the second training swim

The past is never an indicator of the future (1)

Drove 2 1/2 hours through the Santa Cruz hills via CA 17 - to Monterey to my annual ritual, looking forward to the training swim for the Pacific Grove triathlon.

I say this because each year I emerged from the drink chilled as a banana daiquiri, a salty one.

I'll say this about PG, it's one of the better organized events, no quibbling, no lost numbers, or complaints, and the med people are most knowledgeable -something you want at a triathlon.

The infamous kelp forest is not as thick as I remember, but then again, it's August and the thing will grow faster than west coast fuscia.

Living north, I gave myself two hours hoohhahahaha to get down to the placid precincts, in rush hour, so missed the training swim. As I arrived, someone ordered pizza for the trainers and the swimmers. Since I'm not known to turn down (free) pies I grabbed a slice, and around 7 pm, jumped into the drink, solo.

My training leader from last year told me it was 'perfectly safe.' There's an amazing variety of vegetation under suface in the great Monterey basin.
Finishing my second loop, I headed for shore, and at that hour, with the sun setting (I might have remembered to take a picture), the light fading, suddenly, the sourness of dealing with surlyafternoon drivers vanished,  I was in the Element. The evening was lovely as usual, but there was  grandeur to it as well.

But that it was getting dark, I would have stayed longer; the water was not cold.
I felt some kind of repression free up, in the open water. It changes me, cleansed might be the better word, when I go in, to when I come out. Certain biological and spiritual needs are met, the water changes, it heals.

So what about is this divinity of the western light, you ask? As a kid who grew up on the east coast, as I did, dreaming about California in the pages of
The Rolling Stone - my guidepost to the all things Cal - I noticed the light as a tropism, holding sway over the lifestyle, the optimism of the place.

 I was not wrong, as I was about most things at the time. Living here does that. It's in those memorable images from John Steinbeck, the paintings of Wayne Thiebaud; the 'quick brilliant flash' of Ferlinghetti's poetry, the light, divine evanscence...the ocean.

Else will people line the coast roads at sunset to witness the airbrush sunsets, summer fully in its wane in the east, while the Northern California coastline is getting warmed up - our Indian summer.

These sunsets are the reason they invented picture phones.

Emerging blissful, I drove over to Taqueria at Turtle Bay in Monterey, ordered, fresh tacos - the cranberry salsa, tasty - tortillas, doubled-wrapped and soft - no self respecing west coast taq would serve the crunchy kind.

One beer for the road and - solo - taking my time driving CA-1, the coast road, shouting the lyrics to Lou Reed's - Rock and Roll Animal, the water silver under the stars, the only company a rising half moon over my left shoulder.