(I include this video to set the tone of this post hoping that somewhere out there, SOMEONE speaks Spanish! This is hillarious!)
Logistics is my main challenge out here. I run on a treadmill because there aren't any tracks nearby and there aren't many wide open spaces in Barcelona without traffic lights that aren't teaming with tourists (do you like how I snuck my treadmill justification in there? Smooth, huh?). I couldn't go to my race in Portugal because I couldn't get my bike to Portugal. I slept on the beach one night last year because there wasn't bus service early enough to get to an open water swim on time. I missed a duathalon because of the same bus situation and I wasn't about to sleep under a bridge in mid-March. When I saw that my swimming club was going to be doing a 2,500-5,000m swim (the distance kept getting longer as time went on and more emails were sent out) in Vilanova I thought, "Vilanova has a train station! I can do that!"
Now let me give some background information on my swim group. It's a sports club with branches in soccer, swimming, bacci, volleyball, mountainbiking, hiking, sailing, and swimming. What's so special about it? Everyone's gay! I'm a member of the swimming club and I call my teammates the "soggy homos". Technically, it's co-ed, but there are only 3 girls who show up ever and about 30 guys on any given day. You would think that they all get together to touch eachother in the locker room, but actually the training sessions are pretty serious, although there is some ass-grabbing and checking out of speedos going around. Yesterday, I was the only girl in a group of about 20 dudes (and some boyfriends), but everyone used the feminine forms of nouns and adjectives to talk about themselves anyway. "I'm pretty strict (estricta)," said Jacques, who's from Belgium. "Estricto," Vicenç corrected him, "although you can be estricta if you want... Really, it's up to you honey."
I hadn't really told the guys that I was coming and when Jorge, the organizer of the whole excusion saw me he said, "Claire! I didn't know you were coming. I don't have any food for you. At the restaurant where we're going there's only meat, no bread. Just meat."
"I'll survive," I said. "I just came to swim anyway. I'll just, you know, swim and then go home."
"Yeah, but how did you get here? By train? How are you going to get back to the station?" My heart sank. "Well, you know, we're going to be stopping a lot. If you want you can just leave the kayaks behind and go on alone and then walk back when you get there." I don't think Jorge likes me much.
"Don't worry about me, I'll figure something out," I said, a little uncomfortable and telling Jorge to go to hell in my mind.
It took us a full hour and a half to actually get to the water. The boys had to rub sunscreen all over eachother, kayaks had to be rented, and everyone had to dance to Madonna in the little beach bar before we could get going. Jorge explained the course to us, "Ok, you're going to swim around that little peninsula there and there's a little beach, then we're gonna come around another corner that you can't see from here and there's another place to stop, then we're going to swim around that peninsula where the house is and swim out to sea a litte farther because there are a lot of fishermen..." "Fishermen! Fishermen! Yum, yum! Did you plan it that way, Jorge?" everyone was screaming and giggling about fishermen and chanting "Fishermen! Fishermen!" or "Jorge! Jorge!" I feel like maybe I was missing out on some play on words here.
Finally we got into the water and of course everyone had to flap their writs and scream like a little girl as we waded into the water. "The worst is when the water gets up to your ovaries," Vicenç said to Xavi. We swam off up the coast. It was about 400m before we got to the first little cove. There was a little bit of chop and some little currents. I was really trying not to swim off-course (whatever that meant), but with no buoys and a kayak that kept, like, moving around and stuff it was really disorienting. Also, these were "indoor swimmers". Hardly anyone knew how to swim straight (hehe) and it looked like something out of that Monty Python sketch with the footrace for the directionally challenged where the gun goes off and they all run off in different directions but no one is on the track. I was swimming along, breathing on my left side so I could sight off Alberto with the cliffs in the background. It seemed like a better plan than having to stop every 4 strokes and try to find the kayak, and as long as the cliffs were the same distance away, I must be swimming straight. And then, suddenly, in my field of vision were the cliffs about the same distance away, Alberto, and a big outcropping of rocks about 10 feet from Alberto's head! Alberto escaped a nasty bump and I swam farther out to find some toes.
