Trip to the Swimming Pool

On Friday, I managed to have some quality time with the entire family again. We cycled down to the nearest public swimming pool, a distance of just over two kilometres.

In Perth, I’d cover that in about 5-10 minutes, especially if it was located along one of the many cycle paths. However, in Singapore it takes us almost half-an-hour. All the paths are shared, which means we need to deal with loads of pedestrians, most that have no situation awareness or (seemingly) any will to live. They often just step out from nowhere, or turn sharply – usually without looking. So we tend to ride much slower in Singapore than I ever did in Perth.

The pedestrian situation here (the lack of perception) is particularly fraught because there are plenty of delivery riders using e-bikes (of various configurations). They race along the paths at a rate of knots – way faster than I can cycle. The laws the government brought in after a woman was killed by a collision with an e-bike, hasn’t slowed them down. Nor have the pedestrians wised up. They still prefer to walk along the designated bike areas (often in groups), which results in riders weaving their way through the pedestrian traffic. It’s a recipe for tragedy.

Anyway, we survived the ride. It’s been a while since we rode down to the pool. Last time it was just the kids and I, and we took a new (more direct) route. Unfortunately, once we reached a certain point, none of us could remember which way we had to go, so we got lost. But not too badly. We ended up at the pool, only about five minutes later than we should have.

My goal for today’s swim was to teach my Youngest how to do laps. He can swim, his stroke is good, but he hasn’t learnt to breathe properly when doing the Aussie Crawl. It’s mostly a mental thing. He’s not comfortable getting his face wet (or so he says), and so the fear of drowning kicks in. He can actually swim quite a long way (and at a fast rate) without breathing. With his face underwater, btw. But he hasn’t the confidence to turn his head and take a breath. With lots of help from my Eldest we made some progress, which was great, but it’s something for another time. I’m very proud of his achievements today.

After that we did some underwater handstands, a few underwater swims, a bit of short-distance racing, and generally made a nuisance of ourselves. Eventually though, we’d all had enough and left the pool. And just in time, too. After we’d finished changing back into our cycling gear, we noticed that everyone had left all the pools. A thunderstorm was approaching and even the pools that are undercover needed to be evacuated. There were lots of unhappy kids waiting anxiously.

The storm didn’t bode well for us with the intent to cycle home, either. Instead, we decided to cut our losses (and not get drenched – or electrocuted) and had lunch at one of the food places nearby. The storm created a nice water feature (aka waterfall) though. There was only a bit of thunder and lightning.

By the time we’d had finished lunch, the storm had passed and we had fun cycling home. It was a superb day out.