The formula above can be used to determine the maximum number of noodlers possible in a swim lane before you either a) give up and go home or b) forcibly drown someone.  My result today:  22.

Today being Saturday, and this past week being very busy from a work perspective, I decided to not go swim, unless I woke up early enough.  I didn’t set an alarm clock.  The wife and I wanted to sleep in.

Well, our dog had other ideas.  At the crack of 7, he was scratching at our door, begging to go outside.  He’s got the upper hand in this relationship, because it’s no big deal for him to just go pee on the floor.  Not the easy-to-clean-up part of the floor.  No.  He particularly likes our oriental rugs.

So up I jumped, threw on my clothes, grabbed my son’s flip-flops and took the little beasty out for a pee.  I brought him back in the house, reversed the sequence I had just completed, and jumped back into bed…fully intent on getting more sleep.

Next thing I know, my Catholic guilt crept up and I ended up at the pool.  Suddenly, my spravka isn’t good enough; apparently I’m in need to a small triangular stamp.  There was talk of them not taking Xerox’d copies.  My spravka isn’t a copy.  The only way to prove it is this elusive triangle.  I guess I’m going back to the doctor’s on Monday.

I got in the pool at 9, in the proper lane, with the proper headgear.  About 15 minutes and already many passes into my workout, our lane changed ownership, and I found myself surrounded by many teeny-bopper swimmers, just like last week.  I switched to one of the two remaining free lanes.  Unfortunately, both lanes filled up pretty fast, and before I knew it, we had reached critical noodler mass.  Twelve in my lane, and ten in the other.  I checked out the demonstration pool, and all lanes there were for teams or lessons.  900 meters total.  Pathetic Saturday swim.

Funniest of all was what I saw when I returned to the embassy.  Despite all the advertisements that the gym/pool facility’s Grand Reopening will be on Wednesday, the pool was open when I walked by!  I could have swum here today, unmolested by scantily-clad grannies.  Sure I would need far more flip-turns to swim my 4000m, but still, I would have swum it, right?

BTW: thanks to the extremely quick Evan for the title of this post.