Alert and loyal readers will know where I am from the picture below. Sorry, that’s the best picture I could take, with the cell phone I’ve got.

So, dear reader(s), where am I?

My British colleagues talk of swimming in lidos. Don’t worry; I had to look it up too. Here’s what I got when I used my handy Internets-Googly machine.

li·do

/ˈlēdō/

Noun

A public, open-air swimming pool or bathing beach.

OK, got it. But really, it is much more interesting than that. The Brits have got some HUGE lidos. Like lidos with 30-60 yard lengths. Or weirdly shaped ones.

Or how about this monster.

I take it from my reading of H2Open Magazine (best publication, btw) that these lidos are unheated. And this is why I’m writing this odd blog post. I swam outside on base today and the water was, get ready, 65 degrees.  Yes. Freezing. (That is technically freezing in the world of American open water swimming, and downright icy for my triathlete brethren.)

It took me longer to get warm this morning than it did doing the 10K in the UK. In fact, I don’t think I ever warmed up. About half-way through my lips went numb. That’s when I decided to do only an hour. I had three other swimmers in the pool with me. None of them lasted longer than 5 minutes. It was really cold. Didn’t help that the sun wasn’t out. Oh well. Got a good 3300 meters in. That’s all that matters.

Alert and dedicated reader(s) to this blog know that I swim in our embassy pool here in Moscow. Among its idiosyncracies is its length: 15-odd meters per length. Actually, to get very specific, 50 feet 8 inches. That’s 101 feet 4 inches per lap. Or 302 feet per 3 laps. Or 100.67 yards per 3 laps.

Long time readers know that another particularity of the pool is that it closes for a month or so every year. Well, it used to.  In 2010 it was scheduled to close all of August, but the peat bog fires in Russia, that covered Moscow in a lovely carcinogenic-fog, delayed that until October. (Doctors here advised we stay in as much as possible, so the embassy decided not to take the pool away during such a time.) I managed to work with the embassy community and the pool management, and teach them the proper cleaning regime.

Yes, that picture was taken at noon

(I remember fondly lifeguarding as a kid in the early ’80s, and when some kids just would not stop running, we’d make them sit in one corner of the surrounding pavement that never seemed to get wet, and thus got terribly hot. We’d make them sit with their legs out straight. And if more than one kid needed the treatment, we’d sit one out and put the other in the pool with a scrub brush to scrub tiles. It was fun to see the politics that occured between the kids. “Hey, you’re cleaning slow so I have to sit out longer. Just wait ’til I get in there!”  Nowadays, of course, we lifeguards would probably be fined or jailed for treating the kids that way. But, you know what? Few ever got caught running again!)

Anyway, another unique function of my pool is the water. There is something weird in the water. I don’t know what it is, but it’s only in the embassy water. My forays to Russian pools never resulted in what I’m about to tell you. Prepare for grossness: The water turns my ear wax blue. Yeah. Gross.

Beyond that, it turns the fair hairs between my eyebrows blue, as well. I’ve had one doctor here interested in getting some used q-tips from me. (Gross, again.)  But that’s not really necessary as I have photographed proof of what it does.

These are the same goggles, basically. The ‘blue’ ones were the same color as the non-blue ones in the picture only a few months ago. I don’t know what the hell is in my pool water, and, frankly, I’m not going to ask.

These started out looking like the below.

These will look like the above in a short few months

I am so looking forward to getting back to the states.

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.

Here in Moscow, at the Olympic pool specifically, if you don’t have your ducks in a row, you’re setting yourself up for trouble.  But this week, I finally got it right!

My first mistake was going to the pool a couple months ago, thinking I could talk myself in to at least look at the pool.  That didn’t go so well.  My purposefully “poor” Russian didn’t work its usual magic (normally what happens is the Russian is so impressed that I’m even trying, that they’ll be a little more lenient or helpful).  I tried to get past the guard babushka to go look at the pool.  Wasn’t gonna happen, not without 240 rubles and a doctor’s note.

