A thick layer of fog floated above the water’s surface. A couple of bats soared in circles beneath the stars. And while my spine shivered when it felt Friday night’s brisk breeze, the lifeguards sat at a table, listening to 90s rap while eating dinner.

I’m pretty sure it was Chinese.

“Ma’am,” one of them said, an egg roll sticking out the side of her mouth. “Wait!”

I tapped the warm water with my toes, and sat down at the edge of the pool.

“Don’t worry,” I laughed. “I won’t drown.”

I won’t drown, you see, because at the very pool I swam in Friday night, I learned to swim when I was three. And wee though I was, after the lessons stopped, I never lost the ability to travel alone through bodies of water. But I also never had a pool to do it in.

So I joined the YMCA a little over a month ago in hopes to swim a lot more. So far, I’ve managed to squeeze in at least one swim per week, but up to three. And so far, I’ve learned five lessons:

• Old men are really good swimmers. At least, every last one of ‘em at the Y somehow finishes two or three laps before I’m halfway done with my first. Now, in my defense, they’ve probably been swimming for thrice the amount of time I’ve been living. And practice makes perfect.
• Swimming is scary, but it doesn’t scare me. Of all the fears I’ve had (and conquered, like airplanes and rollercoasters and driving on 275), the deep ends of swimming pools have never made the list. But without fail, every time I’m swimming over the deepest part of the pool at the Y, I start to believe I may be too tired to actually finish the lap. My lungs start to hurt, my arms start to hurt, my bangs get in my eyes, the water gets in my mouth and I just stare at the horrifying abyss below me. But somehow, I never panic. It’s crossed my mind a few times to ask the lifeguard just to drag me out of my misery to the other side of the pool. Instead, I usually just float around or doggie paddle until I can breathe.
• I should probably take swimming lessons again. I’m pretty sure I’m incapable of moving my arms at the same time that I’m moving my legs while I’m in the water. Somehow, I manage to make it work. But I’m pretty sure I look pretty stupid.
• Swimming at night is good, but awkward. Now that the nights are cold and since I wait so late to swim, the pool is almost always empty when I get there. The good news? No one but the life guard sees me looking stupid. The bad news? The lifeguard sees nothing but me looking stupid.
• Little kids are really good swimmers. They, like old men, also always show me up. This is indefensible.

Random? Yes. But good? I think so.

It’s an investment, and based not so much on random lessons I learn there and moreso on the fact that it’s the kind of athleticism that doesn’t bore me, my membership is definitely worth it.

Friday afternoon, I left work with a friend in the car and headed toward USF for the homecoming parade.

I knew it’d be a blast, and I knew that as the out-of-shape human being I am, my arms would get quite the workout from throwing beads from the top of a St. Pete Times float to lots of tiny Bulls fans below. So we drove, and we waited behind a long line of cars on Fletcher at a green light.

I’ve lived in Florida for 22 out of 22 years of life, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that no matter what its color, I will stop at every traffic light. But the wait was too much to take for somebody about to get to throw things at people who wanted me to throw things at them. In all of my hyper excitement, I began my trademark countdown to the point at which the line of motionless cars would become a line of moving ones.

“Three, two…one!” I pointed straight ahead.

Nothing.

“Three, two…one!” I pointed again.

This time, I got something. From the driver’s side of the silver Jetta in front of my car, a frail hand (to match the white mop of hair on the driver’s head) appeared out the window holding a sheet of paper. On the paper, she’d apparently just written “Back Off So I Can Go Around!” with a purple highligher, no less.

“Yes,” I thought to myself. “Yes, I think I will back up and smash the cars that are now lined up behind me.”

Long story short, traffic started flowing and the elderly woman – apparently angry that I didn’t decide to smash the cars behind mine so she could go around – picked up the pace to a whopping (and very literal) five miles per hour.

Short story shorter, I accidentally drag raced a woman old enough to be my great grandmother down Fletcher. It was pretty amazing… amazingly unexpected.

The parade, though, was wonderful. And I was right.

My arms still hurt.

 And better yet, who’s with me?

 

I’m thinkin’ Skydive City.

Seven miles?! 

Not gonna lie. Internally, I flipped a lid or three when the guy behind the counter at Weeki Wachee Canoe & Kayak Rental said the trip would be a seven-miler.

I’m Arleen. I can’t even walk more than a mile without spazzing, spewing or – on a good day - scowling in response to severely horrifying chest pains. But there I stood, paddle in hand, and prepared to board my boat.

Well, my kayak.

Fine. The double kayak I shared with my friend Abby. I’ll admit that the double was my idea; I’d kayaked twice before, also in doubles, in canals off the gulf behind a friend’s house. Because I’m a wimp and/or a wuss, I wanted to go with the familiar. 

And while seated atop a bright yellow version of the familiar, I learned a lot.

O.k, mostly I learned that I should have opted for a single seater. (Sorry, Abby.) See, she and I have uncanny inabilities to successfully share the responsibility of steering a giant boat-shaped piece of fiberglass across a seven mile stretch of the Weeki Wachee River. So I think it’ll be best if next time, we only have ourselves to blame when beached, backwards or smacked in the face repeatedly by entire trees.

Despite the few minor mishaps (which may or may not have also included ginormous spiders, paddles stuck in mud, paddles stuck in trees and trees stuck in hair), the trip was amazing. I watched a turtle bathe in the sun to my left, and I saw a deer poke his face out from behind the brush on the bank to my right. And – quite possibly coolest of all – we drifted alongside a manatee that came within a few inches of our kayak.

Just what I needed. It was one of those back-to-nature experiences; one of those reminders that my little world is a heck of a lot smaller than the planet on which it exists. And I, non-athletic though I am, will totally take a couple more days of sore arms to do that again soon. Only next time, maybe Norway:

(That’ll be the day.)

Weeki Wachee Canoe & Kayak Rental
@ US 19 and SR 50 in Spring Hill FL
$42 for a double kayak (or for a 2 seater canoe)
$34 for a single seater kayak

Arleen reccomends it, regardless of athletic ability. (In other words: if she can do it, pretty much anybody can.)