Monthly Archives: August 2007

Driven by fear

Posted on by
Reply

We had a code review during lunch, so I wasn’t able to go swimming until later today. I haven’t missed a day in a long time and I wasn’t going to miss today, just because of poor scheduling. I arrived around 4:45 and noticed a sign at the front desk as I was showing them my barcode. The sign said the pool would be closing at 5:00 every Friday night for the next month, so they could “hyper-chlorinate” it over the weekend. I didn’t read when it would reopen, but I’m guessing sometime Monday. Needless to say, I was not impressed.

Why do they need to “hyper-chlorinate” the pool? Because the government says so. There have been an unusually high number of cases of children getting sick at public pools this year due to Cryptosporidium infection. The decision to hyper-chlorinate and close the pool at Gold’s Gym is wrong on so many levels that it’s almost sad. It did make me realize the true nature of health clubs and gyms, though. They don’t exist to help people exercise or get in shape or anything of the sort. They exist solely to make money. They don’t care if you ever show up, as long as you keep paying. In fact, they probably prefer it if you don’t show up, because that only makes it easier to sell more memberships.

Chlorination is used to kill most viruses, bacteria, and protozoa like Giardia, but studies have shown that Cryptosporidium is more than 200,000 times more resistant to chlorine than Giardia. It has been shown that Cryptosporidium spores are almost completely unaffected after more than 18 hours of exposure to 3% chlorine; they are still fully viable. Anyone that does much wilderness survival hiking knows that Chlorine and Iodine may inactivate many waterborne pathogens, but you need ultra filtration or reverse osmosis to remove the Cryptosporidium spores from your water.

The primary transmission method is fecal matter of children under five years of age (and old people that have lost their ability to control their bowels) in the water at public pools. I have never seen a child under five years of age anywhere inside a Gold’s Gym… ever. And I’m there almost every day. So how would an indoor pool that has never had a child step foot in it be at risk of leaky diapers? It just doesn’t make sense.

I did my best to swim 1000 yards before they kicked me out around 5:10.

Swim:
300 Free warm-up
200 Free
100 Kick
200 Free
100 Kick
100 Free warm-down
————
1000 yards

Eating like a champion

Posted on by
Reply

I took a mini-vacation last weekend to play in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego. I kayaked, snorkeled, surfed, and swam. But the best part of the trip was eating at In-N-Out Burger. I even tried a few items from their (not so) secret menu.

Swimming in the ocean is pretty cool. Charmaine and Julie were in an ocean kayak paddling from La Jolla Shores to the caves around La Jolla Cove. I was swimming along behind them. The water was fairly clear. I could easily see the sand along the bottom when it was more than 15 feet deep. At one point we ran across an old anchor and some kids who said they saw a leopard shark. After further questioning, they admitted they hadn’t seen a shark since the day before. I think it would have been cool to see a shark, but I didn’t think there was much chance of it.

I did manage to step on a stingray, though. That freaked me out. I guess they are in the area this time of year. I jumped off my surfboard once and landed on something the wiggled and wiggled to get free. It turned out to be a small stingray. I was very glad not to have been hurt by it.

I’m not much of a surfer, but I really enjoy it. The waves were fairly small at Pacific Beach and at La Jolla Shores Beach, but there will still 20 to 30 surfers enjoying them. I have a hard time balancing on my board, but I think it may be because I’m renting such a big board, so it rides higher in the water. Maybe I just suck at balancing, I’m not sure. But I can pull myself onto the board and get up to speed to catch a wave as well as most of the surfers that were there when I was there. There weren’t many “good” waves, so I only ended up riding about 15 waves in 3 hours, but it was still better than working.

The snorkeling wasn’t all that impressive. I liked what I saw just outside Avalon on Catalina much better than the stuff around the kelp beds outside the La Jolla Caves.

I got to hit In-N-Out Burger twice in my 3 day trip. That was awesome. The first day I got a 3×3 Animal style with a chocolate shake. I think that’s the perfect combination, but I was willing to try for better the next time. When I ordered the 4×4 Animal style and a Flying Dutchman, the cashier confirmed that I knew what I was ordering and that I really wanted it. That was good, but I think the 3×3 was better. If a 3×3 isn’t enough food for me in the future, I’ll just get 2 of them.

In-N-Out my way