Several people have told me that the pool at the High School doesn’t use chlorine. We’ve asked around and no one seems to know for sure what they use. I don’t need to resurrect the nasty pictures of my skin after the last time I swam in a pool with chlorine; many have asked that they be left off the e-mail list if I ever try to make them look at those again.

So today I went up to the High School pool and swam. Since I haven’t been in a pool in six months, I didn’t get carried away, but I swam for about 45 minutes. I didn’t do any speed work; just long, slow laps with a minute rest every 500 meters or so. We’ll see if they really do use chlorine or bromine ‘cuz I’ll start itching places other people don’t want to see me touch. If I do start itching, Jean may call Diane for a sleeping pill either for herself or me. I thrash around in bed enough without the constant scratching.

I get e-mails every week from Inside Triathlon among many, many others. It’s their on-line magazine and often has interesting articles. It started out HI JOHN (no one calls me John except telemarketers who don’t know I’m really Just Jack), and continues with the teaser line “And their off…”. You all know from my writing that I’m not a grammar geek with the run-on sentences and commas where there should be semicolons or nothing at all. But it drive me crazy that we’ve gotten so dependent on spell-check that we don’t think about what we’re writing.

Any fifth grader could tell you that “their” is a possessive pronoun that is either used alone or used to describe a noun. Their hats; their team; their unmentionables. Not only is it a possessive pronoun, it’s a personal pronoun and we all know personal pronouns don’t use apostrophes (theirs, not their’s). As Inside Triathlon is trying to use the word, it’s really a contraction of the two words “they” and “are”; a quick way of saying “And they are off…”.

There are two dangers in criticizing someone else’s grammar. First of all, since many of our friends are school teachers or former school teachers, I’m likely to get this e-mail back with all kinds of red marks and underlines with a big “D-” on the top and a note that reads “You know you could do better. I would like to meet with you and your parents and talk about your future in this class”. That ship has sailed many times in the past so don’t waste your time.

The second danger is that those of you who don’t see anything wrong with the Inside Triathlon usage will look at me as the class dork who really doesn’t know much, but points out the mistakes of others and ridicules them to make myself look good. As I said before, I’m not very good at grammar and I admit it. But I also don’t write for a globally distributed magazine. Any criticism of this e-mail should be directed to my website www.whoreallycares.nut .

For those of you who haven’t heard, the National Conference On Global Warming meeting that is scheduled to meet in Hastings on Wednesday has been canceled due to the blizzard forecast. It has been rescheduled to the same week as Ironman Wisconsin, trying to coincide with our one week of really hot summer weather.

Just (I Want To Ride My Bike Outside) Jack