Argh! The swimmers are back!
A year ago, I wrote about people swimming in the middle of Mooney’s Bay, seemingly oblivious to the boat traffic on the river.
Well, they’re back.
While dodging kayaks, small motor boats and other dragonboats at Tuesday evening’s dragonboat practice, I also had to contend with two swimmers in the middle of the river. Passing within 10 feet of them, we headed upstream to the top of the bay. As I looked back, I watched as they slowly swam into the middle of a dozen kayaks heading downstream. Shaking my head in disbelief, I continued steering the boat upstream.
A little while later while we were lining up at the 800m mark to practice our race plan, I saw the two swimmers about to head back across the lane that we were going to be racing down in a minute or two. Fortunately, they cleared the lane before it became an issue.
I’d like to think that these swimmers would figure out for themselves that swimming in the middle of a busy river is really not the best idea, but I doubt that’ll happen. If they’re out next week, I might try to tell them how much they look like the marker buoys and the risks they’re taking.
AKA Keeper of Maps, I'm a geocacher who lives in Ottawa, Canada.
What you have there, Gord, is yet-another-incarnation of the “OWE ME” society. A person who lives in the “owe me” world believes that their rights are inviolable, to be exercised at every opportunity, irrespective of the rights of others (who owe them), irrespective of personal responsibility for one’s actions, and often irrespective of good ol’ common sense (cyclists on icy, snowy roads are a good example of this). The swimmers, in their minds, feel that it is not only their right to swim in the river, and swim where they want but that they are OWED river space wherever they choose to use it, and everyone else be damned.
Cyclists feel the same way about roads.
Pedestrians feel the same way about the
bikemulti-purpose paths.In all those people’s minds, there’s never a thought like “although I can be here, SHOULD I be here?”, “I can use this path this way, but what about the other people who want to use it?”, or “I may be swimming in the racing and navigation channel, but if they hit me I won’t sue because I’m being a total nimrod.”