, I found a rat." As I headed for the stairs,
Barbara asked what he wanted. "I'll tell you later," I mumbled, knowing how she gets about small
furry critters. I brought the work gloves I used for rowing.

The rat was under the cottage rowboat. Lena and Ole, Bruce's Boston Terriers, knew their jobs and
were anxious to land the prize. Bruce tilted the boat from one side, pinning the dogs. I lifted from
the prow, exposing Mr. Rat, who tried to escape into a retaining wall drainage pipe. Bruce blocked
this with his foot and said later, "The rat just looked up at me, and I knew it was tame."

The dogs didn't stop to debate the relative tameness of this rattus, however. The rat ran into the
lake, swimming submerged for some twenty feet before only his nose and eyes broke the water. Ole
charged into the water after the rat, but failed to notice that the rat had circled left. After a
few minutes, Ole was headed for the deep water and the rat gained the shore and the woods. Thinking
that we had seen the last of the rat, I dove into the water after Ole, caught him and turned him
back towards shore.

When I got out, Bruce was holding a soaked, slightly-bloodied, scared but surprisingly docile rat in
my work gloves. Lena, who is the more relentless of the two dogs, had chased and downed the rat with
Bruce rescuing him "just in time."

Barbara took one look at the rat and drove to the Penn Yan drugstore to buy a cage, water bottle and
pellets. The kids went house to house to ask if anyone was missing a rat, but I knew we had acquired
another pet.

Donal Fagan AIA Donal@DonalO'Fagan.com (Anglicise the name to reply by e-mail)

Many years ago the indoor pool in Arvada Colorado was going to close down for 3 weeks for
renovations in September. I got a petition signed requesting that they keep the outdoor long course
pool open for all of us addicted pre-dawn lap swimmers and the parks board agreed to this. One
retired Kindergarten teacher kept saying "No way will I go there! It's too cold now in the mornings
(it was getting into the 40s). And, another friend talked me into going to this 24 hour health club
to swim in a not so pleasant indoor pool. After a week of the indoor place, I decided to get tough
and take the cold outdoor option. As I pulled into the parking lot, who should greet me but that
retired teacher. She jumped out of her car and exclaimed "Where have you been?! It's been wonderful
out here!" And, it was wonderful as steam rose above the pool and the guard sat huddled in a winter
jacket with a thermos of hot drink.

Another time I was at the hot springs pool in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The water was not totally
clear so you couldn't see very far into the water. One little kid called to his mother "Mommy, I
found it!" and his mother said "You found what?" and the child replied "I don't know." And the
mother calmly said "Throw it back, dear."

"j. sterling" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I swim in an outdoor pool year round, and one cold December

morning

Quoted message said:

(temperature in the 30s) the steam was pouring off the pool at early

morning

Quoted message said:

practice. In the lane next to me I spied a Speedo bathing suit (one of those kind of baggy ones)
laying on the bottom of the pool. Somebody finally fished it out and threw it up on the pool deck
where it lay in a sodden pile with the steam rising off it. It was the mystery suit - we never did
find out who it belonged to. Hopefully it was being used as a drag suit over another suit.

On another morning (a warmer morning) the pool was set up long course. The lighting at the far
end of the pool is not the best, and this, coupled with the fact that I don't see all that
well without glasses, made it difficult for me to determine what the brown rectangular thing
was that

was

Quoted message said:

on my kick board. Somehow I sensed that I shouldn't remove it by hand, so

I

Quoted message said:

tossed it up onto the pool deck. Instead of landing on the deck as I had planned, the thing landed
in the water AND IT STARTED TO SWIM!!

Eventually

Quoted message said:

it got sucked into the drainage outake on the side of the pool. It was a rat! Yuck!!

"Deli" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

It's Friday so I thought I would share some of my lap swimming stories. These are all true and
happened in the last few months.

3. One guy wears snorkle, fins, and lifjacket in the fast lane. We left a free catalogue for
gasoline powered outboard motors at the desk with his name on it. I dunno if he got the joke
or not.

Funny stuff. This last one hits a little too close to home. When I first started swimming in the
Masters group about 15 months ago, I had a long "jammer" style suit, always wore my zoomer fins, and
had the big aqua sphere goggles that almost looked like a dive mask.

My second day on deck, the coach dead-panned, "Aren't you missing your spear gun?"

A creed of evolutionary biologist came to mind regarding the choices an organism has when facing a
new environment - "Adapt, migrate, or die".

