Thursday, November 18, 2010

Rob and I managed our second week day noon swim today. The weather looked less than promising in the morning with fog and low clouds and a generally cold and winterly cast to things. I checked the Mr. Ricks beach cam at 11 and things didn't look too bad so I went ahead and headed to the beach. Avila was gray with low clouds or fog but almost unlimited viability towards the horizon. There was no wind or no surf and nothing else either on the beach or in the water. There was a raft of small duck like birds out towards the end of the pier and a large group of brown and white gulls on the sand on the beach to the west of the pier. I thought that they looked like they were waiting for a storm to blow in. The water temperature was 55.5 and the water had cleared up and looked real clean. Rob and I did a simple clockwise triangle swim; out to the buoy line, left to the last buoy, back to the end of the Avila Pier and to the last buoy at the creek. I this point I saw something white bobbing in the water between us and the beach so we swam in to investigate this possible pirate booty. It was an empty bottle of motor oil. I tossed it into the surf so it would get washed up on shore and picked up and we continued back towards the pier at the back of the surf line. The clouds had moved off while we were in the water so it was bright and sunny when we got out. We spent about 30 minutes in the water with nice swimming conditions and certainly no crowds or parking problems.

I'll be back Sunday. Rob will be in Long Beach doing some kind of water related playing.

niel