I

've been doing a lot of swimming this year in our apartment complex pool. Before this year I had done almost no swimming for about 15 years. Needless to say my tan is now coming along fine. Some say that we should be wary of too much sunshine in order to avoid skin cancer. But they don't consider the positive aspects of sun on skin. It clears up all sorts of minor disorders and does the psyche a good turn as well.

Well, swimming around and all that ... I have to come up with some innovative way to swim more easily. That is, relax and swim at the same time. Well, I always had this thing about Diana Nyad (the long distance swimmer) and her similarity to the "self-flagellaters" of the Dark Ages. These guys would wear hair shirts and beat themselves with a rod till they bled ... all for the glory of God through the mortification of the body. Well ... I just don't go that route. There is a line in sports (not too well defined) between working out and body mortification.

So here's my gizmo. It works in concert with common swim fins. This is the swimming equivalent of walking ... we just use the legs to paddle around while using a flotation device to keep us up where the air is.