This past weekend I went swimming for the first time in a very long time. Not since high school have I touched the chlorinated waters of a public swimming pool. It was all fun and games back then during free swim hours, but now, we are doing proper laps during lap swim time. Because as we all know, swimming is a great way to exercise with minimal negative impact on the body.
While I normally go running or swing around a kettlebell, my homeboy has been swimming regularly in recent weeks. He’s trying to lose some of the pandemic 15 pounds he’s gained (and hopefully more than that). Due to a recent hiking incident where he badly bruised his ankle, exercising in a pool was the only way to go. Since working out is way better when it’s more than just you, I decided to join my friend for some swimming. It’s always good to have a variety in my workouts.
The good thing about living in San Francisco is that you’re not far away from a local pool. Most if not all of them are either new or recently renovated. None of the dark and decrepit stuff I grew up with. I succinctly remember the broken lockers and the nasty-smelling showers. That is a thing of the past. Sadly, what still here from the past is requiring exact change in cash to enter. Credit cards are not accepted! What kind of back-water byzantine shit is this?! At least give me a QR code to Venmo or something.
What you can do is by a pass from the San Francisco Recreation and Parks website. That gets loaded on to a card, which is scanned at the entrance. Still seems needlessly complicated to me, but once setup it’s no big deal to continue loading money like a transit pass.
It feels great to swim again, especially for exercising purposes. I don’t care that I’m the slowest swimmer there: the whole point is to swim back and forth for about an hour and get a good workout in. I will definitely be joining my friend often in the future. Let’s get it.
Not in this water!