--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, off_world_beings <no_re...@...> wrote: > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com > <mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> , "shempmcgurk" <shempmcgurk@> > wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com > <mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> , off_world_beings <no_reply@> > wrote: > > > > > > [snip] > > > > > > > > I am 47 years old. I swim 80 lengths of butterfly most days - > > > > [snip] > > > > > > I must say that's pretty impressive. > > > > Twice a week I swim about a mile in the lake (mostly breaststroke). I > can do about one half stroke of butterfly and then I am > exhausted...plus, my head doesn't even make it out of the water when I > do.> > > A mile in the lake is impressive too (I trained and competed as a > swimmer 6 days a week for about 3 hours a day from 12 to 16 years of > age.) I don't recommend butterfly unless you were trained in it. Its > heart attack stuff if you don't know what your doing.) > > OffWorld >
No danger of that as I find it just too hard. My exercise of choice is hiking. However, for the 4 months a year when the temperatures in the Phoenix area are 100 degrees plus, hiking is not possible except in early morning. So, instead, I swim in the lake which is a half hour drive from my house. It is one of three man-made lakes created about 100 years ago as reservoirs for various hydro-electric facilities. The water can be very warm which means that there is virtually no difference between the outside air and climatizing oneself as one dunks in the water. Other times, after being in the water for an hour, we can get out and shiver...even though its 110 degrees out! Where else can you shiver in 110 degree heat? Not sure what it is...perhaps the combination of the water on the skin plus a breeze or something. What's nice is I get to see a lot of interesting wildlife. For example, on Wednesday we saw 9 turkey vultures on the shore (near where we were swimming towards) picking at some sort of carcass. On approaching them, it turned out to be a dead, rotting fish, which surprised me because I didn't think vultures ate fish. But I suppose the operative word is "rotting" and they'll pretty much eat anything in that state. After the incident I went online at home to read about turkey vultures and learnt that they have been known to spray-vomit towards humans that approach them so, in hindsight, we were lucky that didn't happen as we did approach them while they were eating.
