Aquaboy rides out

[andygates]

Today's theme is water:

Swim is coming on a bit.  500m set in 11:54, which was nice and on-target for my 35:00 1500 lake goal (also warm-up, 200, 400 sets).  Still having to really concentrate on everything, but there you go.  The new pool is massively more suitable than my local one: cooler, with three paced lanes so I can trundle away in the Mediums without having to play Space Invaders through a wall of marching grannies.  At last, a use for flexitime that isn't just legalising tardiness.

A convergence of nudges has me Jonesing for more surf.  ravenbait sent me a nifty pic of the surf firing up the East Coast, and I traded the Tales Of The Old Horsemen (a "reminiscences of toothless old gimmers" genre piece) which I mistakenly got for Dad [1] for a UK surf break gazetteer.  Add to that a start on the Zombie Board Project and, well, meep. 

The Zombie Board is a karmic nugget of niceness: a freebie from a hitcher I used to give occasional lifts into town.  It had been lurking in the back of his workshop, unsurfable with a huge ding in the back.  But it's a vintage three-fin Watercooled shortie, and despite the yellowed glass and the fist-sized divot missing from the belly, and the deck so battered it looks like it's been ball-peened, and the thrice-repaired nose and twice-repaired tail and wholesale delamination - despite all that, it has character, so I'm going to restore it.  Starting with getting a decade of wax off, stickers embedded in its strata, and getting the damn thing clean; then it gets plugged and glassed, the old repairs get tidied up, I investigate injecting epoxy under the glass to re-bond the deck, and it ends up with a halftone comix zombie babe paint job.  Just because.

Back at New Year, there was some muttering about some of us n00bs taking a day at a surf school.  Who's interested, and can anyone recommend a decent one?

[1] Dad's too far gone now to read, which, to be honest, is the first time that neurological degeneration has frightened me in a long time.  Walking, shakes, moods, continence - no worries.  Not being able to read?  That's terrifying.  But I'm not going to dwell, as I'm sure to find a much swifter or more stupid death.

Comments

[skean.livejournal.com]

That is swim time really depressing. I mean for me, not for you. You've improved run and swim times over the past year, and I have yet to improve my bike time at all. This concentrating on the weakness thing ain't all its cracked up to be. Did you take lessons in the end? (or unofficailly from the Despaer's?)

And I'm sure you've discussed it before, but where does "Jonesing" come from?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Well, I have learned to swim at all, and lost a ton, so the times couldn't not improve. You're already athletickal so those gains aren't open to you. The recent swim improvement was mostly down to a coaching session from a friend of E's - better head position, stronger kick, longer pull, more economical breath. Anyway I'm still terrified about making the 1500 distance!

Jonesing is junkie speak, craving like an addict craves. But I can't find a good origin for it. Tough :)

What bored and lonely people do on Valentine's Day Night.

[n-decisive.livejournal.com]

One reference.

A second.

A third.

The problem is that none of them say the same thing. I'd be interested to know what Cassell's Dictionary of Slang has listed, if anything.

Re: What bored and lonely people do on Valentine's Day Night.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I quite like that "Mr Jones" angle; it feels more credible than "keeping up with the Joneses". We Brits have been keeping up with the Joneses here as long as I can remember (since the 1970s but it was common currency then), but "jonesing" is felt to be a US import.