Normally I'm kind of afraid of open water, but the Mediterranean is much clearer than the Pacific, and it's shallow! In the first chunk I could see the bottom the whole time, and there were no monsters, no fish, no sharks, just the sand with little ripples in it. And then... *Whatthefuckwasthat?!* It was a JELLYFISH, about 3 inches from my right shoulder! A big sucker, about this big (holds fingers making a circle about the size of an apetizer plate) with purple around the edges of his jelliness! Luckily, though, I was not stung. I swam all the way to the next cove wondering how I managed to miss those ubiquitous tenticles and imagining myself getting tangled up in one of those killer jellyfish, what are they called? Manereys? Portuguese man of war? Something like that.
There was more pain and danger in store. Away from the municiple beaches sand isn't shipped in, and the beaches are as God intended them to be, covered in loose rocks about the size and shape of eggs. Have you ever walked barefoot on something like that? It really hurts! To get out of the water we had to step gingerly around as the rocks shifted under our weight and waves made it hard to get your ballance. People climbed out of the water hanging on to their best friend or whoever happened to be around so as not to fall over.
At the first cove there was a "cave". I climbed up the beach, much to the anguish of my metatarsals to check it out. Actually, it was more like an arch. "I walked up that beach for this?" I said. "I could have just swum!" And then THWACK, I smacked my head on the top of the arch. That'll teach me to be nonplussed by the wonders of nature.
Swimming the next chunk the water got murkier and cooler and the current picked up. I couldn't see the bottom anymore, but what I could see was dozens of minnows per square foot just below me. This made me uncomfortable. What if The Monster eats minnows? The Monster might be hungry at this very moment...
At the next cove there were boobs. Nice ones too.
Swimming around the next bend I started to be able to discern the bottom again. It was rocky and seemed to be just inches from my fingertips. It got me really spooked. I kept picturing myself grazing my knuckles on one of those rocks, or that I was too close to the shore and I was going to get smashed against the cliffs. I tried to swim out farther, but it didn't get any deeper. You know, if I cut myself on a rock a shark would be sure to smell my blood...
I was so eager to get away from the killer rocks that I was the first to arrive at the next beach. There, all alone was a boy no more than 20 years old wearing nothing but flip flops and a pair of sunglasses. He was walking back and forth, butt naked, moving his towel, water bottle, etc from thier hiding places behind different rocks to hiding places behind other rocks. He was either cruising, or, well, working. He must have thought that he'd died and gone to heaven when 20 muscular gay men in Speedos climbed out of the water behind me. He came up and asked one of the guys for a cigarette. "Now really, where am I going to have a cigarette?" the soggy homo said. After that the boy got dressed and went back to moving his stuff from one side of the beach to another. Getting back in the water I slipped on the stones and fell onto the guy next to me, someone I'd never seen before in my life. "We'll make like we meant to do it that way and no one will know," he said and grabbed my hand so we could help eachother into the deeper water.
In the last stretch again I was in front as most of the guys had started to swim breast stroke. "Go to the cave and wait!" Jorge yelled from the kayak. I took one look at the cave, which was half submerged and definitely not an arch this time and said, "Hell no!" I treaded water watching most of the guys squeeling with glee as they went in to explore the cave and curiosity got the best of me, but when I got close and saw all those sharp rocks under water I said, "I'll meet you guys at the beach," and swam away on my own.
The beach was called "Dead Man's Cove", which sounds like it would be filled with pirates, but it wasn't. I was greeted with an eyeful of about 50 naked guys, a rainbow flag, and a little bar in the background. The slope out of the water was especially steep and hard to get out of. When I got to about a foot of water and still couldn't stand up I turned my back to the beach and sat down. I decided to take my cap off go back into the water to fix my hair, making like that was my plan the whole time, in hope that someone else would come up to help me out of the water. But no one came, so I had to try to tough it out by myself. The rocks hurt my feet and kept sliding around and I looked like a real dipshit pitching and tripping around out there as the little waves pushed me around. Scrambling up the little embankment to the beach my feet were really starting to hurt. I bet it never occurred to you that scrambling and stepping gingerly don't combine well. I looked up, and there, 10 feet in front of me were the boyfriends, laughing. Instead of lending me a hand Jacques's new boyfriend took out a camera and snapped a picture. "I'm thinking of crawling!" I yelled at him. I don't know if this had the desired effect of making me look like less of a loser.
