We had an overnight snow dump early Sunday morning, and the streets were still mostly unplowed when I began the trek to L1. So it took a while to get out to our swim site, and I had to spend a bit more time digging out a staging area. But luckily the ladder was not iced over, so ingress and egress was pretty straightforward.
The lake came in at 38F (surface) with the air temp just under at 36F. It was still snowing when we got there, and it never really let up during the swim. But that didn’t stop us from getting in! Overall, the lake was quite calm for swimming – even with a slight southbound current that challenged us on the way back. As we are now in winter mode, I donned my shorty, gloves, hood, and booties and got in a quick 1/4 mile.
Instead of changing into my dry clothes at the swim site, I decided to put on my surfer’s changing robe over my wet lake gear, grab my stuff, and hightail it back to my car. While this was messy and complicated (my car still smells like Lake Michigan), it did seem to preempt a really bad afterdrop as I didn’t experience anything as intense as what I usually do when changing into my civilian clothes out in the open at L1. So if I can just work out the tricky logistics of changing out of my wet gear in my Mazda, I may just have a new post-swim routine!
