Our beloved swim club was closed shut for 1.5 or more years. No showers. No sauna.br/ Swimmers formed diasporas and gravitated to easy commutes.br/ On Mars Day it was actually easy to breathe. But then came several days when the sky returned but it was challenging to inhale.br/ In desperation for open water, I texted my friend Becky quot;how do you feel about swimming in this?quot; Becky is a surgeon. I trust her opinion. Without skipping a beat she texted back quot;Meet me in half an hour at Cal Docksquot;.br/ It was my first time ever swimming in the East Bay.br/ Swimming here is a bit of a different animal. The views and available space for swimming is amazing... but it is rather shallow (with everything that entails).br/ The day I described did not look quite like this. In fact, one could see nothing on the left half of the image: no Bay Bridge, no City.br/ But this was an image I sketched from memory not that long after (towards winter). Particulates from all the fires must have still been in the air. The sunset was not a sunset but a flamingo aurora borealis, and we were submerged in hot pink lava that was how the 'aurora' reflected in the ripples. The windows of the abandoned His Lordships Restaurant were aflame with yellow.