"You did it quickly," he said when I finally made it to the towels. "We only just got her by car". An hour and 15 minutes had passed.
When everyone came in they unloaded the kayaks and passed around the bottles of warm water and Coke. That done, they all stripped off their bathing suits and started putting on sunscreen on each other again. I was surprised to see how many of them put sunscreen on their manhood. "Do I have any white on me?" one of the guys I didn't know asked. "Ummmm, only your white ass," I said, pointing at his speedo tan. George, the fabulous Brazilian who is more flaming than a bonfire, whipped out a fabulous black shawl with an embroidered vine pattern complete with sequins and draped it over his head like the Virgin Mary to protect himself from the sun. He looked like a gay Kramer or the Virgen de Guatalupe in a speedo, I couldn't decide which.
I learned something new there on the beach, Europeans don't circumcize. "This must be really weird for you," Sergi said.
"Nah, not really. The only thing that's freaking me out is the guy lying around over there wearing a cock ring."
"Where?"
"Over there."
"Oh, I see him. That is a little gorey, huh?"
"It's just like getting lost and finding myself in the men's locker room I guess." I didn't want to tell him that the only thing I was finding difficult was not to compare size.
"Yeah, I've always been curious to see a women's locker room. Just to see what it's like..." It was sweet of him to say, but I don't think he would really want to find himself in a women's locker room, even if it was the lockerroom of the Cowboys cheerleaders.
It had been decided that I should go back with Jorge to return the kayaks and thus get back to the beach near the station. I'd never been in a kayak before, I'd never even paddled anything except for canoes with my Dad when I was little. I used to sit in the front and leave most of the paddling to him. Luckily, somehow I had absorbed something about how to steer, but when they pushed me off and I tried to come back along the beach to say goodbye I found myself at the other end of the beach about to plow down a couple of guys feeling each other up underwater. By the time I righted myself I was pretty far from the beach, so I had to content myself with waving. No one noticed me all the way out there. "Are you having trouble going straight?" Jorge asked. "Yeah," (hehe) I said. He showed me how to putt out the... the... rudder (is that what the thing's called that helps steer boats?) and things got a lot better.
Kayaking is fun! It was so great to be out there in the middle of the sea and actually be able to see the landscape around me. It was like walking on water, but in a wheelchair. It was hard work though, pulling on those oars. It worked the same muscles as swimming, only with about 50 times the resistance. And as happens when I'm swimming and I get really tired, my right hand fell asleep. "Wait up, Jorge! I can't feel my hand, just give me a second."
"There's a tendency for your recovery wrist to flip back. Keep it straight and rigid and it shouldn't happen again." I wanted to tell him that if there was anyone in the group who didn't have limp wrists, it was me, but he was already way ahead of me when I thought of the joke, so I had to keep it to myself.
My arms were really worn out from all that swimming and rowing, but I felt really strong. My muscles were pumped up from all that work. A vain person would sit on the metro on the way back home and look at her reflection in the train window and marvel at her muscles. A vain person would stand up to have an excuse to grab onto a pole and watch how her muscles tensed up and popped out when she flexed to keep her ballance, or at least tried to make it look like she was flexing to keep her ballance. But of course, I'm not vain, so I didn't do that.
Despite putting on sunscreen before swimming and then before kayaking, I still got a nasty sunburn. This one will keep me from wearing haltar tops all summer...
...and I was only wearing sandals for less than an hour. They were of the shower sandal variety with a big, plastic band across the top and a big oval cut out in the middle. (I know I have ugly feet).
I will repost this with more images when they are available.
Now let me give some background information on my swim group. It's a sports club with branches in soccer, swimming, bacci, volleyball, mountainbiking, hiking, sailing, and swimming. What's so special about it? Everyone's gay! I'm a member of the swimming club and I call my teammates the "soggy homos". Technically, it's co-ed, but there are only 3 girls who show up ever and about 30 guys on any given day. You would think that they all get together to touch eachother in the locker room, but actually the training sessions are pretty serious, although there is some ass-grabbing and checking out of speedos going around. Yesterday, I was the only girl in a group of about 20 dudes (and some boyfriends), but everyone used the feminine forms of nouns and adjectives to talk about themselves anyway. "I'm pretty strict (estricta)," said Jacques, who's from Belgium. "Estricto," Vicenç corrected him, "although you can be estricta if you want... Really, it's up to you honey."
