Why I'm not swimming much lately

©2015 Lydia Hinshaw

The Ormond YMCA pool, three weeks into the project

 ORMOND BEACH, FL --  A long-planned expansion of the YMCA swimming pool began three weeks ago, leaving me high and dry for a while.

 Some of my friends have been driving to the Port Orange YMCA, nearly 12-miles away, to swim, but I'm settling for land-based exercise while holding out for something closer.  The Y is supposed to be opening the pool it operates in Holly Hill, just three miles away, on Monday.  We shall see.

 The Holly Hill pool is not normally heated and therefore not open in winter.  The plan was to move a couple of heaters from the pool pictured above and install them in Holly Hill.  That was supposed to take two weeks and the pool was to have opened Feb. 2.  There was no breath-holding among YMCA regulars, however, and no one was surprised when that date was postponed a week.

 The renovated pool in Ormond, once it's completed will be a 50 meter by 25-yard rectangle, instead of the L-shaped original version, which had eight 25-yard lanes at one end, but the remainder of the pool was only 20 yards wide.

 Many other new and exciting improvements are part of the project.  No one is venturing a guess as to when the renovation project will be completed, but since Prince Charming and I plan to leave here in May, I don't expect to swim in  the new pool before we come home in October.

 In the meantime, I'm waiting for official confirmation that the substitute pool is open before I head down there to see how crowded it is.