I went out and bought a speedo suit.

Eric

I love these posts on funny stories--please keep them coming everyone! This was a great thread to
start--thanks Deli.

Have any of you read the book "Swimming Just for Laughs" by Norman Bower? If not, I recommend it.

Marianne

"Larry Weisenthal" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I'm still rather proud of this one:

I used to regularly swim a nearly 2 mile long, triangular course at Seal Beach. Swim out parallel
to the Pier to the end (about 400 meters off-shore), and then head out on a diagonal to the end of
the Alamitos Bay jetty, maybe 700 meters off-shore, and another 800 or so meters North before
turning around and swimming in a straight line back to the starting point.

There were often kids fishing off the end of the breakwater, after scrambling out to the end (not
all that easy to do). Anyway, I just appeared, literally out of the blue, and I used to like to
stop and tread water and holler out "Is this the way to Malibu?" (maybe 50 miles up the coast).

Larry Weisenthal

Certitude is poison; curiosity is life

I had the good fortune to be able to swim at a local high school this morning (remember, Purdue is
closed for 10 days). The head coach (Jim) and one of his assistants (Diana) were also going to swim.
I got in first and thought that the water was a bit chilly. I would have guessed 79 which is just
about my lower limit. When Jim and Diana appeared, ready to jump in, I told Jim the water was cold.
He put his toe and and shoed me off, insisting it was just fine and to "GET MOVIN!" in his gruff,
tough voice. So, I figured it was in my head. I saw Jim jump in and the next thing I knew, he and
Diana were standing away from their respective lanes, Jim wrapped in a towel. I stopped and looked
at them and they both said "It's too damn cold!" I insisted that if they kept moving it really was
not bad (right on the border of being too cold and being cold enough to be refreshing). I told them
to jump back in and give it a few minutes. "No way!" they yelled. So, I said "Well, you guys are
just a bunch of WUSSES!" and they said in unison "Your're right!" Diana announced she was going
running and got out of there in a flash. Jim stayed on deck to clean it. I stayed in and did 8000
yads. A man came to talk with Jim on deck shortly before I was done. When I got out, Jim informed me
that "A man told me that he is putting in a new pool heater and it should be warmer on Wednesday." I
laughed and said "I TOLD you the water was cold!"

"Deli" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

It's Friday so I thought I would share some of my lap swimming stories. These are all true and
happened in the last few months.

1. An older, obese gentleman decides to do his laps in the fast lane, disregarding the "fast" sign
on the pool deck. Unfortunately, his stroke

of

Quoted message said:

choice is a sort of sideways frontcrawl/breaststroke hybrid (crawl arms, whipkick legs on your
side at about 45 degree angle). He kicks myself and

a

Quoted message said:

few other in the shoulder and stomach as we kept passing. I gently

suggested

Quoted message said:

that he try another of the lanes, for slow or medium, but he didn't

listen.

Quoted message said:

A few minutes later, a Chinese guy in my lane has had enough and yells at him in stereotyped asian
english "Hey you! Fast lane not for you ! Fast

lane

Quoted message said:

too fast ! You swim slow! Go to slow lane where you belong!", which made

me

Quoted message said:

laugh so much I swallowed a bunch of water. The guy shrugged it off and

just

Quoted message said:

kept swimming for another 10 minutes, and I got kicked again.

2. A large cardiac patient always bobbles around the deep end when I swim. He is very funny and we
always crack wise in the sauna or the showers. One time I noticed he was wearing navy blue
speedo beach shorts, and that the chlorine had worn them to the point where they were
see-through. The lifeguards giggled a bit but no big deal. The other day, I was getting out and
so was he, and he asked if I was going to the sauna. At that exact moment he had hoisted
himself up the ladder and all you could hear was "Riiiip!" and those speedos were history. I
threw him my towel and I instantly had several weeks of new jokes.

3. One guy wears snorkle, fins, and lifjacket in the fast lane. We left a free catalogue for
gasoline powered outboard motors at the desk with his name on it. I dunno if he got the joke
or not.

"MSEagan" <[email hidden]> pondered, puzzeled, prognosticated (perhaps even premeditated),
and then, in a very wise voice, sed: :

<s n i p>

Quoted message said:

"Your're right!" Diana announced she was going running and got out of there in a flash. Jim stayed
on deck to clean it. I stayed in and did 8000 yads. A

^^^^

i know it's not proper to make fun of people's typo's, but...i never realized you were from
Boston! :-)

--
chris

"Nothing is real."