When Days Are Hot, When Days Are Cool

so, here i am in kitchener, visiting my aunt and uncle. in order to keep up with my swimming over the holidays, i got my coach to write down a couple of workouts for me to do. anyway, i was pretty excited about having the opportunity to come here and swim at the waterloo swimplex. when i was a kid and we would come visit here, we used to go to the swimplex. since i have always been a keen swimmer, i relished the chance to go to the swimplex. in my mind, the swimplex was the greatest swimming facility ever built. it seemed so cavernous and huge, with its two level high dive, double regular diving boards, whirlpool, full size waterslide, mushroom, and fountain in the shallow end. i thought my cousins were so lucky to have such a beautiful pool at their disposal, and i looked forward to swimming there more than any other aspect of my visits. so, when i decided that that is where i would be swimming this week, i was pretty excited to come back to my most favourite pool. turns out though, that ten years is a long time for growing up, and the pool isnt as amazing as it seemed so long ago. yes, it is still a fantastic facility, but there are little things about it that make me realise it was my childs perspective that made the place seem so surreal. for starters, being bigger than i once was, the pool is not nearly as gigantic as i remembered. the lockers are the same system as they were ten years ago, wherein you put a quarter in and you have to keep track of your key for the rest of the day and then when you unlock it you get your quarter back. this kind of technology impressed and mystified me as a child, but now, its cumbersome and irritating to have to keep track of a key. when the shallow lanes are open, the deep end lanes are only 20m long instead of 25, which means i lost 20m off each 100 while i was working out. i was able to readjust my lengths for some of the drills to compensate for this, but it made doing 50s and 75s impossible. also, since its only 20m, the number of turns is increased and the amount of time doing a length is decreased, which is dizzying. other than that, i still had fun and it was still a nice pool, but it has gone from being my childhood wet dream (hahaha pardon the pun) to just another pool. i wonder how many other things i am going to find disappointing when compared to my childhood ideals. i guess this is the lousy side of growing up.