I've been swimming at 6 am at the WeHo pool for the last 4 years and never have I read or heard as great of a description of swimming at 6am than a reporter's take on the Arden Hills Swim Club back in the 1960's:
"It looked like something out of Dante's Inferno, or mayb a witch-and-wizard's convention in Yellowstone Park. The temperature of the air was thrity-five degrees; so, with the three swimming pools heated to about eighty, they were generating mists swirling up about forty feet. The only illumination came from below, from the underwater lights of the pools, and through the mists, it looked something like hell. The swimmers, struggling back and forth back and froth, two in each lane of each pool, were barely visible and gave me the impression of tortured souls in purgatory..."
This is from the out of print book "The 50 Meter Jungle" by Sherman Chavoor but the description reminds me of many a morning as I pull up to the pool. I can see the steam rising up in the air before I can see the pool. Some mornings the digital clock at the end of the pool vanishes behind these flumes of steam. In some mornings it's magical and others it does feel like I've entered the gates of hell.
