Splish Splash... with improved visuals

I had me quite an adventure this weekend. Being dirt poor is really getting old, so despite the fact that I'm completely broke I signed up to do a swimming thing on the Costa Brava this weekend. What no one told me is that there were no trains that went there... and that the first bus doesn't arrive until after the race starts. Well, not being one to have my plans foiled once I set my mind to something I went anyway. Luckily I was accompanied by a new friend, Monica, who was crazy enough to think that my plan to sleep on the beach was a good idea. Sleeping on the beach is illegal here. So at 8:30 pm on Saturday Monica and I piled into a bus headed north out of Barcelona. We arrived in L'Estertat around 10:45 and made for the beach. We found a little ice cream stand that when we were in the shadow it hid us well enough from the street, ate a picnic dinner and lay down to go to sleep. Not much sleeping happened. It was surprisingly cold, and the wood floor that we were lying on was hard. That and the beach cleaning machines came by every half hour and growled and shined their flood lights on us. Since illegal to sleep on the beach I guess that we were lucky that they didn't give us any trouble. So at dawn it was time to give up on sleeping and watch the sunrise. I'm up at sunrise all the time, but here in the city you never have a clear view of the sky at that time of day, so I hadn't really seen a sunrise since I was home. Here are the pictures:

Monica wandering down to the water just as it started to get light.

Monica taking black and white pictures of the sunrise. The islands you see in the background of these pictures are the ones that I would swim from in a few hours.

Maybe the not sleeping thing was worth it...

I don't know if I've ever watched a sunrise close enough to actually see the sun come up over the horizon like it does at sunset. Would you think I was stupid if I said that it never occurred to me that it would do that?

Then we wandered around the tiny little tourist town looking for the starting line with a surprising number of joggers, bikers, and one woman doing yoga on the beach. While we were looking for the other soggy homos (if you don't know, that's what I call my swim squad, which is a specifically gay group) a bubbly woman in her mid-40s came up and started talking to us. She hadn't trained for the race, she wasn't really a swimmer, but she'd done a race like this years ago and it was fun and she was studying the Islas Medes Natural Reserve (where we were) in her geography class, and she was going to swim it. Then she was going to quit smoking. Blanca and her family wound up being better company than the soggy homos. She offered to let us put our stuff in her car, and when it became clear that the soggy homos had no room for us, she even agreed to give us a ride back to Barcelona! Here's a picture of me and Blanca getting ready to get on the boat:

My hair's a bit out of control, and as a general rule I don't like photos of me not wearing any pants, but I take comfort in the fact that nobody ACTUALLY reads my blogs. Sadly, this photo is the last known whereabouts of this swimsuit. I loved that suit!
Then it was time for all 600 participants to get on a ferry and get dumped out in the middle of the sea. There were 5 ferryloads, and these weren't small boats. This is what it looked like:

When we got within about 100 feet of the island they told everyone to just jump off. No ladders, no water slides, just climb over the railing and hop in. Blanca was already in the water 6 feet below before I could finish saying "you go first". I looked under the water and there were little wormy seaweeds with fishies swimming around in them. Scary as hell. And on the surface 600 people in orange caps (some with seagull feathers stuck in their goggle straps like Captain America) and oh so many speedos. Then the Guardia Urbana (Spanish police) came out in a motorboat with the last contestant who had missed the last ferry, and it was time to start. This is as close as my zoom would let Monica get to the starting line:

There were kicking feet and scratching smacking hands all over the place that never really cleared up over the 1500 meters... At good moments it was like this:

But a lot of times it was like this:

Coming around the bend here my hand touched something that was squishy, and NOT A FOOT like I first thought. Jellyfish!!! Aah! Then my boob started burning. Yeah, that's right, my boob. Ok, not my boob, but my chest, but anyway...

And finally we came into the beach. The WHOLE time there was a guy practically on top of me on my left side. When I breathed to that side I was close enoug to kiss him on the shoulder. I hate that. I finished in 27 minutes, which I think is faster than I used to swim in Santa Cruz, but you can never really be sure. Blanca came in in just under an hour with a salty tongue but feeling great. The last guy came in, "destroyed", with 2 sopping seagull feathers in his goggles, but completely naked apart from that. We took showers in a SCUBA diving locker room where guys came in while I was getting dressed after my shower. Hey, I guess that's the way it works in Europe. I was so flustered that my bathing suit stayed in that locker room. Then we watched the awards ceremony, where I think they skipped me by mistake. I mean, 14th is good too, right?

In the car ride on the way home Blanca, Monica, and I made plans to do another one next month. I love races!!! I wish there were more around to do.