Do floats, float?

As part of my new year’s resolutions, which I mentioned on a previous post, I have been taking swimming lessons for the last two weeks. I can safely say that the nicest part of my swimming lesson is the bus journey into the Freyberg Swimming Pool and back again.

Every now and then, if you’re really lucky, you will end up on a bus route that could double up as a sight seeing tour. The number 14 bus that brings me to the swimming pool via Oriental Bay is one such bus. I decided to take my camera on the bus to the pool this morning so you could appreciate the views also. Here are some pics taken going from Hataitai (name of area where we live, pronounced, hi-tie-tie) to Oriental Bay.

This is a picture of the swimming pool which interestingly enough, especially when you’re drowning, is 33.3 meters long. Three lengths making up 100m (I trust you worked that one out for yourself).

Speaking of drowning I had my first lesson about two weeks ago, and it wasn't long before my teacher was telling me to go out and buy flippers! My "ability" to kick with a float while at the same time remaining perfectly stationary seems to have made quite an impression on my new teacher.

As part of my lessons I have to aqua jog, which involves putting a float around your waist and going for a "jog" out of your depth. Being the leaner side of way too skinny I do not have the greatest buoyancy in the world. The only thing keeping me afloat, it would seem, is the air in my lungs. I discovered this last night, when aqua jogging with Sharon. I got into a fit of laughter and realised that the more I laughed, the more I exhaled, the more I sank. It seemed that the happier I got in the pool the more short lived that happiness was going to be. My new motto is "stay grumpy and float."

At the start of my second lesson, my teacher handed me a float and asked me to do my "flipper impression," my words, not hers. When she handed me the float, I informed her that I was using one the previous night and it kept on sinking, so I used two and it was much better. I naively expected her to run off and get the second float, but she didn't budge. She just looked at the float somewhat bemused and asked me what she was holding. "A float" I replied knowingly! Exactly she said, it’s a "float" not a "sink." Strangely enough I began to sense where this was going, and it wasn't towards the stash of floats behind her!

Anyway, apparently it was the tension in my body that was making the float sink, and not some mysterious force of gravity that exuded from my body. I learned a valuable lesson that day and quite a simple one at that. Floats, float!

Here's a few pics from the way back home.

I took the pic's showing the window frames on purpose as it is the way that the images are framed when you are traveling that makes them even more intersting.

The number 14 bus journey has terrific views of the sea and gives me a most appropriate incentive to keep on trying to learn how to swim!


Cathal aka "flipper"