Another special LOST guest!!!

Today may have been the perfect LOST swim!!!  The water really was warm… even though no one believed me (I don’t know why no one believes me when I tell them the water temp before we get in?)… I said it was 65F… it turned out to be warmer than what I said… not sure if that has ever happened before… it was 66F!!! 18C!!!  On top of that, the water was flat, but with long slow rollers which made it interesting.  They were coming from the south-east which was unusual and even gave us a push coming back, which was nicer than the usual uphill swim coming back in! 

The sun was out, not a cloud in the sky… the water was crystal clear… you could see for miles underwater!  Which I like… but apparently Alexis doesn’t.  I yelled to her as we were swimming along “Hey Alexis, come and check out this big fish right underneath me!”… very cool.  I always think it’s neat when you see some aquatic life, a rare opportunity to see something most people never get to see.  Like seeing a fox or rabbit on a run, interesting and it breaks up the swim a bit.  Alexis, it seems, disagreed.  I believe her comment was something to the effect of “oohhhh, I don’t like big fish!!!”… and then she swam away from me?!  Oh well, I thought it was cool.

I even saw the 2 mink (I googled them, they were mink, not ferrets!) on the beach that I thought I saw last week.  They were just down the beach a ways and came out of the water and ran under a log.  But this week I was prepared… I ran down the beach with my camera and got a few pics.  Again, I seemed to be the only one really interested in chasing down the minks.  Peculiar.  Reminded me of growing up on the farm in Saskatchewan when I was a kid when I used to have a trap line and trapped weasel, mink and beavers… and skin them and sell the pelts.  Seems pretty barbarian now I’m sure… but this was in the days before PETA.  It was more fun to take the pictures anyway.

Having said all that, neither the fish nor the mink were the special LOST guest… in case you were wondering if I had forgotten about that part.  There is a Mexican guy from Guelph name Miguel Vadillo who is swimming Lake O on Aug 10 who came out to swim with us today!  I’ve been chatting with him for months and offering my two bits of experience for his big swim, but I’d never met him… so it seemed only fitting that we met at a LOST swim… in the lake… literally!  I was almost back to the beach and suddenly saw a kayak right beside me… which startled me a bit, because we didn’t start with one… it turned out to be Miguel’s son, Santiago, with Miguel swimming

along beside!  So I introduced myself, we shook hands and had a great little chat in the middle of Lake Ontario about swimming Lake Ontario… cool.  He said he knew it was me because I was the only one without a wetsuit (actually Melanie went “naked” for the first time today too!!!  Congrats, Mel… you’ll warm up soon!)  Then Miguel though it might actually make more sense to finish the conversation on shore.  So we swam back… had a good chat… and he took Santiago out for a swim.  Literally.  Santiago is 12… and not that into paddling along for hours… but Miguel is smart and knows it is good to have someone to swim with… so he pulls him in the kayak!  Last I saw of them, Miguel was pulling his son in the kayak headed east!  I’ll, of course, keep everyone posted on how Miguel does and put the results up on the site. 

That’s the cool thing about LOST Swimming… you never know who or what you’ll run into in Lake Ontario… a Mexican marathon swimmer, mink, a big fish or just a bunch of LOST Swimmers!

Best of luck, Miguel!!!

Cheers,

Rob