Didn’t swim at all on day 3 of the Croatian vacation because this happened instead:

Our son wanted to skydive for his graduation present, so we thought why not do that in Croatia?! He loved it, and wanted to immediately go back up. I had to tell him no, though, because it ain’t cheap. Especially when wife and daughter (only 15-years old!) wanted to go, too!

That drive to the mainland and back took the entire day, but it was fun. We got to see a little bit of Zadar, but mostly we were on the road or the ferry.

Thursday (Croatian vacation day #4) started out blah. Fembot and I had planned a duathlon of sorts. She would walk to Supetar and I would swim. According to the incredibly accurate Google Maps mensuration algorithm, my swim would be on the order of 5K. Fembot’s walk a bit more due to the vagaries of trails through olive groves. She would bring along a couple trash bags in case she had to swim part of the way.

Well, the morning was shot due to a storm. A pretty neat storm, lightning and everything, to include a drop in air temp of about 10C (w00t!), but no swimming was going to happen. Just before lunch the weather cleared, so the kids went swimming while we got a light lunch. When the kids were done, the two of us went walking around Sutivan some, but the water looked so inviting, we decided to go home and ready ourselves for our Sutivan-Supetar duathlon.

Less than a half hour later we were walking to one of the beaches, and we noticed the sky looking angry. Then the wind started. And the people (most of them anyway) started running for cover. But what does Iron Mike do, because he’s stupid? I get in, and start my swim to Supetar, of course!

41 minutes, and only 976 meters later, I get out. Or at least I try. I couldn’t find a good place to get out that wasn’t rocks, so Fembot helped me find a better place. Still, I missed her chosen location by a few meters and got rolled on the rocks, twisting a toe and bruising one butt cheek. I had to ditch my SaferSwimmer and let it roll onto the beach, which it did with a speed that was almost sentient. Probably 5 of those 41 minutes were spent trying to get on shore. I have a video of me attempting this, but I can’t upload it yet. It’ll have to wait until we return to Kyrgyzstan and I can get on my home computer.

But Fembot and I refused to let Mother Nature ruin our day, so we decided to continue the walk, at least to Mirca, which is about 3km from Sutivan. Of course the rain started while we were sitting at a beach-side bar drinking our Radlers and wine. So we headed back.

When I dumped my dry bag out, I realized my Garmin GPS watch (Forerunner 310xt) was missing. Oh shit. That’s $350+ gone! Where the f*^k did I drop it? Off to the car with tiniest Fembot and original Fembot to find it. We parked along the beach about where I got out of the water (scrambled out? rolled over the rocks till dry?) and started walking around. I figured it was along the wall right where the road and the beach meet. Nowhere to be found. I was about to give up when tiniest Fembot found it. She went out onto the beach and looked back at the wall, and saw a small orange strap sticking up out of the rocks.

She is now my favorite kid. Not really. Parents aren’t supposed to have favorites. (Yep, she’s my favorite.)