Don’t even try to enter without these!

The second time, I went to the pool with the spravka in hand, 240 rubles, and all my crap.  Well, I thought it was all my crap.  They don’t issue towels.  Not only that, but you better bring a plastic bag to put your dirty disgusting outdoor shoes in or else you’re opening up yourself to possible reprisals from guard babushka #2, better known as the locker-room babushka.

Trip #3 went well…until the lifeguard stopped me to inform me about the critical requirement to have your head covered.  In that case, my fake crappy Russian worked.

On the 27th I had all my ducks in a row.  Everything was going right.  Unfortunately, about 15 minutes into my warm-up, I noticed that the only other swimmers in my lane had been alive during WWII.  I noticed the board on the starting block had an adjective I had not seen before.  I looked a few lanes over, and sure enough, the other signs were the ones I was used to:  Разовые Билеты (Single tickets).  The one in my lane had the additional adjective: Льготные.  I didn’t know what that meant, so I asked a Russian guy in the adjacent lane.  Well, turns out I was in the lane for those swimmers given a complimentary ticket, because they are so bloody old.  Whoops.  Another fail.

So, finally, TA-DA, trip #5 on the 28th went perfectly.  I had every requisite piece of equipment with me and successfully swam without interruption from the lifeguards.  Success!

Just got back from Ekaterinburg, Tyumen and Chelyabinsk (Екатеринберг, Тюмень и Челябинск).  Not much to see in the latter two cities.  Ekaterinburg had more to offer, especially the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, a sight to behold.  Beautiful church, and the location where the Tsar and his family were murdered by those despicable communists, may they rot in hell.

Their bodies were rolled in blankets, then taken out into the woods to Ganina Yama (Ganya’s pit).  Currently this location is the home to an orthodox monastery.  There are seven churchs, each dedicated to a member of the last Tsar’s family.   Very beautiful.  The Tsar and his family’s bodies were thrown in an old disused iron mine shaft.  (The hole in the picture below.)

There was also beer in Ekaterinburg.  Of course, there has been beer in every Russian city I’ve visited so far.  And sometimes I’ve got interesting fellow dipsomaniacs.

All in all, a fun trip.

So what is the point of the title?  Well, of course, the entire time I was tooling around the Ural region of Russia, I missed swimming.  I was actually dreaming of it.  (Someone in the USMS forums mentioned that once you start open water swimming, you really count the days between swims, and I sure am doing that now.)  I got back Friday afternoon, took my daughter to eat at TGI Fridays (Ти Джи Ай Фрайдис) for her 11th birthday, and first thing this morning, went back to the Olympic pool.

Today I got up at 6am, still being on Urals time (2 hours ahead).  The pool doesn’t open till 7, and I had some emailing to do (to my fellow blogger and vet, Rob), so I tooled around the house til about 7:15, then headed out the door.  Everything followed just like my first day, until I finished my 500m warm up.  One of the lifeguards stopped me and I thought he asked me where my hat was.  Dumbfounded, I explained that my Russian was horrible, would he please repeat.  With a little Russian sign language and repeating his question slower, I realized he asked me where my swim cap was.  Apparently they are required in Russian pools.  God forbid some of my long hair fell out (correction: more of my hair fell out) and clogged the pool filters!  I prepared to beg, thinking as fast as I could how to say “pretty please with a cherry on top” in Russian.  (A literal translation might be “довольно пожалуйста, с вишней на вершине.”  But I’m sure that wouldn’t really translate…where is my idiom dictionary when I need it?)  To my surprise, the lifeguard smiled and said, “Next time is fine.”  Happiness!

