Let Me Call You Sweetheart

I spent last weekend in Palm Springs with Julie, Megan and Kari, celebrating our collective 40th birthday.

While I was there, I finished a book about another accomplishment. It's the new Glenn Stout biography of Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel.

Trudy was a member of the 1924 U.S. Olympic team, the first year a women's swim team was fielded. She swam to two bronze and one gold medal in the Paris Games, disappointing because her achievements up to that point had proven her the best American woman swimmer, if not the fastest female swimmer in the world.

She was crushed, but it didn't take her long to set her sights on the even greater challenge of the Channel crossing. It took her two tries, but when she completed the 21 mile swim in 14 hours and 31 minutes on August 6, 1926, she became not only the first woman to successfully cross, but she set a record time, beating the handful of men who had traversed the Channel before her.

The book describes how Trudy would retreat into her own "sphere" while she swam. A state of almost automated bliss and communion with the water. Sound familiar, mermaids?

Another cool thing about the book was the discussion of the evolution of freestyle, which was an adaptation of an overhand breastroke style of swimming called the Trudgeon (which Kari and I tried to replicate in the resort pool in Palm Springs after researching it on youtube. We called our version the Curmudgeon).

After her swim, Trudy revealed that she sang the words to "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" over and over in her head as swam from Gris-Nez to Dover.

Trudy passed away at age 98 in 2003. She never married.

Trudy and the other women swimmers on the 1924 Olympic team were breakthrough athletes, at a time when training and participating in sports was still a considerable taboo. So in a quiet and grateful tribute, I have posted the long-promised "grinning idiot" Danskin T1 photo above.

Recovery

Still Here Dancing with the Groo Grux King

I did it.

The alarm went of at 5 on Wednesday morning, and by 5:30 I was handing a check for $195 to the coach at Mercerwood Shore Club. I am officially back in the pool, with a new home. Through the end of the year, anyway.

I liked the workout, but I am warped for pool swimming for awhile.

"How are you?" yelled Mike Shaeffer from the edge of lane 6 when he arrived.

"A little rusty!" I answered, red faced and panting after a mere 200 meters.

"A little lusty?" Mike yelled back.

Swimcaps across the pool popped up and swiveled to see what he was talking about. And hence I have a new nickname, at my new pool, before I even had a single workout in.

Tomorrow I will wear a different suit and cap and hope for anonymity.

There is a price to pay for four months of lake swimming, in the shape of 2-3 weeks of pool hell, but I will open my fitness wallet for that pleasure any day.

Today I'd hoped to swim in the lake with Brendan and Geoff, but the bank of fog that rolled in during the wee hours, combined with Geoff's last minute "I'm out" voicemail had me hopping back under the covers.

I'm back in the pool tomorrow, with plans for a mermaid swim Saturday morning. The air temperature will likely be below 40, the dew on the grass excruciatingly cold as we scamper from the sidewalk to the shore. But since the water is about 20 degrees warmer, I declare that lake season is still not officially over.

Which brings me to the Groo Grux King.

Every summer I have a theme song (last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE2orthS3TQ).

It's been a funny summer on that front; it's been a hard one to peg with lyrics and a beat without biking and running.

The early front runner was Into the Ocean by Blue October. Followed by Fireflies by Owl City. And then, sometime in July, I bought the new DMB CD, Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King. And played tracks 5-7 over, and over, and over, on the way to the beach and back, week after week.

So here it is. The theme song of the summer of 2009 is a dark horse...Driver Education by the Indigo Girls.

Reading the lyrics won't do it justice, but youtube has no quality videos. Try for me:

I fell for guys who tried to commit suicide,
With soft rock hair and blood shot eyes.
He tastes like Marlboro cigarettes,
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups,
A Pepsi in his hand, getting off the school bus.

Films and drills and safety illustrations
The crushed cars of driver education

Now its tattooed girls with a past they can't remember,
Who pledged allegiance to a life of bending the curriculum.
She tastes like spring, there she goes again,
Drinking with the older guys, tripping by the lakeside.

Films and drills and safety illustrations
The crushed cars of driver education

When you were sweet sixteen, I was already mean and
Feeling bad for giving it up to the man just to make the scene.
Where were you, back when I had something to prove,
With the switchblade set and the church kids learning my moves?

I ran for miles through the suburbs of the seventies,
Pollen dust and Pixie sticks, kissing in the deep end
Of swimming pools before I knew what's in there.
We come into this life waterlogged and tender.

The song resonates because the two things I remember my about my 15th summer were driver's education...and learning how to swim fast. Maybe because this summer was dedicated to swimming only. And because the song reminded me of things I hadn't thought about in a quarter century. Oh, and that last line says it all.

Honorable mention: Shake Me Like a Monkey by DMB. Somehow I just couldn't pick a song with that name.

Still here dancing...