Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Low water pressure

Our small town is fortunate enough to have an excellent swimming facility.

Completed several years ago, the aquatic center features an 8 lane, 25-meter lap pool, a corkscrew water slide into a separate 4-foot deep pool, a separate diving pool with both low and high diving boards, and a 25-meter long wading pool complete with beach-type shoreline and a 15-foot mushroom water fountain centerpiece.


The locker rooms are clean, the showers are hot and staff are small town Oklahoma friendly. Open year round, we've been enjoying the facility very much and very often.

With the exception of two days last week, that is.

One day we were turned away due to a baby ruth incident that caused them to shut down the pool to introduce what I can only imagine to be industrial strength E coli killing chemicals. They didn't drain the pool, however.

This type of accident seems to be more common than us public pool patrons would care to know about since the staff didn't seem all that concerned and were following what appeared to be a well-practiced set of procedures for chemical application.

The next day (no kidding), they closed the pool again due to some 10-year old doofus kid attempting a back flip off the side of the diving pool. He split his head open and the resulting flow of blood from his still-growing skull polluted the water beyond salvageability.

They had to drain, bleach, and refill the pool, retreat and reshock the water before allowing people back in some 24-hours after treatment. 10-year olds suck.

On a side note, the day they refilled the pool, we had low water pressure at our house. Here in my small town we have two water towers - one old and one new.

Wonder what would happen if everyone in town flushed at the same time?

On a personal note, Rest In Peace, Scotty.

1 comment:

Kenn said...

In my small Arizona dessert hometown, we too had the municipal swimming pool. No one had a private pool, and the summers were spent swimming the hot dessert afternoons away. I remember the dipping pool at the locker room door that had heavy chemicals that would kill athletes’ feet. Everyone had to go through the dip in order to get in the pool. I shudder now at what must have been in the mix.

There was also an x-ray machine at the local clothing store. You could put shoes on and then go x-ray your feet. As a kid you would do that over and over, until your feet glowed. Well, they didn’t then but they could have.

Whoa…those are scary memories.