Knocked out 4000m at a good pace, right along my usual 1000m/20:00 pace.  But this included stopping, slowing down, and passing breast strokers, back strokers, and otherwise recreational fitness swimmers.  Let’s just say I got a lot of passing practice today.  Also, right at the end, literally on the last lap, I was tapped on the shoulder by one of the teeny-bopper-esque Russian girls who had commandeered my lane.  Her coach yelled at me that the lane I was in is for training now.  I could kindly move my ass to lane 6.  I apologized in my purposefully horribly-accented Russian, and her frown turned to a smile (as did the bevy of Russian devushki) and she said no problem.  I jumped out, walked down to 6, swam 50m back to the other end, then got out.  Workout finished.  All together, 1:20 of swimming, to include a minute stop after a 500m warm up to get instructed on proper headgear, then another one minute stop at the end of my 3000m set to rest for my 500m cool down.  Not bad.

My current job has me traveling quite a bit.  I love it.  Any day outside the office is a good day.  Not much worse than sitting in a window-less space, breathing recycled air and catching everyone else’s germs.

As long as I get to swim every day.

That’s the hard part.  When I’m home, here in Moscow, I can always go to the pool.  And I do, 4-5 days a week.  I workout in the morning, because if I don’t, I won’t.  It is just too hard to workout after work.  The kids are home, dinner is smelling good, and I’m beat from work.  Who the hell wants to jump in the pool then?

But when I travel, it’s hard to get swims in.  I manage it when I travel to the states.  Many hotels have pools, however small.  (I managed 45 minutes straight in a pool only 10m long. That was a lot of flip-turns.)  Then there are nearby gyms and YMCAs.  But in Russia, pools aren’t as easy to find.  And those you find, might not let you in, you dirty foreigner!  Oh, and don’t forget your spravka.

I’ve traveled to some obscure places, at least for an American.  Khabarovsk has an indoor pool, but only for Russian military.  There’s a great river there, the Amur.  Huge and beautiful.  But apparently not clean, or safe.  St. Petersburg has wonderful canals in which I’d love to do some time.  Of course, the Russians (and some visitors) use the canal to dump trash.  Very sad.

There is no indoor pool in Ulyanovsk, Ufa or Ekaterinburg, but I believe I’ve been misinformed.  Each of those three cities is the third largest city in Russia, if the taxi drivers are to be believed.  Gelendzhik is on the Black Sea, and the Black Sea is very swim-able.  But not when you’re busy the entire one day you’re there.

Yes, that sign warns that swimming is dangerous to your life.

I’ve written before about Russian work scheduling and why I’m not currently able to swim in my “home” pool. Unfortunately, I’ve managed to get some damn virus from my kids, which I’m not shaking.  So my plan to swim in the Olympic pools here in Moscow is delayed.  Perhaps next week…if I’m not traveling somewhere!

I’ve written very little about the weirdo pool I have to swim in here in Moscow.  The embassy’s indoor pool (at least it’s indoors) is about 16m long, thus I do three laps and call it 100 yards.  Or meters.  Or whatever I feel like calling it that day.

The most disgusting part of the pool is that no one cleans it.  I realized this recently when I noticed a line of green scum at the water level in each of the four lanes.  I don’t touch the wall now, except to flip turn.  I keep telling the “lifeguard” (really just a Russian dude paid to zap our badges upon our entry) I’m going to bring in a scrub brush and clean my own lane.

Well, being new to Moscow, I didn’t know that the embassy solves this cleanliness problem with something even worse: they close the pool for (at least) three weeks.  What?  WTF?  Three weeks?  Yes.  They close it to re-tile (every year?!) and clean the pool.  It must be disgusting…gross.

Yes, I will be without my beloved pool from September 13th to roughly 4 October.  The search has begun to find a Russian pool to swim in.  I found the Olympic (1980) pool complex.  It’s got a bunch of pools in it.  And I even got my spravka (справка, по-русски) from the doctor.  (Gyms require a note from your doctor stating that you are fit enough to use their facilities.  Without your spravka, you won’t get in.)  This coming weekend I will test run the trip to the facility, as it is a few metro stops away.  I’ll check out the prices and pools, see if they have lockers, shower facilities, and whatever else I need.  With work, I think I’ll be able to maintain my workout schedule during the pool closure.  Crossed fingers!