I hadn't really told the guys that I was coming and when Jorge, the organizer of the whole excusion saw me he said, "Claire! I didn't know you were coming. I don't have any food for you. At the restaurant where we're going there's only meat, no bread. Just meat."
"I'll survive," I said. "I just came to swim anyway. I'll just, you know, swim and then go home."
"Yeah, but how did you get here? By train? How are you going to get back to the station?" My heart sank. "Well, you know, we're going to be stopping a lot. If you want you can just leave the kayaks behind and go on alone and then walk back when you get there." I don't think Jorge likes me much.
"Don't worry about me, I'll figure something out," I said, a little uncomfortable and telling Jorge to go to hell in my mind.
It took us a full hour and a half to actually get to the water. The boys had to rub sunscreen all over eachother, kayaks had to be rented, and everyone had to dance to Madonna in the little beach bar before we could get going. Jorge explained the course to us, "Ok, you're going to swim around that little peninsula there and there's a little beach, then we're gonna come around another corner that you can't see from here and there's another place to stop, then we're going to swim around that peninsula where the house is and swim out to sea a litte farther because there are a lot of fishermen..." "Fishermen! Fishermen! Yum, yum! Did you plan it that way, Jorge?" everyone was screaming and giggling about fishermen and chanting "Fishermen! Fishermen!" or "Jorge! Jorge!" I feel like maybe I was missing out on some play on words here.
Finally we got into the water and of course everyone had to flap their writs and scream like a little girl as we waded into the water. "The worst is when the water gets up to your ovaries," Vicenç said to Xavi. We swam off up the coast. It was about 400m before we got to the first little cove. There was a little bit of chop and some little currents. I was really trying not to swim off-course (whatever that meant), but with no buoys and a kayak that kept, like, moving around and stuff it was really disorienting. Also, these were "indoor swimmers". Hardly anyone knew how to swim straight (hehe) and it looked like something out of that Monty Python sketch with the footrace for the directionally challenged where the gun goes off and they all run off in different directions but no one is on the track. I was swimming along, breathing on my left side so I could sight off Alberto with the cliffs in the background. It seemed like a better plan than having to stop every 4 strokes and try to find the kayak, and as long as the cliffs were the same distance away, I must be swimming straight. And then, suddenly, in my field of vision were the cliffs about the same distance away, Alberto, and a big outcropping of rocks about 10 feet from Alberto's head! Alberto escaped a nasty bump and I swam farther out to find some toes.
Normally I'm kind of afraid of open water, but the Mediterranean is much clearer than the Pacific, and it's shallow! In the first chunk I could see the bottom the whole time, and there were no monsters, no fish, no sharks, just the sand with little ripples in it. And then... *Whatthefuckwasthat?!* It was a JELLYFISH, about 3 inches from my right shoulder! A big sucker, about this big (holds fingers making a circle about the size of an apetizer plate) with purple around the edges of his jelliness! Luckily, though, I was not stung. I swam all the way to the next cove wondering how I managed to miss those ubiquitous tenticles and imagining myself getting tangled up in one of those killer jellyfish, what are they called? Manereys? Portuguese man of war? Something like that.
There was more pain and danger in store. Away from the municiple beaches sand isn't shipped in, and the beaches are as God intended them to be, covered in loose rocks about the size and shape of eggs. Have you ever walked barefoot on something like that? It really hurts! To get out of the water we had to step gingerly around as the rocks shifted under our weight and waves made it hard to get your ballance. People climbed out of the water hanging on to their best friend or whoever happened to be around so as not to fall over.
At the first cove there was a "cave". I climbed up the beach, much to the anguish of my metatarsals to check it out. Actually, it was more like an arch. "I walked up that beach for this?" I said. "I could have just swum!" And then THWACK, I smacked my head on the top of the arch. That'll teach me to be nonplussed by the wonders of nature.
Swimming the next chunk the water got murkier and cooler and the current picked up. I couldn't see the bottom anymore, but what I could see was dozens of minnows per square foot just below me. This made me uncomfortable. What if The Monster eats minnows? The Monster might be hungry at this very moment...
