When we last left the dynamic duo (me and my Queen) 😉 I had just been awaken by the god-awfulliest stomach pain I have had in recent memory… again – A truly nasty,nasty way to start a day~~ I bolted out of bed and ran to the bathroom….. I won’t go into any more detail – because, really….. who wants to hear about that ?? 😉  After about an hour I was ready to go…. well, as ready to go as I was gonna get. My Queen and I loaded up and headed down to the boardwalk in downtown Christiansted. My Queen offered up herself to help where needed for the Triathlon while I got my gear loaded aboard the boat that was to haul me and a dozen other Rescue Swimmers out to the course the swimmers would be swimming. Me and my two buddies (Greg and Hillary) were the first off the boat, being dropped at the last turn of the 1.12 mile swim. Hillary has an impressive camera set up and was wanting to get pictures of the swimmers as they passed over head. Yes, we were to be under the water for this leg of the race. As it turned out, the visibility where we were at was miserable and she didn’t get hardly any pictures – but it was a very unique experience, to be hovering in about 15′ of water watching almost a 100 swimmers go over the top of you. We were requested to stay in the water for the second leg of the race, which was a sprint (much shorter course) so we bobbed around in the water waiting for the second leg to commence. It finally started and we opted to stay on the surface for that race…… it was really kinda cool watching all these folks go by. One big revelation I had – was the face of every swimmer I saw, looked like they were in pain. I mean serious pain. I could not help but wonder why a person would want to do that to themselves. I’ve always heard about a “high” intense athletes get while doing their thing….. I don’t think any of those folks had quite got there yet. 3rd to last swimmer on the sprint was an older gentleman….. probably my age or slightly older….. got to the corner buoy where I was stationed. The guy on the paddle board who was trailing him motioned to me to “watch this one”….. I eased over to him and asked him if he was alright or needed help. He declined my help. He hung there for a little bit and took off again for the finish line…… he didn’t make it a 100 yards, before I saw another paddle boarder pull up to him and grab him…… Coast Guard boat pulled up to them and hauled him out of the water. He was the only swimmer that needed assistance. After what seemed like an eternity, ‘our’ boat finally pulled up to pick us up. We had been in the water just over 2.5 hours and because of a small current – we had to kick constantly to maintain our position. That is 2 and a half hours of constant swimming~! I was never so glad to get out of the water in my life. My hips were killing me, my feet were starting to cramp and I was a wrinkled as I ever care to be. A pretty unique experience. Will I do it again?? Hell yeah~!  😉
Good night Ya’ll —– Thankx for stopping in~!
(That be ‘Pork Chop‘ in the background~~!)
Bob Riggs
My Queen~~ <3 
