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April 26, 2025
I want to give a big shout out to my local YMCA (Sussex County YMCA) for making one of my greatest nightmares a reality earlier today.
My nightmare is similar to the dream where you are trying to cross a road and for some reason you can only move in slow motion and cannot ever get to the other side.
In my nightmare I am swimming laps in a pool and all of a sudden the water level in the pool starts to drop.
I want to finish my laps and I find myself racing to complete the workout before all the water is gone and I end up flopping about on the bottom of the pool like a fish out of water.
Well today, when I arrived at the pool I noticed that the water level was about a foot lower than normal.
The staff told me that there had been an technical issue last night which caused to pool to lose about 30,000 gallons of water.
They assured me the problem had been resolved and that the pool was gradually filling up to normal levels - but that it would take time.
In the meantime, I was told that I could used the pool to swim my laps.
When I got into the shallow end to begin my laps, I noticed that there were only about two feet of water at that end.
Instead of getting in and pushing off from the side I had to lower myself down on my knees and then fall forward to get started - taking care to not bang my head on the bottom.
When I go to the deep end at the end of my first lap there was plenty of water but I had to reach up to the deck and hang on to adjust my goggles.
Even though they assured me that the problem had been fixed, at the end of each lap I couldn't help but count the number of tiles above the water line like a paranoid pool detective, to make sure the water level wasn't dropping like in my nightmare.
I ended up getting through my workout but did end up dragging my knuckles and feet on the bottom a few times when attempting to turn around in the shallow end.
So the good news is that I was able to finish my workout.
The bad news is I just got an email from the YMCA saying the pool was now "...closed until further notice."
I hope nobody ended up flopping about on the bottom of the pool like a fish out of water.
