… wet bathing suits?
I was inspired to question this as a result of a road trip visiting beaches on the north shore of Lake Erie yesterday.
It got me thinking of wet bathing suits from years gone by. As a youngster, we lived at the swimming pool during the summer. In the morning, we’d take swimming lessons, in the afternoon it was public swimming from 2-5 and then public swimming from 7-9 in the evening. In between, we’d roll up our bathing suits and towels, clamp them to our bike carriers (we called them rat traps), and take them home. The clothesline was just outside the back door and we learned to clip them there to dry for the next swimming trip.
The irony of my problem of wearing a wet bathing suit is not lost on me!
This is what Google Gemini pictured as my transportation and carriage of the swimming towel and bathing suit carefully rolled. It’s pretty close.
I learned quickly not to call the carrier a mouse trap or rat trap as a description to Google Gemini. This is NOT what my bike looked like.
While the town pool was our most frequent destination, there were some special trips with Mom and Dad that took us to a beach – typically Bayfield or Goderich, and a few wonderful times hitting up both.
Now, that’s quite a bicycle trip and so we’d take our car. That did pose a challenge for carrying those wet bathing suits. I can still distinctly remember our solution. You’d put the bathing suit over the radio antenna through the leg holes. As we drove, the bathing suits flapped in the breeze and dried out very quickly. Certainly, it was much quicker than the clothesline at home.
(I hope that frequent readers notice than our Belair had white wheel tires)
Now, on any road trip headed east, we always make sure that we hit Leamington and fill up with gas with its lower prices. ($1.51.9)
I used the opportunity to clean the car windows – don’t worry, I’m getting to the point – and I noticed the antenna on the back of our car. If it was a beer bottle, we’d call it a “short stubby” and it is parallel to the ground. There’s no way that you could hang a bathing suit on it. What to do? What to do?
Which brings me to the point …
- were you a frequent swimmer in your youth?
- did you have issues with wearing a wet bathing suit?
- did you take swimming lessons or attend public swimming? How did your bathing suit get from home to the pool or beach?
- did you ever go to a swimming location that required driving in a car? If so, how did you transport a wet bathing suit? How did you dry it?
- is there a more sophisticated way to carry a wet bathing suit that has eluded me?
As always, for a Sunday morning, I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.
This is a somewhat regular Sunday morning blog post around here. You can check out all the previous posts here.
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.