Humans and water

The conference ended today, so this is our last day at this hotel. From experience, it's nicer to stay at the hotel that's hosting the conference, rather than staying off-site.

But now that the conference is over, tomorrow we'll check out, and go to another hotel that's (1) slightly cheaper, and (2) about 15 mins. walk closer to the downtown area.


The Lady, The Kid, and myself all availed ourselves of the hotel pool. Very strange for me to be back in the water: haven't been in a pool or gone swimming in seven(?!) years.

Swimming creeps me out. I mean, the human body just isn't made for swimming. Dolphins and seals, for example -- fellow mammals -- are **much** more streamlined than we are, and they have way more buoyancy control. With some experimentation, I re-discovered that despite having a greater percentage body fat than ten years ago, my breathing bits (nose, mouth) don't naturally rise to the surface. Conversely, I'm not dense enough to actually get more than a foot below the surface, without a lot of effort on my part.

I just inherently distrust the medium of water. I tend to judge environments by how long you could survive in them, if forced to. For example, I'd prefer the desert to the arctic, in that you could last several days, in street clothes out in the desert, but only a few hours in the arctic (if you got wet; e.g. Jack London's short story ''To Build a Fire''). Water is even worse: Unless you have external flotation devices, as soon as you stop moving about, you're done for.

And swimming for exercise just seems like a bad idea: the idea of intentionally tiring yourself out, while out in the water. Sounds dangerous. At least with weight lifting, or taking a jog, you can just sit down -- and not have to worry about the whole ''breathing thing''.

Any activity where you have to take extra measures just to keep breathing: bad idea.


Anyhow, we all stayed at the shallow end of the pool, and The Lady and The Kid spent most of their time in the kiddie pool. The Kid seems to really enjoy the water, unlike The Lady and myself -- so maybe she'll defeat her heritage and become an Olympic-class swimmer (one Olympic sport that's well-represented by the Australians).

On a less pessimistic side, our hotel room is really well-placed, relative to the laundry room. Literally fourteen paces, and I'm there! Used an empty suitcase as a laundry basket, and washed our four days' worth of clothes: our idea was to pack light, then do laundry halfway through our trip.


Since the conference is now over, tomorrow The Lady and I can begin taking advantage of all the antique shops and used bookstores I scouted.


--GG