At the next cove there were boobs. Nice ones too.
Swimming around the next bend I started to be able to discern the bottom again. It was rocky and seemed to be just inches from my fingertips. It got me really spooked. I kept picturing myself grazing my knuckles on one of those rocks, or that I was too close to the shore and I was going to get smashed against the cliffs. I tried to swim out farther, but it didn't get any deeper. You know, if I cut myself on a rock a shark would be sure to smell my blood...
I was so eager to get away from the killer rocks that I was the first to arrive at the next beach. There, all alone was a boy no more than 20 years old wearing nothing but flip flops and a pair of sunglasses. He was walking back and forth, butt naked, moving his towel, water bottle, etc from thier hiding places behind different rocks to hiding places behind other rocks. He was either cruising, or, well, working. He must have thought that he'd died and gone to heaven when 20 muscular gay men in Speedos climbed out of the water behind me. He came up and asked one of the guys for a cigarette. "Now really, where am I going to have a cigarette?" the soggy homo said. After that the boy got dressed and went back to moving his stuff from one side of the beach to another. Getting back in the water I slipped on the stones and fell onto the guy next to me, someone I'd never seen before in my life. "We'll make like we meant to do it that way and no one will know," he said and grabbed my hand so we could help eachother into the deeper water.
In the last stretch again I was in front as most of the guys had started to swim breast stroke. "Go to the cave and wait!" Jorge yelled from the kayak. I took one look at the cave, which was half submerged and definitely not an arch this time and said, "Hell no!" I treaded water watching most of the guys squeeling with glee as they went in to explore the cave and curiosity got the best of me, but when I got close and saw all those sharp rocks under water I said, "I'll meet you guys at the beach," and swam away on my own.
The beach was called "Dead Man's Cove", which sounds like it would be filled with pirates, but it wasn't. I was greeted with an eyeful of about 50 naked guys, a rainbow flag, and a little bar in the background. The slope out of the water was especially steep and hard to get out of. When I got to about a foot of water and still couldn't stand up I turned my back to the beach and sat down. I decided to take my cap off go back into the water to fix my hair, making like that was my plan the whole time, in hope that someone else would come up to help me out of the water. But no one came, so I had to try to tough it out by myself. The rocks hurt my feet and kept sliding around and I looked like a real dipshit pitching and tripping around out there as the little waves pushed me around. Scrambling up the little embankment to the beach my feet were really starting to hurt. I bet it never occurred to you that scrambling and stepping gingerly don't combine well. I looked up, and there, 10 feet in front of me were the boyfriends, laughing. Instead of lending me a hand Jacques's new boyfriend took out a camera and snapped a picture. "I'm thinking of crawling!" I yelled at him. I don't know if this had the desired effect of making me look like less of a loser.
"You did it quickly," he said when I finally made it to the towels. "We only just got her by car". An hour and 15 minutes had passed.
When everyone came in they unloaded the kayaks and passed around the bottles of warm water and Coke. That done, they all stripped off their bathing suits and started putting on sunscreen on each other again. I was surprised to see how many of them put sunscreen on their manhood. "Do I have any white on me?" one of the guys I didn't know asked. "Ummmm, only your white ass," I said, pointing at his speedo tan. George, the fabulous Brazilian who is more flaming than a bonfire, whipped out a fabulous black shawl with an embroidered vine pattern complete with sequins and draped it over his head like the Virgin Mary to protect himself from the sun. He looked like a gay Kramer or the Virgen de Guatalupe in a speedo, I couldn't decide which.
I learned something new there on the beach, Europeans don't circumcize. "This must be really weird for you," Sergi said.
"Nah, not really. The only thing that's freaking me out is the guy lying around over there wearing a cock ring."
"Where?"
"Over there."
"Oh, I see him. That is a little gorey, huh?"
"It's just like getting lost and finding myself in the men's locker room I guess." I didn't want to tell him that the only thing I was finding difficult was not to compare size.
"Yeah, I've always been curious to see a women's locker room. Just to see what it's like..." It was sweet of him to say, but I don't think he would really want to find himself in a women's locker room, even if it was the lockerroom of the Cowboys cheerleaders.
It had been decided that I should go back with Jorge to return the kayaks and thus get back to the beach near the station. I'd never been in a kayak before, I'd never even paddled anything except for canoes with my Dad when I was little. I used to sit in the front and leave most of the paddling to him. Luckily, somehow I had absorbed something about how to steer, but when they pushed me off and I tried to come back along the beach to say goodbye I found myself at the other end of the beach about to plow down a couple of guys feeling each other up underwater. By the time I righted myself I was pretty far from the beach, so I had to content myself with waving. No one noticed me all the way out there. "Are you having trouble going straight?" Jorge asked. "Yeah," (hehe) I said. He showed me how to putt out the... the... rudder (is that what the thing's called that helps steer boats?) and things got a lot better.
Kayaking is fun! It was so great to be out there in the middle of the sea and actually be able to see the landscape around me. It was like walking on water, but in a wheelchair. It was hard work though, pulling on those oars. It worked the same muscles as swimming, only with about 50 times the resistance. And as happens when I'm swimming and I get really tired, my right hand fell asleep. "Wait up, Jorge! I can't feel my hand, just give me a second."
"There's a tendency for your recovery wrist to flip back. Keep it straight and rigid and it shouldn't happen again." I wanted to tell him that if there was anyone in the group who didn't have limp wrists, it was me, but he was already way ahead of me when I thought of the joke, so I had to keep it to myself.
My arms were really worn out from all that swimming and rowing, but I felt really strong. My muscles were pumped up from all that work. A vain person would sit on the metro on the way back home and look at her reflection in the train window and marvel at her muscles. A vain person would stand up to have an excuse to grab onto a pole and watch how her muscles tensed up and popped out when she flexed to keep her ballance, or at least tried to make it look like she was flexing to keep her ballance. But of course, I'm not vain, so I didn't do that.
Despite putting on sunscreen before swimming and then before kayaking, I still got a nasty sunburn. This one will keep me from wearing haltar tops all summer...
...and I was only wearing sandals for less than an hour. They were of the shower sandal variety with a big, plastic band across the top and a big oval cut out in the middle. (I know I have ugly feet).
I will repost this with more images when they are available.
8 comments:
What a wonderful saga that was. Maybe not so wonderful while it was going on, but your 'straight' talk is priceless. Glad the kayaking gave you a better appreciation of where you were, it beats the crap out of the 95 degree weather today here in NYC.
Anyway, if I start a punk band name 'Gay Kramer', you'll be the first to know.
You have the best adventures. From pigs, traffic and whores to jellyfish sharp rocks and naked gay men. You are definately not in danger of boredom.
Thanks for entertaining the rest of us living vicariously through you!
Holy hilarious! The vision of all those gay men groups made me laugh. You certainly have interesting workouts.
BTW, nice tan lines.
That burn looks like it hurt. I guess that's reason #3 why I wear the wet suit. Seriously though the only reason I bought a wet suit was to protect against Jellyfish stings for my "salt water tris"( gotta love Long island sound)Seriously though it sound like you're living it up over there.
Bob-O (bob almighty) and I have a friend who always seems to have the strangest things happen to him. I'll talk to him on the phone and he'll just tell me the most random shit...reminds me of you and your stories. Strikingly similar, indeed.
Keep it coming.
I am relieved to know that the problem of gay groups being 90% men and 10% lesbians they taunt until you look at their manhood and then try to get you to admit, no, really, I am not remotely about to puke, is completely international. That makes me feel better when it happens at the Spanish conversation group at the Center, even if the context is way off.
Quite an adventure -- and a sunburn. But on some level you're relieved about the halter tops, right?
I discovered a gay swim group in London (called Out to Swim) when I was suddenly surrounded by a hoard of lesbians in the swimming pool changing rooms. It was just my luck to be on the way out. I hung around to see what sort of fun I was missing out on but was disappointed not to witness any social splashing in the shallow end. It was terrifyingly hardcore actually, I've never seen so many fast, committed swimmers.
Seriously you MUST be making some of this up! Priceless. BTW if it was truly a kayak, it's "paddling" not "rowing." Not that it matters, but I wouldn't want Jorge to have an excuse to give you a hard time. Not that he needs one I guess.
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